Evelyn Hooker

Evelyn Hooker overturned the American Psychiatric Association's view that homosexuality was a mental illness. Hooker's work was foundational to the gay liberation and gay civil rights movements. Her 1957 report, "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual," showed that homosexuals were not intrinsically abnormal, contrary to the popular opinion in the psychological and psychiatric communities.

Evelyn Hooker received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to test the accepted view that gays were by definition neurotic, unstable, infantile, and identifiable. Hooker's tests rated more than half of the homosexuals as better adjusted than the heterosexual subjects. With regard to neuroses, psychoses, and other mental illnesses, the tests showed no difference between the gay and the non-gay groups.

Based on Hooker's work and leadership, homosexuals were declared psychologically indistinguishable from heterosexuals. In 1967, Dr. Hooker was appointed the head of a Task Force on Homosexuality at the U.S. Public Health Service's National Institute of Mental Health. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association agreed with Dr. Hooker's findings and ceased calling homosexuality a psychiatric disorder. In honor of Dr. Hooker, the University of Chicago established the Evelyn Hooker Center for the Mental Health of Gays & Lesbians.