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Homosexuality and Pathology in the Than

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1.0, University of Duisburg-Essen (Institut für Anglophone Kulturen), course: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Literature from the 19th century to the present, language: English, comment: Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Entstehung des Pathologiemodells von Homosexualität in den USA und zeigt seine Ursprünge in Psychotherapie und Religion. Darüber hinaus beinhaltet es eine kritische Evaluation von sexuellen Veränderungstherapien wie sie von NARTH beziehungsweise konservativen, christlichen Gruppen propagiert werden. , abstract: For almost four decades now organized mental health has declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in the United States of America. After several years of bitter dispute, the American Psychiatric Association decided to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, its official list of mental diseases. Nevertheless it is remarkable that a demise of therapies designed to change homosexual orientation seems improbable at least, given that some religious political activists and marginalized health professionals are apparently seeking to reinstate the disease-model of homosexuality by presenting stories of presumably cured homosexuals to the American public. Aside the professional media, especially religious groups promoting sexual orientation change therapies recently experienced unwanted popular media coverage. The treatment of homosexualityby medical practitioners is of relatively recent origin. Before 1800, homosexuality was essentially conceived as a merely theological-moral phenomenon. From then onward however, legislative declared it a legal matter until medical professionals declared it a sickness. While at it's time of origin, the medical practitioners' concept of homosexuality as a sickness may have been a liberal and humaneadvance over the conception and punishment of ho