NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter was awarded the John Fryer Award from the American Psychiatric Association, following a keynote lecture at the organization’s  Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the modern LGBTQ rights movement owes its remarkable success to the unique partnership between legal advocates and mental health experts, who have shined the bright light of knowledge—of medical science, of evidence-based research, of fact—into the dark corners of our nation’s long history of bias against, and ignorance about, LGBTQ people,” he said. “That partnership has been evident in every major civil rights victory for our community, from the transformation of child custody and adoption laws, to the court’s 2015 decision on marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges, to the many recent court decisions concluding that President Trump’s transgender military ban is rooted in animus, not medical science.”

The John Fryer Award is named in honor of the psychiatrist who was part of a protest by gay psychiatrists at the 1972 APA Annual Meeting in Dallas. His courage led to the removal of homosexuality from DSM the following year.