Why being gay is not a 'mental illness' (no matter what Facebook says)
Mark Zuckerberg has announced new rules which means Facebook posts describing LGBTQ+ people as mentally ill are acceptable now. That's still 100% incorrect, though.
Someone being gay, bi, poly, or any other sexual orientation that isn’t bog-standard heterosexual does not mean they are mentally unwell in some way.
That’s another thing we can add to the worryingly large pile that is “It’s 2025, why is it still necessary to be saying this?” But here we are regardless.
You can blame Mark Zuckerberg for this, with his recent announcements that Meta is changing their guidelines to remove fact checking and reduce moderation of speech, meaning posting claims that gay people are mentally unwell will be permitted.
Obviously, it shouldn’t be. Because they are not. Just so we’re clear.
Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. And anyone who says otherwise is a bigot, a liar, or a fool (or, quite feasibly, all three). But given that we can expect to see such notions becoming more commonplace now, here’s a rundown of the more typical arguments for homosexuality being a mental aberration, and why they don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Homosexuality was a mental disorder!
This is actually true. Homosexuality was classed as an official mental disorder by the medical establishment. The main ‘texts’ used in medicine the world over that list what is or isn’t a recognised condition are the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), produced by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
And for a disconcerting length of time, both the DSM and ICD listed homosexuality as a ‘sexual deviation’, i.e. something abnormal, that needed to be treated/cured/managed. And who’s going to argue with the global medical establishment?
The answer to that is… the global medical establishment.
Because while it may have been a worryingly recent development (just 35 years ago in the case of the ICD), homosexuality was later removed from both the core texts. Essentially what happened was, the medical establishment, presented with an increasingly overwhelming amount of evidence, eventually said “You know how we said homosexuality was a mental disorder? Turns out we were wrong.” Which is how science should work.
Our bodies are incredibly complex systems, our brains even more so. The number of things that can go wrong with them is still being explored, and every new unusual patient provides more data and evidence to update the overall knowledge of the field. That’s why these core texts are constantly being refined and updated. The DSM is on it’s fifth volume, the ICD it’s eleventh.
This is particularly important in the mental health field, because the parameters are a lot ‘fuzzier’. The human body is amazingly sophisticated, but it’s also pretty consistent. It’s been basically the same for countless thousands of years now, so we know what it should/shouldn’t be doing.
Ergo, if someone starts spewing purple fluid from every orifice, a medical person can confidently say “That is NOT meant to be happening!”
This isn’t the case with the mind. It’s really hard to tell, from the outside, when someone’s mind is doing something it shouldn’t. As a result, medicine has to use social norms as a metric, or baseline. As in, “most people do/think X, but my patient does/things Y. This isn’t typical. Therefore, Y may be a mental health problem”.
That’s why claiming you regularly speak to an invisible green alien and ask him for favours would likely warrant medical intervention, but claiming you speak to a vast ineffable intelligence that created and permeates the universe, and ask it for favours, would not. They’re both essentially the same, but the latter is normal. So, it’s not deemed a sign of mental health gone awry.
Unfortunately, basing a medical diagnosis on a social norms is like mooring your canal boat by tying it to a nearby cow. It may seem like a big solid object, but there’s every chance it’ll wander off by itself, and your boat ends up in entirely the wrong place.
So yes, homosexuality was recognised as a mental disorder once. But no longer. Because society realised it was far more normal than previously though. And the medical data was updated accordingly.
And if you’re of the thinking ‘medicine had it right in the old days!’, why stop there? Why not treat your alcoholism with cocaine? Or get your infected teeth pulled out by a barber, with no anaesthetic?
With all due respect to the medical professionals, it took a lot of time and effort to get to our modern understanding. We’ve come a long way from the assumption that mental disorders were the result of a detached womb wandering around the (woman’s) body.
You can long for the ‘old fashioned’ approach to medicine if you like. Me? I’m quite happy with antibiotics, thanks.
Gay people have more mental health problems overall
It’s not a pleasant fact, but it’s a fact nonetheless, that LGBTQ+ people, as a population, have noticeably higher rates of mental disorders. They clearly are more mentally unwell, so surely their sexual orientation is a part of that?
I guess that makes sense to some people. But it’s not how it works.
Sexual orientation isn’t known to have a direct effect on mental health. But mental health and wellbeing is affected by many things, like isolation, emotional suppression, loss of family/relationships, social rejection, constant stress, and a lot of stuff like that.
And such things are far more likely to be experienced by LGBTQ+ people existing in an environment/community that does not accept them. ‘Coming out’ is still a big deal for many, even a traumatic one, because we still live in a world where it’s by no means a given that expressing your sexuality (if you aren’t straight) is safe. And dealing with the fallout from not being accepted takes a considerable toll on mental health. Often to a clinical extent.
If tomorrow a law was passed that said “Everyone with green eyes must be beaten with a large stick 7 times a day”, soon we’d see a lot of badly-injured green-eyed people.
If you then said “Wow, having green eyes gives you serious bruises!” that would be ridiculous. But blaming LGBTQ+ people’s mental health issues on their sexuality is basically the same thing.
Homosexuality is not natural!
I mean… it is, though. One could describe it as ‘rife’ in nature.
Homosexuality, and other orientations beyond heterosexual, were a common element of countless (all?) historical cultures.
It was only when the Roman and later Christian powers-that-be (in the West, at least), heavily influenced by Stoicism and its ‘all emotion is to be suppressed!’ worldview, that the modern ‘sinful’ aspects of sex became so entrenched.
You can argue that this was a good or a bad development. But it’s certainly not something ‘naturally occurring’.
You can’t procreate with gay sex!
Yes, that’s true. Whatever your thoughts on sexual congress between two (or more) people of the same anatomical sex, it isn’t biologically possible for it to result in anyone becoming pregnant and producing a child.
This leads many to conclude that it is, therefore, wrong. And it seems to be the main basis for the ‘unnatural’ accusation, as just mentioned.
Because sex is for reproduction, right? And any sex that can’t lead to reproduction is, ipso facto, wrong sex, illogical, and thus the behaviour of an ‘unwell’ person. Indeed, this reasoning undoubtedly played a significant role in the medical establishment’s labelling of homosexuality as a clinical disorder.
The main problem with this, though, is that we now recognise it’s a ridiculous oversimplification of an eye-wateringly complex process. You can’t take an exquisitely sophisticated human behaviour and motivation, boil it down to just the raw biological outcomes, and hope to understand anything of worth. It’s like looking at an elephants tail and saying “this animal is a snake”, while calling yourself a zoologist.
Or, to put it another way, we’re talking about people, not plankton.
Some species have an existence that’s defined purely by biological survival, but humans evolved beyond that aeons ago.
Basically, sex for humans is not purely a matter of reproduction. It’s incredibly important, arguably even more important, as a social process.
Humans are ultrasocial. So much of what we do and are, so much of our brains workings, evolved to form and maintain relationships with others. That’s the key to our species success. None of this ‘dog eat dog’ guff.
And nothing bonds two people together like sex. And because humans are so cooperative and form such complicated groups, strong bonds between members of the same sex are often very important. One might say… natural. And so, we have homosexuality etc. Despite it not being a viable way to reproduce directly, it helped/helps our species survive, and thrive.
But even if you disagree with that, how often do you do something that has no direct biological benefit?
After all, why eat elaborate foods when a plan balanced diet of the basic food groups is all you need for sustenance.
Why drink anything other than water? Isn’t drinking is only for hydration?
Why wear anything than the cheapest, most basic clothes? Clothing is only for warmth and modesty, after all.
Why play sport or do anything fun? Physical activity is only for survival and defence, surely?
You can see where I’m going with this.
Ultimately, humans aren’t defined by our basic biological requirements. Far from it. There are even theories that language itself evolved in order to allow us to bond better via gossip, rather than ‘exchange information’ (which only a fraction of verbal communication actually does).
If you’re going to insist that behaviour deviating from the most basic, fundamental biological processes is an indication of mental disorders, but only apply that premise to homosexual acts, that suggests you really haven’t thought this through.
Not that that’ll prevent you posting it on Facebook, of course. Doesn’t seem to have stopped anyone else, in fairness.
More on the history and defining of mental health issues can be found in my book Psycho-Logical: Why Mental Health Goes Wrong, and How to Make Sense Of It.
An accessible-for-all explanation of how to filter out misinformation on social media can be found in my latest book Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What To Do About It