On this day in queerstory: American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from DSM

On December 17, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association publicly announced that it would remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM). In plain terms: being gay was officially declared not a mental illness. About time.

To understand how radical this was, you have to remember what came before. For decades, queer people in the United States had been pathologized by medicine, policed by law, and punished by religion—often all at once. Psychiatrists labeled same-sex desire a sickness. Therapists prescribed “treatments” that ranged from talk therapy steeped in shame to electroshock, institutionalization, and forced heterosexual marriage. Being queer didn’t just risk social rejection; it could cost you your job, your freedom, or your sanity.

And then queer people started pushing back—loudly.

The decision announced on December 17 didn’t come from a sudden burst of enlightenment among psychiatrists. It came from pressure. Activists had spent years confronting the psychiatric establishment head-on. Groups like the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance disrupted APA conferences, seized microphones, and demanded to be heard. One of the most iconic moments came in 1972, when psychiatrist John Fryer—himself gay—addressed the APA disguised in a wig, mask, and tuxedo, calling himself “Dr. Anonymous” to avoid professional ruin. His message was simple and devastating: the profession was harming people under the guise of science.

Behind closed doors, the APA’s board voted on December 15, 1973, to remove homosexuality as a diagnosis. Two days later, on December 17, the decision was made public. The announcement didn’t magically end homophobia, but it shattered a powerful weapon that had long been used against queer lives. Without a medical diagnosis to hide behind, discrimination became harder to justify—though, of course, many still tried.

In the U.S., this moment became a cornerstone for future legal and cultural battles. Courts increasingly questioned laws that treated gay people as inherently unfit parents, employees, or citizens. Therapists began—slowly, unevenly—rethinking their role, moving from “curing” queerness to supporting queer clients. For LGBTQ+ people, especially those who had been told their desires were symptoms, the change offered something rare: official validation that they were not broken.

The ripple effects traveled far beyond American borders. Because the DSM influenced psychiatric practice worldwide, the APA’s decision cracked open debates across Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Progress was uneven and often painfully slow. The World Health Organization wouldn’t remove homosexuality from its own diagnostic manual until 1990—a date now marked globally as the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia. Still, December 17, 1973, helped set that global shift in motion.

It’s also worth noting what the decision didn’t do. Trans identities remained pathologized for decades afterward, and many still are in various forms today. Queer people of color, poor queer people, and those outside major cities often saw little immediate relief. And the rise of so-called “conversion therapy” showed that stigma doesn’t need official diagnoses to survive—it just mutates.

Yet December 17 remains a powerful reminder of something essential: systems change when people force them to. This wasn’t benevolence from above; it was liberation wrestled from institutions that had caused real harm.

So today, December 17 stands as a celebration of queer resistance, inconvenient truths, and the radical idea that our lives are not illnesses. It’s a date that invites us to toast the activists who kicked down the doors of psychiatry—and to stay alert, because history shows that progress is never permanent unless we keep defending it.