Timeline of events related to sexual orientation and medicine
19th century
1886
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, a German psychiatrist, published a study of sexual perversity.
20th century
1948
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, the first "Kinsey Report", was published by Alfred Kinsey. 1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, the second "Kinsey Report", was published by Alfred Kinsey. 1957 The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality was founded to encourage the rigorous systematic study of sexuality. 1973 The American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). 1975
The Gay and Lesbian Health Caucus of the American Public Health Association is founded.
1977
The Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights was 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 was founded in 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 homosexuality was dropped from the DSM. 1990 The World Health Organization replaced its categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness with the diagnosis of ego-dystonic sexual orientation. 1991 The American Psychoanalytic Association issued a statement allowing training of gay psychoanalysts. 1992 The American Psychoanalytic Association prohibited discrimination against gay people when selecting teaching faculty. 1993 Dean Hamer published a paper suggesting a genetic component to sexual orientation. 1995 Saquinavir, the first protease inhibitor, was approved for public use by the FDA. HAART radically changes the prognosis of HIV/AIDS. 1996 The US Department of Defense included homosexuality in a list of "mental disorders", in a document known as "directive 1332.38: physical disability evaluation".
21st century
2002
The United States Department of Health and Human Services published Healthy People 2010, with the goals of increasing the quality and years of healthy life and eliminating health disparities in America. It identified sexual orientation as one of 6 demographic factors contributing to health disparities.
2004
New York Medical College revoked the charter of its LGBT medical student group after the applies to change its name from Student Help Organization to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender People in Medicine. School officials claimed "the organization and its leader would advocate and promote activities inconsistent with the values of NYMC." In an interview with the Westchester Journal News, then AMA president John Nelson said that as a private institution the college has the right to set and enforce its own policies. The AMA organization did not support the ban, and the organization released a statement claiming the president's views were not representative of AMA policy.
The American Academy of Pediatrics published "Sexual orientation and adolescents", a report on the state of health of LGBT youth in the United States.
2005
American Medical Association president Edward Hill became the first AMA president to address the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association in a speech entitled "Understanding, Advocacy, Leadership: The AMA Perspective on LGBT Health."