Social conservatives Janet Mefferd and
Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About
Homosexuality, have criticized the American Psychiatric Association's
(APA) decision to no longer classify transgender identity as a
“disorder.”
The APA's upcoming edition of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will no
longer include the term “Gender Identity Disorder.” The updated
manual instead will include the term “Gender Dysphoria” to
describe emotional distress over one's gender.
LaBarbera claimed the organization had
“been infiltrated by LGBT activists” who have “politicized”
science.
“The importance of this saying it's
no longer a disorder means basically it will propel this radical
transgender movement forward,” he
said on Mefferd's radio show. “The transgender movement … at
its extreme it's getting these awful, disfiguring sex-change
operations which I believe shouldn't even be legal.”
“It comes back to: what is the
purpose of law?” LaBarbera asked. “Law used to be to restrain
sin, that's the biblical purpose, but now it is flipped in American
society and law is encouraging sin.”
“Of course, that's the brave new
world we're all living in,” Mefferd added.