Timeline of Sexual Orientation and Medicine - 20th Century

20th Century

1948

• Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, the first "Kinsey Report", is published by Dr. Alfred Kinsey

1957

• The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality is founded to encourage the rigorous systematic study of sexuality.

1974

• The American Psychiatric Association votes to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

1977

• The Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights is founded in San Francisco as a support group for gay and lesbian medical students, residents, and other health care providers. The group claims to be the first LGBT medical society in the US.

1981

• The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association is founded 1981 as the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights.
• The first cases of Gay related immunodeficiency, now known as AIDS, were first reported 5 June 1981, when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.

1987

• The diagnosis of Ego-dystonic sexual orientation is dropped from the DSM.

1992

• The World health organization replaces its categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness with the diagnosis of ego-dystonic homosexuality.

1993

• Dr. Dean Hamer publishes a paper suggesting a genetic component to sexual orientation.

1995

• Saquinavir, the first protease inhibitor is approved for public use by the FDA. HAART radically changes the prognosis of HIV/AIDS.

1996

• The US Department of Defense includes homosexuality in a list of "mental disorders," in a document known as "directive 1332.38: physical disability evaluation."