Psychiatrists learned the wrong lesson from the gay rights movement [View all]

Benjamin Ryan is an independent journalist and has been covering LGBTQ health for over two decades.

Five decades ago, the world’s most powerful psychiatric association changed the course of LGBTQ civil rights history when it removed homosexuality from its influential bible of mental health disorders.

At annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association during the early 1970s, activists and internal reformers compelled the association to host panels and discussions on the merits of the relevant research, fostering a rigorous debate about whether homosexuality should still be considered a pathology. The science won in 1974 and set in motion a parade of legal victories for the gay rights movement, including the right for same-sex couples to wed.

APA members gather in New York on Saturday for this same crucial meeting. The summit should again serve as a watershed moment in the care of LGBTQ people. This time, the pressing question facing American psychiatrists is how best to treat children who are distressed about their gender. In response to emerging analyses of the available research, health officials in several European nations have sharply restricted the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in this population — in some countries to research settings only. But the APA still endorses the use of these drugs as a front-line intervention for minors.

In 1974, the science lined up neatly with the demands of gay rights activists. But today, the science of pediatric gender medicine is uncertain, so it doesn’t back the cause the of groups leading the contemporary LGBTQ civil rights movement in the United States.

GLAAD has gone so far as to insist that “the science is settled” regarding pediatric gender transition. It is not. In fact, the field of pediatric gender medicine is woefully compromised by a critical lack of quality research. Evidence-based-medicine experts insist that we simply do not know whether gender-transition treatment is safe and effective for minors.

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