What are we going to call this? Are you going to say this is normal? That a person who has legs that have been actually paralyzed by polio is a normal person even though the polio is no longer active? The fears that have created the homosexuality, and the psychological inhibitions, belong in some kind of psychiatric representation.

Dr. Spitzer: It now appears that although Dr. Bieber doesn't believe homosexuality is a mental illness, he would like to categorize it some place in between. If that is the case, why is he upset about the recent decision? It doesn't say homosexuality is normal. It only says it doesn't meet the criteria for psychiatric illness or disorder.

But before Dr. Bieber answers this question—Much of the language that Dr. Bieber uses (homosexuals are crippled, there is an injury) represents precisely the definitions that homosexuals now refuse to accept. Homosexuals are insisting they no longer want to view themselves this way.

The Redefinition

And the reason that this new proposal was unanimously passed by the three committees of the APA and finally by the Board of Trustees, is not that the American Psychiatric Association has been taken over by some wild revolutionaries or latent homosexuals. It is that we feel that we have to keep step with the times. Psychiatry, which once was regarded as in the vanguard of the movement to liberate people from their troubles, is now viewed by many, and with some justification, as being an agent of social control. So it makes absolute sense to me not to list as a mental disorder those individuals who are satisfied and not in conflict with their sexual orientation.

Dr. Bieber: I didn't say homosexuality was a mental illness. And the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorder (DSM) contains other conditions [that do not satisfy Dr. Spitzer's definition] that I don't consider mental disorders either, such as voyeurism and fetishism.

Dr. Spitzer: I haven't given as much thought [as Dr. Bieber] to the problems of voyeurism and fetishism, and perhaps that's because the voyeurs and fetishists have not yet organized themselves and forced us to do that. But it is true that there probably are some other conditions, and perhaps they include voyeurism and fetishism, which do not meet the criteria [of mental disorders]. I would be for reviewing those conditions as well.

I would like to ask you: Would you be in favor of adding the condition of asexuality, or celibacy, to the DSM?