In 1973, activists succeeded in their efforts. As they had in years past, gay activists disrupted panels and gave speeches. One of the more famous speeches offered at the May 1973 APA conference in Honolulu was by a gay activist named Ronald Gold, who told the APA members, “Stop it, you’re making me sick.” The resounding line was somewhat of a double entendre: the APA was literally saying that Gold, as a gay man, was ill, implying that the “medical professionals” were creating sickness where there was none. And, in stigmatizing Gold’s personhood, the APA was helping to further the social conditions that alienated and ostracized queer people—like him.

Ultimately, activists were successful in part by pointing out the gaps in the APA’s own reasoning behind classification. The declassification movement made heavy use of the fact that, until this time, the members had not really defined what a mental illness was, only asserted that they existed and had a distinct etiology, though the brain’s complexity prevented complete precision. “In fact, the controversy over the homosexuality diagnosis was able to reach such heights of publicity in part because the APA had never had cause to reach consensus on a standardized definition of mental illness,” Lewis writes.

@jstor I am begging you to do a "wikipedia roulette" feature

it's because you're always on that damn archive