Questionable Appointment to APA’s Committee on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders

Filed Under Health | May 28th, 2008 

WASHINGTON, — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is questioning the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) recent appointments of Kenneth Zucker, Ph.D., to chair the Committee on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders for the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), and Ray Blanchard, Ph.D., to serve as a committee member. These appointments are raising great concerns within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Zucker has built his reputation on the position that children can be directed away from nonconforming gender expression via therapy, while Blanchard has a long list of articles pathologizing commonplace expressions of sexuality and gender.

In 1973, the Task Force was instrumental in getting the APA to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Rea Carey, Acting Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said, “We are very concerned about these appointments. Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard are clearly out of step with the occurring shift in how doctors and other health professionals think about transgender people and gender variance. It is extremely disappointing and disturbing that the APA appears to be failing in keeping up with the times when it comes to serving the needs of transgender adults and gender-variant children.”

Source: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force