News
2007-03-13
LGBT activists,
researchers start think tank
Approximately 30
experts have been selected to provide testimony and
research on LGBT issues for a new progressive think tank.
Approximately 30
experts have been selected to provide testimony and
research on LGBT issues for a new progressive think tank.
The Rockway Institute is made up of a group of faculty
members at the California School of Professional
Psychology as well as 20 Rockway Institute Fellows who
are international leaders in their specialized areas of LGBT
research. In a statement Rockway officials
said the think tank is being established at
a time when LGBT experts are needed to answer
questions about same-sex marriage, legal benefits, and
family building for courts and legislative bodies.
Robert-Jay Green,
executive director of the Rockway Institute, said
research has played a key role in promoting civil rights,
including the American Psychiatric
Association’s 1973 decision to declassify
homosexuality as a mental illness.
“That
decision, in turn, was based largely on earlier research by
psychologists such as Evelyn Hooker showing that gay and
heterosexual men were indistinguishable from one
another on the basis of their mental health," Green
said in the statement. "Similarly, all of the
currently active court cases and legislative hearings
concerning same-sex marriage, LGBT parenting rights,
harassment of LGBT youth in schools, and workplace
discrimination against LGBT employees make very heavy use of
social science and mental health research findings.”
The Rockway
Institute is an extension of Alliant International
University and is named after the late Alan Rockway, a
psychologist who helped write and defend an
unprecedented gay nondiscrimination ordinance in 1977.
(The Advocate)
Click here to follow The Advocate on Twitter.
Page 1 of 1