Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker Clip/ 57 YEARS TOO MANY (2013) #57yearstoomany - #64yearstoomany

57 YEARS TOO MANY (2013) /64 YEARS TOO MANY (2020)

Meet the woman, who challenged unscientific base of homosexuality being a mental illness in psychiatry circles and beyond in 1956. Turns out she is born in September too.

57/64 years too many people on both religious and non-religious isles of society have been  been IMO either clueless, prejudiced or picky about nature, science and reality on  GLBTQ people. I know that  often  they are  so there in good faith and are meaning well( naturally there are exceptions) being  motivated by own morals and beliefs of various faiths or philosophy as i have met many of them in my life and religious and spiritual journey well meaning different communities members being  ,  though in my opinion they have NO BASE for not accepting GLBTQ folks for completely for who they are and let them practice their lifestyle, while letting them to take part in their communities, churches, congregations, mosques, synagogues, temples, Centres, workplaces and so on and that the scientist has not only challenged a previously unfounded view in science but basically leaving all people, countries and all religions, who say that GBLTQ folks are faulty, sinful etc. to use different forms of discrimination against them and especially those who claim to accept scientific findings and science being equal to the religion to be just a religion in that matter. for public view.  While following post deals with Baha'i viewpoint and theological teachings on homosexuality, its not the only religion that either at softest option makes people to choose part of themselves and groups/organizations rules and policies and  own participation possibility in them and/or at harshest has sanctions against those who go against written norms that in some countries of Islam gays end up with being hanged up for being gay.  I learned of this scientist in now archived Baha'i Rants blog that was back in 2013 published by a Baha'i  ( I dont know what her personal  faith level or membership status is now)  by blogger named Baquia:   https://web.archive.org/web/20190407052743/http://bahairants.com/pathology-of-homosexuality-1763.html

"The Pathology of Homosexuality
The assumption that homosexuality was related to psychopathic, paranoid, and schizoid personality disorders was widely accepted at the time of Shoghi Effendi by medical professionals. Such a diagnosis resulted in barbaric treatments which included but were not limited to: hysterectomies and estrogen injections (for lesbians), electroshock therapy, chemical castration, surgical castration, and trans-orbital lobotomies. I shudder to think of Baha'i's who took the advice offered to them and availed themselves of such options.
While viewing homosexuality as having pathology was the prevalent doxa back then, it is imperative to point out that it was the social doxa that imposed itself onto the medical doxa. Scientifically there was no basis whatsoever for the medical assumption that homosexuality had a definable pathology.
The infamous Alfred Kinsey was among the first to study homosexuality. In 1948 he published a report not only showing the ‘normalcy’ of homosexuals as people but also the first evidence of the ineffectiveness of sexual conversion therapies.
Dr. Evelyn Hooker
 But it was not until 1956 that a young woman, already an outsider for being female in the male dominated field of psychology, destroyed the widely held orthodoxy that homosexuality was a ‘disease’ with the presentation of her research at the American Psychological Association’s Annual Convention in Chicago.
Dr. Evelyn Hooker applied for and was given a grant by the NIMH in 1953 for her study. She said years later, “It was exciting because it would have been the first time anybody ever looked at this behavior and said ‘we’ll use scientific tests to determine whether or not homosexuality is pathological.’” Dr. Hooker’s research was both simple and ground breaking. She examined a group of 30 homosexuals and 30 heterosexuals with psychoanalytical surveys and the Rorschach ink-blot test.
Dr. Hooker removed all identifiable marks from the test results and to even further remove any possibility of bias sent the results to three other preeminent psychologists for analysis. One of them was Dr. Bruno Klopfer who was convinced that he would be able to tell the homosexual subjects apart from the test group of heterosexuals just from the Rorschach test. He couldn’t. In fact, none of the three could. Mental health was equally distributed among the subjects tested and homosexuals exhibited none of the widely assumed markers of mental illness.
After Dr. Hooker, many other researchers attempted to find a scientific, objective and empirical method for identifying pathology in homosexuals. They all came to the same conclusion. As a result, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-II seventh printing). Today all official professional oversight organizations in the field of medicine, psychiatry and psychology from around the world have moved forward and reject the classification of homosexuality as a ‘disease’, ‘aberration’, ‘handicap’ or as having pathology.

For more on Dr. Evelyn Hooker, see this article http://cregs.sfsu.edu/article/making_homosexuality_healthy_work_evelyn_hooker at the Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality at the San Francisco University and this article http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/02/myth-buster.aspx at the American Psychological Association as well as the 1992 documentary ‘Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’ narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart."#1

The Clip: 


 Sources:
#1. http://bahairants.com/pathology-of-homosexuality-1763.html   the site is down now.  But there is Internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20190407052743/http://bahairants.com/pathology-of-homosexuality-1763.html and topic and site ha sbeen
and referred  on : https://justabahai.wordpress.com/category/bahairants/