Medicalization of homosexuality

Medicalization is a sociological concept explaining how medicine can be applied to behaviors that are not self‐evidently medical or biological. Early emancipators of homosexuality reasoned that if homosexuality was biologically determined, homosexuality would no longer be regarded as immoral and would be exempted from legal prosecution. The medicalization of homosexuality has not delivered this liberation. Research in the 1950s established that homosexuality was not per se associated with psychopathology and that a medical label for homosexuals was scientifically unfounded. This was reflected in the removal of homosexuality from classification systems of psychiatric diseases. The transition from sin‐to‐sickness‐to‐status has had a positive impact on the well‐being of homosexual people.