A Legacy of Cruelty to Sexual and Gender Minority Groups

Abstract

An accounting of medical injustices against members of sexual and gender minority (SGM) groups (including les bian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ+] people) requires unearthing the cruel, inhumane, and stigmatizing articles published in the Journal, which has pathologized homosexu ality and gender nonconformity even as recently as the 2010s. Given this history, it should not be surprising that LGBTQ+ communities face health disparities and outsized ill effects related to every major disease.1 When HIV/AIDS arrived in the 1980s, much of the medical community deemed it to be merely the latest manifestation of a perverse and diseased existence. The simple fact is that to protect themselves from further harm, LGBTQ+ people avoid care at deadly costs.2 The legacy of characterizing SGM people as deviant and dis turbed persists, playing out in examination rooms, medical schools, and state houses to this day.