from Clinical/Therapeutic Issues
The Y-BOCS scale has been ruled discriminatory against gays by Sweden's Ombudsman Against Discrimination On Grounds Of Sexual Orientation. The Ombudsman issued the ruling after a gay client filed a complaint against the scale as being heteronormative.
The Ombudsman ruled in favor of the gay client. According to the Ombudsman, the scale is discriminatory because it places homosexual obsessive behaviors in the context of criminal and aberrant sexual behaviors and it does not include obsessive thoughts about heterosexual behaviors. The Ombudsman believes this discriminatory scale could be grounds for prosecution under Swedish law.
Ruck and Bergstrom, however, note: "We feel that a quandary has arisen mainly because the Ombudsman does not distinguish between the sexual orientation homosexuality and obsessions about homosexuality as a part of a psychiatric disorder. That is to say, homosexual obsessions on the Y-BOCS are placed in the context of other sexual obsessions because the thought of being gay or lesbian by some patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder is repulsive and undesirable to them."
They continue, "... our understanding and clinical experience is that gay and lesbian patients with obsessive compulsive disorder never or rarely experience obsessions about heterosexuality, whereas the inverse is fairly common, explaining why obsessions about heterosexuality are not listed."