The difference between distress and disorder

Lets travel back in time to the mid-20th century.

A person could be a happy homosexual. Their disorder or pathology was
homosexuality. They may have experienced little distress though.

In 1973 when America demedicalised homosexuality there was a debate
about medicalising the distress of awareness of homosexuality in a
society that was still heteronormative. They chose not to medicalise it
because the distress of the change of awareness was considered normal by
psychiatrists at the time.