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March 13, 2007

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. 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)

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