New Meta content rules let users call LGBTQ+ people ‘mentally ill.’ Here’s what medical experts say.

Alongside the announcement that Meta was ending its relationship with independent fact-checkers, the social media company outlined new "hateful conduct" policies. Those policies explicitly permit users to call LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill" or "abnormal" without violating platform rules.?

These changes are part of a larger shift in how Meta plans to moderate content and speech on its platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Threads. But these carve-outs could also allow the spread of misinformation.?

Leading medical experts do not consider being gay or transgender to be a mental illness, and we’ve fact-checked claims to the contrary.?

For people who identify as transgender, their sex — the biological category they were assigned at birth — does not match their gender identity, which is someone’s internal sense of being a man, woman, or a nonbinary gender.

Here's what Meta changed, and what medical experts say about LGBTQ+ people and mental health.?

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Jan. 7 video, "We're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse."

Meta has long had "Community Standards" for the content allowed on its platforms. Meta can take down posts that violate those standards.

When it updated its standards on "hateful conduct" Jan. 7 to narrow what speech violated its policies, Meta specified that insults about "mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness," are not allowed. That’s similar to the previous rules.?

But it added a new exception: "We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality."?

The Anti-Defamation League, a nongovernmental organization that tracks online extremism, says the term transgenderism "has been co-opted by anti-trans activists to characterize being transgender as an ideology rather than an innate identity."

In its updated "policy rationale," Meta wrote that although people may use insulting language or call for exclusion when discussing topics such as transgender rights or homosexuality, "Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech."

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Although referring to LGBTQ+ people as mentally ill is now allowed on Meta’s platforms, that does not make it true or reflective of mainstream medical consensus.?

The majority of major medical associations in the United States affirm that being trans is not a mental health disorder.?

In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the diagnostic guide published by the American Psychiatric Association. In 1990, it was removed from the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases.

Today, treatment that attempts to discourage or "treat" someone’s homosexuality is referred to as "conversion therapy" or "reparative therapy" and is condemned by most major medical organizations as ineffective and potentially harmful. Twenty-three states have passed laws prohibiting conversion therapy practices, according to Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank that tracks policy on LGBTQ+ issues.?

Like homosexuality, the medical community previously pathologized being transgender, as a "disorder." But leading medical experts and most major medical associations no longer consider a person’s transgender identity to be a mental illness.?

In 2019, in the latest edition of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, the WHO renamed its previous diagnosis given to transgender people from "transsexualism" to "gender incongruence" and moved it from the chapter on mental health disorders to a new section titled "conditions related to sexual health."?

The WHO in 2018 said in a press release that "evidence is now clear that it is not a mental disorder, and indeed classifying it in this can cause enormous stigma for people who are transgender."?

Similarly, in 2013, the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, changed the term "gender identity disorder" to "gender dysphoria" to reduce stigma around the diagnosis. The diagnosis was not totally removed because doing so could have threatened access to gender-affirming medical care.?

However, being transgender and having gender dysphoria are not the same. Gender dysphoria is the experience of distress that can result when your sex assigned at birth does not match your gender identity. Not all trans people experience this distress or have gender dysphoria.?

Although persistent gender dysphoria can cause distress and other mental health issues, being transgender is not itself a mental health disorder, according to experts.?

Research suggests that higher rates of mental health struggles among LGBTQ+ people may be attributed to the social stigma and discrimination they experience.