As a member of AGLP since the 1980s, I ask that you support me for APA President-elect.
My championing of AGLP issues goes back to the early 1980s, when I worked with Constantine Kyropoulos, David Kessler, Jim Krajeski, the late Stu Nichols and others to get the Assembly to accept representatives of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual psychiatrists to the Assembly as an underrepresented group. As you know our efforts were successful, and AGLP now is rightfully represented in the Assembly (currently by Mark Townsend and Philip Bialer).
Later in that decade, when I was part of the DSM-IIIR Task Force, I was among those who successfully moved that "Egodystonic Homosexuality" be removed. It had been in DSM-III.
In the late 1980s I began advocating for the Assembly to recognize important national psychiatric organizations because we want the APA to be a representative democracy. Eventually the Assembly agreed to have allied organizations represented, and AGLP has a representative, David Scasta.
If I am elected President-elect, my next steps in enhancing APA's becoming a more representative democracy will include:
1. Asking AGLP to suggest corresponding membership for members on APA components that the AGLP regards as important to gay and lesbian issues, e.g., Council on Psychiatry and the Law. [I've had motions successfully passed by the APA Board of Trustees that there shall be no limit on the number of corresponding members a component can have.]
2. I will encourage the Assembly to give major psychiatric subspecialty organizations, such as AGLP, more than one vote in the Assembly.
The APA must vigorously support gay and lesbian psychiatrists. No matter how many victories we attain as to gay and lesbian rights, the prejudices run so deep that it will be a long time before we can say the war is over.
Finally, I want to say that marriage is the only institution based on love. The APA must champion the concept that marriage be available to all lovers.
