A gay psychiatrist donned a Nixon mask & came out to colleagues in 1972. He changed the world.

It looked like a scene from a vintage Halloween flick. A hulking 6’4 figure in a baggy tuxedo sat center stage, a partially melted rubber Nixon mask obscuring his wide face. He’d appeared on the dais seemingly from nowhere, a wiry, black novelty wig pulled low on his forehead. In lieu of an axe, he held a few sheets of yellow notebook paper bearing handwritten notes. Every doctor in the crowded hall was anxiously transfixed as he used one hand to reposition the microphone before him, then began to speak. 

“I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist. I, like most of you in this room, am a member of the APA, and proud of that membership.” 

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The 8-minute speech that followed, delivered at what should have been another unremarkable professional convention at Dallas’ Adolphus Hotel, detonated a long-simmering secret within the mental health community and forever changed the landscape for gay Americans. 

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But it would be decades before anyone knew who “Dr. Henry Anonymous” really was and what it had taken to get him on that stage. 

Dr. John Fryer initially had no interest in sacrificing his freedom for “the greater good.” When addressing the American Psychiatric Association that afternoon in 1972, homosexuality was still categorized as both a mental illness and a crime. Dozens of states — including Texas where the convention was held — had anti-sodomy laws on the books. Being “out” guaranteed the loss of a medical license, as well as any shot at teaching or research positions. A bonafide genius on the faculty of Philadelphia’s Temple University, Fryer, just 34, had everything to lose. 

He’d nearly lost it all once already. 

A Kentucky native, Fryer never quite fit in anywhere. Very tall, heavyset, and nearly always the youngest person in the room, childhood friends recalled him being bullied constantly by other boys, in part due to his overt queerness. He skipped multiple grades, beginning college classes at 15 and med school by 19. By 1964, he was a few years shy of 30 and already in residency at the University of Pennsylvania. There, he got his first taste of oblivion after mentioning being gay in passing to a friend over dinner. The “friend” immediately relayed Fryer’s orientation to his department chair, who gave the prodigy an ultimatum: resign or be fired. 

Fryer spent the next several years in a degrading, poorly-paid position at the State Lunatic Hospital at Norristown attempting to finish his residency, a waste of the Vanderbilt University and Ohio State whiz kid’s considerable talent. The experience drove him speedily back into the closet. 

“It was a way, if you came out as being gay, to not have any power,” Fryer once told NPR’s This American Life. “Being a ‘straight,’ closeted physician enabled me to have power.”

Years passed. Fryer ran into professional roadblocks rooted in the rumor of his sexuality. Once he managed to unlock a professorship at Temple University, he kept his head down, toiling through brutal hours trying to assimilate. 

Until he got a call from lesbian librarian-turned-activist Barbara Gittings. 

Gittings was part of a grassroots LGBTQ+ advocacy group intent on getting the American Psychological Association to reverse course on homosexuality as a malady. Through the queer grapevine, the group had learned of “The GAYPA” — a secret subset of the APA comprised of dozens, and possibly hundreds, of closeted “analysts” all hamstrung professionally and personally by homosexuality’s mental illness categorization in their profession’s Bible, the DSM.

The Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the ever-evolving handbook used to make diagnoses in modern psychology. Gittings’ posse of radicals had already protested at the APA’s annual meet-up once before but were dismissed as disgruntled deviants. She needed an eloquent member of the APA itself to truly get the org’s attention, and Fryer’s name landed in her lap. 

“My first reaction was NO WAY,” Fryer recalled in 2002. But Gittings was persistent. Fryer’s airfare and hotels would be covered, she promised. He could wear a disguise and speak anonymously. They’d sneak him through backdoors and unused hallways and utilize the microphone to disguise his generally soft-spoken voice. “She planted in my mind the possibility that I could do something that would be helpful without ruining my career.” 

This is how Fryer ended up costumed onstage in 1972, staring into a ballroom of his peers… including the man who’d fired him from his residency years prior. 

From behind his mask, Fryer outed the existence of The GAYPA, exposing for the first time how the organization pathologized homosexuality while simultaneously placing queer folks in high-ranking positions of influence. As Invisibilia producer Alix Spiegel would later recount for NPR, President-Elect of the APA John Spiegel, in attendance for the speech, was himself secretly queer.

Fryer detailed how their profession’s unsuccessful collective attempts to “cure” homosexuality meant hiding from the queer community as well as colleagues due to the ongoing trauma psychologists caused LGBTQ+ people. He described working 20 hour days to elevate a profession which “would literally chew us up and spit us out if they only knew, or chose to acknowledge, the truth.” 

In his closing, Fryer appealed to The GAYPA directly. “We are taking an even bigger risk, however, in not living fully our humanity. This is the greatest loss — our honest humanity,” he said. 

The acute reaction to Dr. Anonymous was a standing ovation. Its ripple effect was even more impressive. 

Fryer’s speech called into question the ethics of homosexuality’s classification and was bolstered by the work of researchers like Dr. Evelyn Hooker, the very first analyst to study healthy homosexuals who were not legally imprisoned or in the throes of mental health crises; sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who unearthed just how many “heterosexual” adults experienced same-sex attraction; and progressive allies within the APA, like Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, a member of the APA’s Committee on Nomenclature. 

One year later, the APA stunned the medical community, announcing in December 1973 that homosexuality was not a mental illness. Homosexuality was edited out of the DSM’s list of “sociopathic disorders,” erasing any scientific or legal basis for discrimination on the basis of sexuality. By 1975, the organization put the following in print:

“…Homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgement, reliability or general social and vocational capabilities…mental health professionals should take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness long associated with homosexual orientation.” 

Despite the eased restrictions, it would take Fryer another two decades to speak openly about being Dr. Anonymous. The DSM had changed, but homophobia lingered as the standard in academia and medicine. The same year the DSM declassified homosexuality, Fryer was fired from a position at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. “If you were gay and not flamboyant, we would keep you. If you were flamboyant and not gay, we would keep you. But since you are both gay and flamboyant, we cannot keep you,” a senior administrator told Fryer the day he was dispensed. 

Fryer did eventually get tenured at Temple, flamboyance and all. He spent the majority of his later career specializing in “bereavement,” pioneering the hospice movement — work that would serve his community with devastating need as the AIDS epidemic took root. He cultivated a rich professional life, befriending the famed anthropologist Margaret Mead and winning accolades as a reluctant gay activist but never ascending to the heights a groundbreaking genius should have. Though rarely alone and genuinely beloved by friends and students, he struggled to find a life partner. 

“There was always a sense of sadness at not being fully accepted,” colleague Dr. David Scasta told The New York Times. “John always felt he was on the fringe.” 

Dr. John Fryer died February 21, 2003 from complications connected to diabetes and pulmonary disease. The Association of Gay & Lesbian Psychiatrists, in partnership with The APA, established the John Fryer Award for work benefiting “sexual minorities” in 2005. 

The prize’s first recipients included none other than Barbara Gittings, the woman who’d convinced him to put on the mask for the benefit of mankind. 

**Editor’s note: This piece originally misidentified the APA as the American Psychological Association. It has been updated to reflect that it stands for the American Psychiatric Association.