197310
Homosexuality and
Civil Rights
POSITION STATEMENT
Approved by the Board of Trustees, December 1973
Approved by the Assembly, 1973
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"Policy documents are approved by the APA Assembly and Board of Trustees… These are …position statements that define APA official policy on specific subjects…" -- APA Operations Manual. |
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WHEREAS HOMOSEXUALITY per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities, therefore, be it resolved that the American Psychiatric Association deplores all public and private discrimination against homosexuals in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation, and licensing, and declares that no burden of proof of such judgment, capacity, or reliability shall be placed upon homosexuals greater than that imposed on any other persons. Further, the American Psychiatric Association supports and urges the enactment of civil rights legislation at the local, state, and federal level that would offer homosexual citizens the same protections now guaranteed to others on the basis of race, creed, color, etc. Further, the American Psychiatric Association supports and urges the repeal of all discriminatory legislation singling out homosexual acts by consenting adults in private.
(The American Psychiatric Association is, of course, aware that many other persons in addition to homosexuals are irrationally denied their civil rights on the basis of pejorative connotations derived from diagnostic or descriptive terminology used in psychiatry and deplores all such discrimination. This resolution singles out discrimination against homosexuals only because of the pervasive discriminatory acts directed against this group and the arbitrary and discriminatory laws directed against homosexual behavior).
This statement was prepared by Robert L. Spitzer, M.D., with the approval of the Task Force on Nomenclature and Statistics and was recommended for approval by the Council on Professions and Association.