Hellenic Psychiatric Association: "Homosexuality is not a mental illness"

The Hellenic Psychiatric Association responded to the claim that homosexuality is a mental disorder

With its post on Facebook, the Hellenic Psychiatric Association takes a position against voices that insist on the medicalisation and pathologisation of homosexuality.

"The Hellenic Psychiatric Association emphasises, explicitly and unequivocally, that homosexuality is not a mental illness," the press release states, with the announcement signed by the board of directors.

In his presentation on January 23, the Metropolitan and President of the Church's Bioethics Committee stated, among other things:

"Our biggest mistake as a Church would be to accept that the homosexual act, apart from a mental disorder, is not even a sin. These persons, apart from the hope of psychiatric treatment, would have definitively lost the saving disposition of repentance and the search for the consolation of divine mercy for their own deviations.

According to him, "Since psychiatry deleted homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, it gave up on related research, and these unfortunate people were left helpless with only companionship, the hope of a convenient legislation and the assertion of rights with parades of self-deprecation and of shame."

Greece faces Orthodox Church opposition over same-sex marriage plans

Greece’s centre-right government is speeding up its timetable to legalise same-sex marriage – despite growing opposition from the powerful Orthodox Church.

Government officials said the draft legislation would be put to a vote by mid-February. Greece would become the first Orthodox-majority country to legalise same-sex marriage if the law passes.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, which heads Orthodox churches around the world, has expressed its opposition to the same-sex marriage proposal.

“Marriage is the union of man and woman under Christ… and the church does not accept the cohabitation of its members in any form other than marriage,” the Ecumenical Patriarchate said.

It echoed a decision by the church’s senior bishops in Greece earlier this week.

Metropolitan Bishop Panteleimon, a spokesman for the Greek Church’s governing Holy Synod, said that its written objections would be sent to all members of Greece’s parliament and read out at Sunday services around the country on 4 February.

“What the church says is that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and that is the source of life,” he told private Skai television. “The elders of our church are concerned with defending and supporting the family.”

Panteleimon also said it was too soon to comment on the approach that the church would take towards the children of same-sex parents.

Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who won a landslide re-election victory last summer, will likely need to rely on opposition party votes to approve the measure. He faces dissent from within the governing New Democracy party and from members of his Cabinet.

“We are talking about something already in effect in 36 countries and on five continents. And nowhere does it appear to have damaged social cohesion,” Mitsotakis told his ministers in a televised statement Wednesday.

“I want to be clear: We are referring to choices made by the state and not religious convictions… Our democracy requires that there cannot be two classes of citizens, and there certainly cannot be children of a lesser god.”

Recent opinion polls suggest that Greeks narrowly oppose same-sex marriage, with conservative voters more clearly opposed.

READ MORE: Mitsotakis: Same-sex marriage bill “seeks the equal treatment of all citizens.”