In Chicago, some 50 years ago, Dr. Evelyn Hooker presented the groundbreaking results of her initial research to a conference of psychologists at the Sherman Hotel. Having accepted a challenge in 1953 from a student, Sam From, to do research on healthy homosexuals instead of the patients and prisoners who were the subjects of most studies, Hooker found their psychological profiles indistinguishable from comparable heterosexuals.
Hooker, a native of Nebraska, received her master’s degree from the University of Colorado in 1930 ( where she first read The Well of Loneliness ) and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. At the time she conducted her studies she was a research psychologist at UCLA. She was featured in an Academy Award–nominated documentary, Changing Our Minds, which also showed electric shock treatments for homosexuals and a gay man being lobotomized ( it destroyed his brain, but did not alter his sexuality ) .
Kinsey showed we were here by the numbers. Hooker showed we are no different from the rest of humankind. Many of us, especially the young, still need to hear that message.
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