The Rockway Institute is a center for LGBT research and public policy based at the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 2007 and named for bisexual clinical psychologist Alan Rockway, who was active in the LGBT rights movement in Florida in the 1970s. [1] [2] [lower-alpha 1]
The group's founder and first executive director, Robert-Jay Green, described its initial organization as a group of 10 faculty members and 20 fellows with expertise in LGBT research. He said that professional research had already played a key role in advancing LGBT rights, citing early studies that lead to the decision of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its mental illness classification scheme in 1973. He said that "all of the currently active court cases and legislative hearings concerning same-sex marriage, LGBT parenting rights, harassment of LGBT youth in schools, and workplace discrimination against LGBT employees make very heavy use of social science and mental health research findings." [1] As of 2015, the Institute described its mission in these terms: [6]
A primary goal is to organize the most knowledgeable scientists, mental health professionals, and physicians in the United States to provide accurate information about LGBT issues to the media, legislatures, and courts. In addition, the Institute conducts research to answer the nation's most pressing LGBT policy questions in the areas of couple/family relations, mental health, education, and health care.
Green also emphasized the importance of educating journalists in order to counter anti-gay spokespeople like James Dobson of Focus on the Family who "frequently and categorically dismiss all reputable existing research on LGBT issues" and to counter the work of discredited researchers. [7] A spokesperson for Focus on the Family countered that "We've looked at what homosexual activists have put forward and found it lacking. It doesn't meet basic social science standards. It speaks to the desperation among homosexual activists to give credibility to their political goals." [8]
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of heterosexuality and heterosexual relationships. According to Elizabeth Cramer, it can include the belief that all people are or should be heterosexual and that heterosexual relationships are the only norm and therefore superior.
The field of psychology has extensively studied homosexuality as a human sexual orientation. The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality in the DSM-I in 1952, but that classification came under scrutiny in research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. That research and subsequent studies consistently failed to produce any empirical or scientific basis for regarding homosexuality as anything other than a natural and normal sexual orientation that is a healthy and positive expression of human sexuality. As a result of this scientific research, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM-II in 1973. Upon a thorough review of the scientific data, the American Psychological Association followed in 1975 and also called on all mental health professionals to take the lead in "removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated" with homosexuality. In 1993, the National Association of Social Workers adopted the same position as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, in recognition of scientific evidence. The World Health Organization, which listed homosexuality in the ICD-9 in 1977, removed homosexuality from the ICD-10 which was endorsed by the 43rd World Health Assembly on 17 May 1990.
Lani Kaʻahumanu is Kanaka Maoli bisexual and feminist writer and activist. She is openly bisexual and writes and speaks on sexuality issues frequently. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Bisexuality. She is also working on the books My Grassroots Are Showing: Stories, Speeches, and Special Affections and Passing For Other: Primal Creams and Forbidden Dreams – Poetry, Prose, and Performance Pieces. In 1974, she divorced her husband and moved to San Francisco, where she originally came out as a lesbian. She was a student leader in the nascent San Francisco State Women Studies Department, and in 1979, she became the first person in her family to graduate from college. Kaʻahumanu realized she was bisexual and came out again in 1980.
The bisexual community, also known as the bi+, m-spec, bisexual/pansexual, or bi/pan/fluid community, includes members of the LGBT community who identify as bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, polysexual and sexually fluid. As opposed to hetero- or homosexual people, people in the bisexual community experience attraction to more than one gender.
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, may be based on irrational fear and may sometimes be attributed to religious beliefs.
Bisexual erasure, also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.
Charles Silverstein was an American writer, therapist, and LGBT rights advocate. He was best known for his presentation as a graduate student before the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 that led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the organization's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. He was also the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Homosexuality.
Robert-Jay Green is founder and senior research fellow of the Rockway Institute, and distinguished professor (emeritus) in the Clinical Psychology PhD Program of the California School of Professional Psychology, a division of Alliant International University.
Gregory M. Herek is a researcher, author, and professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis (UCD). He has conducted extensive research on prejudice against sexual minorities, and coined the term sexual prejudice as a replacement for homophobia to describe this phenomenon. Herek argued that using the term homophobia incorrectly assumes that negative responses to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are founded in pathological, irrational fear, whereas psychological research indicates they are more accurately regarded as a form of prejudice. Herek is an openly and prominent gay psychologist. Herek is considered one of the most influential scholars of sexual minorities.
Timeline of events related to sexual orientation and medicine
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, to more than one gender, or to both people of the same gender and different genders. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, which is also known as pansexuality.
Ilan H. Meyer is an American psychiatric epidemiologist, author, professor, and a senior scholar for public policy and sexual orientation law at the Williams Institute of UCLA. He has conducted extensive research on minority identities related to sexual orientation, gender, race and ethnicity, drawing conclusions on the impact of social stresses on their mental health. Meyer was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (2010), the federal case that overturned California Proposition 8.
The first English-language use of the word "bisexual" to refer to sexual orientation occurred in 1892.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBT topics.
David Nachman Lourea was an American writer, AIDS activist, and bisexual rights activist.
Anthony Raymond D'Augelli is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Outreach, as well as Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, at Pennsylvania State University. He is best known for his LGB identity development theory, as well as his research on LGB youth, rural LGB populations, and the impact of anti-gay victimization on LGB mental health.
The history of bisexuality concerns the history of the bisexual sexual orientation. Ancient and medieval history of bisexuality, when the term did not exist as such, consists of anecdotes of sexual behaviour and relationships between people of the same and different sexes. A modern definition of bisexuality began to take shape in the mid-19th century within three interconnected domains of knowledge: biology, psychology and sexuality. In modern Western culture, the term bisexual was first defined in a binary approach as a person with romantic or sexual attraction to both men and women. The term bisexual is defined later in the 20th century as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to both males and females, or as a person who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to people regardless of sex or gender identity, which is sometimes termed pansexuality.
Many health organizations around the world have denounced and criticized sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts. National health organizations in the United States have announced that there has been no scientific demonstration of conversion therapy's efficacy in the last forty years. They find that conversion therapy is ineffective, risky and can be harmful. Anecdotal claims of cures are counterbalanced by assertions of harm, and the American Psychiatric Association, for example, cautions ethical practitioners under the Hippocratic oath to do no harm and to refrain from attempts at conversion therapy.
