Charles Silverstein, who helped declassify homosexuality as illness, dies at 87

[Pete Ross Junior]

Charles Silverstein, who helped declassify homosexuality as illness, dies at 87
The Washington Post

Charles Silverstein, a psychologist who helped achieve one of the most significant victories of the gay rights movement by persuading the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness, died Jan. 30 at his home in New York City. He was 87.

He had lung cancer, said his executor, Aron Berlinger.

Dr. Silverstein spent decades of his life — as an activist, a psychologist and an author — advancing the cause of gay rights. He had felt the sting of discrimination and the burden of shame as a gay man who came of age at a time when expressions of homosexuality were stigmatized if not outright illegal, and when gay people were treated not only as morally deviant but as mentally ill.

Dr. Silverstein, who felt he had no choice but to conceal his sexuality during his early professional years and into graduate school, came out as the gay rights movement gained momentum in the wake of the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969.

He was nearing completion of a doctoral degree in social psychology and had joined the Gay Activists Alliance, an advocacy group that organized high-profile protests known as “zaps,” when he was invited to speak to the APA’s nomenclature committee on the matter of homosexuality.

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[Behind the Aegis]

1. Thank you for posting.

I had this article in my line-up, but because of some personal issues, I haven't been posting here lately. I am glad someone did post this. It is a shame so few even read this or know about it; just another minority group whose history is obscured, unknown by most, including the target population, and disregarded.

Because of him and those like him, progress was made.

Rest well!

[Pete Ross Junior]

2. I knew him (gay rights movement in the 1970s), but ...

... I hadn't realized how important he was.

A very modest man.