ABSTRACT
Since homosexuality is the subject on which many social issues are fought, could it not be the central feature for a study of perversion, a word whose very connotations reek of moral, that is, social, issues? Of course. We would no more choose homosexuality than any other alleged diagnosis as the subject upon which to fight the battle about the validity of psychiatric diagnoses. But it is too bad we go about the task piecemeal; to isolate homosexuality from the rest of the tottering system—unless everyone understands that the particular example is to serve only to illuminate the general issues—is to ignore the palsy from which the whole, necessarily inept, structure suffers. Many homosexuals feel that the very diagnosis “homosexuality” serves, in the hands of psychiatrists (who should know better) and the public (which does not care to know better), as a hammer to oppress people whose only crime is their sexual style.
