Is homosexuality a disorder?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

Disclaimer: Wikiversity and the debate authors do not support the motion. This is an argument analysis exercise, to explore the argument space and better understand thinking of previous times and different cultures.

Homosexuality is a disorder

Pro

• Pro In so far as homosexuality impacts reproductive activity in its reproductive function, it can reasonably be likened to a somatic disorder of infertility, although homosexuality is not somatic but rather psychological.
  • Objection Using this reasoning, one would argue that the use of contraception is a contraceptive use disorder, leading to loss of reproductive function. And that is implausible.
• Pro Homosexual sex is not normal human behavior. Therefore, it is abnormal.
  • Objection Behavior deviating from cultural norms or customs is not automatically disordered.
• Pro WHO's definition of health includes (among other things) a state of social wellbeing. Homosexuality evolves in social groups with rather harsh conflicts (i.e. in unhealthy social environment). Thus it is a disorder.
  • Objection Homosexuality here serves as a remedy for mitigating conflicts, not a disorder itself.
    • Objection Analogically, inflammation is a response of the body that is called to mitigate cell damage. But it has negative effects such as hay fever, periodontal disease, atherosclerosis, and osteoarthritis. Homosexuality does have negative effects like anxiety and depression.
      • Objection Anxiety and depression come out of discrimination, not from homosexuality itself.

Con

• Con Homosexuality is no longer recognized as a disorder in the West. Inconclusive yet suggestive.
• Con Homosexuality does not harm normal human functioning in a way in which disorders typically do.
• Con There is no such thing as a psychiatric disorder/mental illness. Therefore, neither is homosexuality a disorder. See also Is there such a thing as mental illness?
  • Objection Arguments from the linked debate supporting the existence of mental illness apply.

Further reading

• Homosexuality, wikipedia.org
• When Homosexuality Stopped Being a Mental Disorder, 2024, psychologytoday.com
• Is homosexuality a mental illness?, quora.com
• Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality by Jack Drescher, 2015
• Royal College of Psychiatrists' statement on sexual orientation, Mar 2014