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Rh In its then-most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1952) (DSM–I), the American Psychiatric Association (APA) classified same-sex attraction as a “sexual deviation,” a particular type of “sociopathic personality disturbance,” id., at 38–39, and the next edition, issued in 1968, similarly classified homosexuality as a “sexual deviatio[n],” Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 44 (2d ed.) (DSM–II). It was not until the sixth printing of the DSM–II in 1973 that this was changed.

Society’s treatment of homosexuality and homosexual conduct was consistent with this understanding. Sodomy was a crime in every State but Illinois, see W. Eskridge, Dishonorable Passions 387–407 (2008), and in the District of Columbia, a law enacted by Congress made sodomy a felony punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years and permitted the indefinite civil commitment of “sexual psychopath[s],” Act of June 9, 1948, §§104, 201–207, 62 Stat. 347–349.