ABSTRACT
We have come a long way in a short time. In 1972, a masked John Fryer feared for his career as he spoke about being a gay psychiatrist. Thirty-three years later, Jack Drescher, openly gay psychiatrist and author of a major body of work on gay-affirmative therapy (Drescher, 1998), is nominated to run for president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) (Melzer, 2005) and Joseph P. Merlino was named the first openly gay psychoanalyst to serve as president of a national medical psychoanalytic group, the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry (2004–2006). Not long ago there was little, if any, popular media representation of gay people. And when there was, as in The Boys in the Band, homosexuality was portrayed in tragic terms. We now have Will and Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Ellen Degeneres' current success as an openly gay comedian and talk show host. In the legal arena, we have seen the end of antisodomy laws and moves toward marriage equality in Massachusetts—not to mention Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Spain. We are truly at the dawn of a “queer millennium” (Rosario, 2002).
