The American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as an illness in 1973. However, the stigma persisted in the medical community where gay patients were often approached as sick individuals who needed to be cured.

Dr. Richard Isay was one of the first prominent psychiatrists/psychoanalysts to encourage his gay patients to accept themselves rather than deny their feelings. Dr. Isay was already an established mental health professional when he came out of the closet. He was ostracized by his colleagues, but he continued to present his then-radical notions about homosexuality at meetings and in his writings.

In 1992, Isay teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to threaten the American Psychoanalytic Association with a discrimination lawsuit. The APA agreed to start treating analysts the same regardless of their sexuality and to promote education on the subject within the network.