Medicine

Prime Minister of Ireland

b. January 18, 1979

“Our democracy is vibrant and robust and can survive divisive debates and make difficult decisions.”

Leo Eric Varadkar is the first openly gay Taoiseach (prime minister) of the Republic of Ireland. He is also Ireland’s youngest prime minister and the first of Indian extraction.

Varadkar was born in Dublin, the nation’s capital, and raised Catholic. His father, a Hindu, was born in Mumbai, India, and immigrated to the United Kingdom to work as a doctor. His mother, a Catholic, worked as a nurse in Slough, England. The couple moved to Dublin six years before Varadkar was born.

Varadkar attended secondary school at The King’s Hospital, a boarding school administered by the Church of England. He joined Young Fine Gael, the youth wing of Fine Gael, the Irish liberal-conservative and Christian democratic political party. Varadkar maintained his party affiliation. 

Varadkar studied medicine at Trinity College in Dublin and worked as a non-consultant hospital doctor before qualifying as a general practitioner. He earned his first significant political post in 2004 as a member of the Fingal County Council, located north of Dublin City, before serving as deputy mayor. 

As a longtime statesman, Varadkar has held important and diverse roles within the Irish government. In 2007 he was elected to the Teachta Dála, the lower house of Ireland’s parliament. He has since served consecutively as minister for transport, tourism, and sport; minister for health; and minister for social protection.

Varadkar came out in 2015 during the referendum that legalized same-sex marriage in Ireland. In June 2017, when the country formed its 31st government, he became Ireland’s prime minister and minister for defence at the age of 38.

In becoming Ireland’s first gay prime minister, Varadkar also became the world’s fourth openly gay head of government. As Taoiseach, he also leads his political party, which promotes their support of LGBT rights and families by displaying ads in the Gay Community News (GCN). 

By January 2018 Varadkar’s approval rating had reached 60%—the highest of any Irish prime minister in 10 years. A few months later, TIME magazine named Varadkar to its list of the 100 Most Influential People of the year. In May the predominantly Catholic country voted to legalize abortion. Varadkar described it as “the culmination of a quiet revolution.”  

Varadkar lives with his boyfriend, Dr. Matt Barrett, a cardiologist. In 2018 the couple marched hand-in-hand in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Transgender Secretary of Health
(2018 LGBT History Month Icon)

b. October 28, 1957

“We need to do a better job educating medical students about LGBT issues and transgender medicine.”

Rachel Levine, M.D., is the Secretary of Health for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. She is the first transgender cabinet officer in Pennsylvania history and one of the highest-ranking transgender public officials in the United States. 

Born male and named Richard, Levine attended an all-boys private school outside of Boston. “All I knew is I wanted to be a girl, or I was a girl,” she says. Levine describes carrying this “secret” from an early age and struggling to fit in, even playing linebacker on the high school football team. 

Levine graduated from Harvard College in 1979 and earned an M.D. from Tulane University School of Medicine in 1983. She completed her medical training in pediatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, followed by a fellowship in adolescent medicine. She practiced at Mount Sinai until 1993. 

In 1996 Levine moved on to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, where she founded the Eating Disorders Program for adolescents and adults. She has served as chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders and as vice chair for Clinical Affairs for the Department of Pediatrics. She is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine and has worked as the faculty adviser for the university’s LGBT student group. She is also the LGBT affairs liaison at the Penn State Hershey Office of Diversity. In 2010 she completed her transition from male to female.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced Levine’s appointment to Physician General in 2015. She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. In March 2018 she became Secretary of Health. 

As the state's top doctor, Levine shapes policy on issues ranging from HIV to childhood lead testing, and she has made significant strides in tackling Pennsylvania’s opioid crisis. She also uses her platform to address LGBT issues, including transgender care. She spearheaded an LGBT workgroup for the governor’s office that creates programs to ensure fairness and inclusivity in health care, insurance and other areas. She serves on the board of Equality Pennsylvania, an LGBT organization that lobbies for equal rights.

In 2015 Levine served as Grand Marshal of the Philadelphia Pride Parade. Two years later, she was named to NBC Out’s national #Pride30 list, which recognizes individuals making an impact on the LGBTQ community. In 2018 Equality Forum presented her with the Frank Kameny Award. 

Immediately after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden named Levine Assistant Secretary of Health. She will be the first transgender person confirmed by the U.S. Senate ever to hold a position in the federal government.

As Richard, Levine married and had a family before divorcing many years later. She remains close with her ex-wife and two children. Levine is in a committed long-term relationship.

NOTE: On March 24, 2021, Dr. Levine became assistant secretary of health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is the first openly transgender official to be confirmed by the Senate.

On October 19, 2021, Dr. Levine was sworn in as a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, making her the first openly transgender and first female four-star U.S. officer. She is only the sixth four-star admiral in the history of the 6,000-person corps, founded in 1889.

CEO of the APA

b.  September 5, 1957 

“It is our firm stance that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, a position we have maintained since 1973, when homosexuality was rightly removed from the DSM.”

Saul Levin is the first openly gay CEO and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). He also serves as board chair the APA Foundation and as a clinical professor at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

A native of South Africa, Levin received his medical degree in 1982 from the University Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He completed his residency in psychiatry at the UC Davis Medical Center and worked as a coordinator for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Levin joined the APA in 1987 and served on several committees. 

In 1994 Levin earned a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He  founded a health care consulting firm, Access Consulting International, which he led for 10 years.

Levin has served as the president and CEO of medical education for South African Blacks, a U.S-based charity that grants scholarships to black South African students pursuing health care degrees. He has served as vice president for science, medicine, and public health for the American Medical Association and has held numerous other leadership positions in the medical and social equity fields. 

In 2012 Mayor Vincent Gray of Washington, D.C., named Levin interim director of the District of Columbia Department of Health. By this time, Levin was widely known to be openly gay. 

In 2013 Levin was hired as the CEO and medical director of the APA, the world’s leading psychiatric association. His position as the organization's top medical executive marks an LGBT milestone. Until 1973 homosexuality was listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders. Treatments for the “disease” included lobotomy, electric shock treatment, chemical castration and other catastrophic therapies. 

In 2018 Levin addressed the audience after a performance of “217 Boxes of Dr. Henry Anonymous,” an Off-Broadway play about APA member John E. Fryer, M.D., and his role in the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Levin praised Dr. Fryer and spoke about the APA’s commitment to LGBT inclusion and equality.

Psychiatrist and Dr. H. Anonymous

b. November 7, 1937
d. February 21, 2003

“I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.”

John E. Fryer, M.D., challenged the designation of homosexuality as a mental illness at the 1972 convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Seated on a panel and disguised as Dr. H. Anonymous, he announced his homosexuality at a time when a medical license could be revoked on that basis. Fryer declared himself a proud member of the APA and explained that homosexuality was not the illness, but rather the toxic effects of homophobia.

Since 1952 the APA had listed homosexuality as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Fryer’s actions were pivotal in the declassification of homosexuality as a disease.

The DSM classification was first attacked in the 1960s by Gay Pioneer Frank Kameny, a Harvard-educated Ph.D. astronomer. Kameny and fellow activist Barbara Gittings waged a multi-year campaign against the APA. In 1971 after storming the APA’s annual meeting, they were permitted to organize a panel discussion on homosexuality for the 1972 convention. 

When no other gay psychiatrist would participate, Gittings recruited Dr. John Fryer. Concealing his identity with a mask and a voice modulator, he declared, “I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.” He described the hardships homophobia imposed on homosexual psychiatrists and patients. “This is the greatest loss, our honest humanity,” he said, “and that loss leads all those around us to lose that little bit of their humanity as well.” The conventioneers were transfixed. Subsequently, the APA formed a panel to evaluate the basis for the DSM classification. In 1973 homosexuality was delisted as a mental illness.

Fryer earned his medical degree from Vanderbilt University and began his psychiatric residency at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, but grew depressed from hiding his sexual orientation. He relocated to pursue his residency at the University of Pennsylvania, but was forced to leave for being gay. He completed his residency at nearby Norristown State Hospital. 

In 1967 Fryer joined the medical faculty at Temple University where he became a professor of psychiatry and family and community medicine. He was employed at Temple at the time of his panel appearance. Having been forced from residency and at least one job for being gay, he took a considerable risk, even disguised. “It had to be said,” he wrote in 1985, “But I couldn't do it as me. I was not yet full time on the faculty.” 

Fryer lived in Philadelphia until his death. In 2006 the APA named an annual civil rights award after him. Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny were its first recipients.

Biologist and AIDS Activist

b. May 12, 1934
d. February 13, 1994

“We are everywhere.” 

Bruce Raymond Voeller was a biologist and AIDS researcher who became a leading gay rights activist. He cofounded the National Gay Task Force and served as its executive director for five years. He helped lead the early fight against AIDS and founded the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation. 

Born in Minneapolis, Voeller first confronted his homosexuality as a student. His school counselor assured him that he was not gay, but Voeller had felt same-sex attraction very early in life, which inspired his interest in biology.

Voeller graduated with honors from Reed College in 1956, winning a five-year fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute to complete his doctoral studies in biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics. He became a research associate at the Institute in 1961, and later a professor. He wrote four books and married a woman, with whom he had three children. 

Voeller came out when he was 29 and divorced in 1971. In 1972 he was among a group that took over George McGovern’s New York campaign office to protest the senator’s opposition to gay rights. Voeller outlined a six-point statement before he was arrested while chanting “gay power.”

Voeller went on to become president of the New York Gay Activist Alliance. He founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 (now the National LGBTQ Task Force), which became the first gay rights group to meet at the White House to discuss policy related to gay and lesbian Americans. 

Voeller conducted pioneering HIV/AIDS research before the disease had a name. He co-edited “AIDS and Sex: An Integrated Biomedical and Behavioral Approach” in 1990 and wrote scores of papers on the subject. He also worked at Hunter College and Cornell University doing research on the effectiveness of condoms and spermicides in preventing disease. 

In 1978, with Karen DeCrow of the National Organization of Women and Aryeh Neier of the American Civil Liberties Union, Voeller founded the Mariposa Foundation to study human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. Volunteers for the organization preserved important historical resources of the gay rights movement, which have become an archive on human sexuality at the Cornell University Library. 

While with Mariposa, Voeller commissioned the famous George Segal sculpture of gay couples at Christopher Park, across the street from the site of the Stonewall riot. He also commissioned Dom Bachardy to create a series of portraits of Gay Pioneers, including Frank Kameny, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, Barbara Gittings and others.

Voeller died from complications of AIDS in 1994. His longtime companion, Richard Liuck, a former associate at the Mariposa Foundation, died the same year from an AIDS-related illness.

Neurologist and Author

b. July 9, 1933
d. August 30, 2015

“We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think.”

Oliver Sacks was a British-born physician and best-selling author who specialized in neurology. He spent most of his professional life in the United States. The New York Times called him “the poet laureate of medicine.” 

Sacks came from a long line of scientists. His father was a physician and his mother was one of the first female surgeons in England. Sacks’s first autobiography, “Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood,” chronicles his early experiences escaping the Blitz during World War II and being enrolled at a cruel boarding school. 

Sacks graduated in 1956 from Queen’s College, Oxford, with a degree in biology and physiology. He came to the United States in the 1960s to complete a residency at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco. He pursued fellowships in neurology and psychiatry at UCLA. As part of his 2012 book, “Hallucinations,” he discussed his experimentation with recreational drugs and its effects on his brain.

After moving to New York City, Sacks began documenting his observations about neurological diseases, which led to his book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” His treatment of patients suffering from a rare illness became the basis of “Awakenings,” which was adapted into a 1990 Academy Award-nominated film starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. His book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” also inspired a film, “Musical Minds,” on the PBS series “Nova.” Sacks created the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, where he served as a medical adviser. 

Sacks regularly contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books, as well as many medical publications. The recipient of numerous honors, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996 and was named a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1999. He was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature in 2008. 

Sacks lived alone for most of his life. He spoke about being gay for the first time in his 2015 autobiography, “On the Move: A Life.” He said he was celibate for 35 years before beginning a long-term relationship with writer Bill Hayes in 2008. “It has sometimes seemed to me that I have lived at a certain distance from life,” he wrote. “This changed when Billy and I fell in love.” They were together until his death.

Sacks wrote about his uveal melanoma, which affects the eye, in his 2010 book, “The Mind’s Eye.” When in 2014 the cancer returned in his liver and brain, he announced it in The New York Times. He died at age 82.

Athlete

b. November 1, 1937

d. July 11, 1987

“Winning is doing your best.”

Tom Waddell was an Olympic athlete and founder of the international sporting event, the Gay Games.

Born Thomas Flubacher in New Jersey, Waddell’s parents divorced. At 15, he moved in with his neighbors, Gene and Hazel Waddell, who adopted him. Waddell attended Springfield College, where he studied pre-medicine and was a star gymnast and football player. In 1960, he enrolled at New Jersey College of Medicine. In the early 1960’s, he participated in the African-American civil rights demonstrations in Alabama.

In 1966, Wadell joined the Army and served as a medical doctor. Two years later, he competed in the Olympics, placing sixth in the decathlon. Because of a knee injury, he retired from athletics. After the Army, Waddell completed a graduate fellowship at Stanford University.

In the mid-1970’s, Waddell came out to friends and family and began exploring the burgeoning gay scene in San Francisco. After attending a gay bowling competition, he was inspired to organize a gay sporting event. Modeled on the Olympics, he founded the Gay Games, which first took place in 1982 in San Francisco. Originally called the “Gay Olympics,” the U.S. Olympic Committee sued Waddell for the use of the word “Olympics” and the organization was renamed “Gay Games.”

In 1981, Waddell began a relationship with Zohn Artman. That same year, he met lesbian athlete Sara Lewinstein, and they decided to have a child. After their daughter was born, Waddell and Lewinstein married.

Waddell experienced the success and international impact of the Gay Games. “Tom wanted to emphasize that gay men were men, not that they were gay,” said Waddell’s biographer. “He didn’t want them to lose their homosexual identity, or hide it; he just didn’t want them to be pigeonholed by it." In 1987, Waddell died of AIDS-related complications.

Surgeon
b. November 26, 1832
d. February 21, 1919

"You men are not our protectors... If you were, who would there be to protect us from?" 
    
A steadfast feminist, Mary Edwards Walker defied nineteenth century patriarchal society by refusing to live within the confines of gender-based roles. As a student, physician, and activist, Walker defined her place in society while paving the way for future generations of women.

Diverging from the norm, Walker's liberal parents encouraged her and her five sisters to attend college and pursue careers. Her father, a self-taught doctor and advocate of women's dress reform, largely influenced Walker.

In 1855, Mary Edwards Walker graduated from Syracuse Medical College, becoming one of only a few female physicians in the country. She married fellow student and physician Albert Miller in an unconventional ceremony. Walker wore trousers and a man's coat and chose to keep her last name. The marriage ended four years later.

At the onset of the Civil War, having been denied a position as an Army medical officer, Walker volunteered as a nurse for the Union Army. During the next few years she served in several battles including the First Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Fredericksburg. Despite her service, Walker often found herself at the scrutiny of male superiors who questioned her credentials.

The Confederate Army captured Walker in 1864 and held her captive for four months.  Shortly following her release, Walker became the first woman commissioned as Army Surgeon, earning a monthly salary of one hundred dollars.

The following year, Walker became the first and only woman in history to receive a Medal of Honor, the highest military honor in the United States. The bill, which President Andrew Johnson signed upon the recommendation of two major generals, reads:

Whereas it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of medicine, has rendered valuable service to the Government, and has devoted herself with much patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soldiers, both in the field and hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war four months in Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon...It is ordered, That a testimonial thereof shall be hereby made and given to the said Dr. Mary E. Walker, and that the actual medal of honor for meritorious services be given her.

After the war, Walker continued to live a nonconformist lifestyle. A strong advocate of dress reform, she wore men's clothing exclusively and was arrested on several occasions for impersonating a man. In 1917, Congress revoked her Medal of Honor after revising the criteria for receiving the medal. Walker refused to return the medal, wearing it until her death.