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(Washington) The Pentagon on Wednesday apologized for classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Earlier this month it was revealed that a Pentagon document listing various "disorders" included the reference to homosexuality decades after mental health experts abandoned that position.
Alongside homosexuality in the Pentagon document that outlined retirement or other discharge policies for service members were mental retardation and personality disorders.
The revelation caused a maelstrom of criticism, particularly from gay rights organizations and the American Psychiatric Association.
"Homosexuality should not have been characterized as a mental disorder in an appendix of a procedural instruction," the Pentagon said in a statement on Wednesday. "A clarification will be issued over the next few days."
But the statement also noted that whether or not the description should have been in the document out gays cannot serve in the military.
"Notwithstanding its inclusion, we find no practical impact since that appendix simply listed factors that do not constitute a physical disability, and homosexuality of course does not," the statement said.
The Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, uncovered the document and pointed to it as further proof that the military deserves failing grades for its treatment of gays.
A total of 742 military personnel were discharged in 2005 under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on openly gay service members, up from 668 discharges among the services in 2004.
A bi-partisan coalition in Congress now supports legislation to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law. The Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1059), introduced in March 2005 by Congressman Marty Meehan (D-MA) now has about 120 supporters, including five Republican lawmakers. Meehan’s legislation would repeal the military’s ban and allow lesbian, gay and bisexual personnel to serve openly in the armed forces.
The Pentagon's classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder brought a stern rebuke from the APA last week.
"Based on scientific and medical evidence the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 - a position shared by all other major health and mental health organizations based on their own review of the science," James H. Scully Jr., head of the psychiatric association, said in a letter to the Defense Department's top doctor earlier this month.
©365Gay.com 2006
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