The Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has been the authoritative reference volume for psychiatrists and psychologists, whose diagnoses and therapeutic regimens (that is to say, annual incomes) are largely guided by the book’s directives and prejudices. Mental health professionals, stern in their discipline, along with giddy pedagogues who speculate about human nature like so many first-graders wielding Crayolas, are both equally beholden to the Holy Writ that is the DSM.
In the 1960’s, homosexuality was described in the Manual as a neurosis, very close to a mental illness. This was in the decade of the Sexual Revolution, which sought to overthrow the strictures of the Eisenhower years. There was mayhem in the streets, interspersed with boisterous love-making, and the vandals and hippiegoths soon ransacked the academe, whose views on human sexuality, up until then, reflected those of the culture at large.
The Revolution died down, as hormones and ideals gave way to boredom and expediency. But in its place arose a greater menace, a movement fueled by passions perverted, and oddly enhanced, by sophistry. I call this movement “The Sexual Substitution.”
It began with the takeover of popular media, and in short order insinuated itself into various institutions, each ideological tentacle coiling around society’s edges, feeling, testing, altering where it could, and withdrawing when it met resistance.
In the 1970’s, homosexuality, as a diagnosis of morbidity, disappeared from the pages of the Manual. When it came up as a subject, or even as a controversy, homosexuality was referred to as an “alternative lifestyle,” as though it were a pair of conspicuous bell-bottom jeans, something one might dismiss with a flick, however flamboyant, of a wrist. Homosexuals, who had been denigrated (uncharitably) as “pansies” and “faggots,” now were called “gays,” a word which had an uplifting and poetic resonance. They were perceived as carefree denizens of an underclass (as exemplified by The Village People)—closer to respectability than one might suppose.
It was a fun decade, come to think of it. There was disco, and roller blades, and Jimmy Carter. The President’s grin, so endearing at first, rushed toward the realities of international affairs like the grille of a Buick headed for a brick wall. The automobile was lucky, actually, to have had some OPEC-branded gas in its tank. In any case, by the end of the decade, the fun was over, the economy was wrecked, and AIDS had reared its strange, ugly head.
In the 1980’s, homosexuality turned into a public health issue, and a Marshall Plan of medical research funds poured out of Washington, DC, as the government strove to curb the disease. Gays were portrayed as victims of Pat Robertson’s apocalyptic machinations, and of Ronald Reagan’s indifference. The homosexual community became infected, as well, with a new-found militancy, as groups like “Queer Nation” and ACT UP took to the streets with their grievances. Homosexuality had evolved from a clinical dysfunction to a political cause.
As the hysteria over AIDS abated, sometime in the mid-90’s, homosexuality was downgraded to a mere “orientation,” one with a genetic component perhaps, like astigmatism. Its apologists insisted it was a condition undeserving of social stigma. In fact, they said, homosexuality deserved special legal protection. Gays were an “oppressed minority,” like Latinos. Thus, “gay rights” went from being a political cause to a secularist crusade, its fervent mission nothing less than the upturning of American society.
Here we are at last in 2011. United States jurisprudence—as the old Virginia Slims advertisement might put it—has “come a long way, baby.” Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont recognize same-sex marriage, and eight more states, including Illinois, have civil union statutes on their books. Many municipalities and corporations extend domestic-partner benefits to gay couples, and now the entire United States military is officially obliged to shut up, and to put up with homosexual behavior in its ranks.
All the while, the momentum grows. Everywhere, the message is that being gay is good. To be against “gay rights” is to be a homophobe, a creature lower than a microbe.
The substitution is nearly complete. What began as an abnormality is now considered fashionable. Heterosexuality, the norm since Adam and Eve, is a musty Victorian relic, a vestigial structure. We are all supposed to bathe in this new gender-neutral enlightenment, according to Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender organization.
Yet where some see growing momentum, others see a moral spasm, a death wish. It isn’t just that homosexuality, so erosive to society, is now embraced by many; it is that marriage has been fundamentally weakened, by divorce and cohabitation, by tax laws, by late-night comedy, and now by radical redefinition. As western civilization undermines its own foundation, madmen and mystics among the Taliban and al-Qaeda glare at us stupidly.
Oh, you don’t think this is a spiritual battle? What does the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (Edition IV) say today about homosexuality? Chances are it has an offhand attitude, one devoid of any sense of conflict or misgiving. Meanwhile, what is the name of SB 1716, the provision granting homosexuals in Illinois the same marital rights and benefits that heterosexuals possess? The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection & Civil Union Act.
The irony in that title is prodigious, even for a political document. Only the Constitution and Scripture, as it happens, stand in the way of the Left’s onslaught. We can only trust that the words of the founding fathers, and of our heavenly Father are more steadfast than the promiscuous perambulations of the DSM.
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