common cures

Alberta Taxpayers Funded 1,750 Treatments For Homosexuality

Some 1,750 “treatments” for homosexuality were conducted between 1995 and 2004 in Alberta according to an examination of doctors’ classification codes, for which there is an official one for gayness because the Canadian province still lists it as a mental disorder — for which taxpayers foot the bill. Yesterday Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky promised to remove the classification, which is cute, because the government there has been promising to do that since 1998.

Alberta’s current diagnostic codes were last updated in 2005, the same year that British Columbia removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders and four years after China did so. In Alberta, homosexuality still falls under the heading of Mental Disorders: Sexual Deviations and Disorders. It is at the top of the list and is followed by bestiality, pedophilia, transvestism, exhibitionism, transsexualism, disorders of psychosexual identity, frigidity and impotence.

Neither Zwozdesky nor Alberta Health and Wellness spokesman Howard May could explain why Alberta’s diagnostic codes have not been revised. “These are not Alberta’s codes, they were developed by the World Health Organization, under international guidelines, and are in use in many provinces,” May said. Asked why Alberta’s current codes are based on the 1975 ICD-9 and not on the 1990 ICD-10 that drops homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, May said in an email: “The codes are extremely complex. It would be a vast undertaking to change them.”

[Edmonton Journal; photo via]

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