Dr. Charles Silverstein is well known in the gay community for his activism in the struggle for gay rights, his professional contributions toward providing counseling for gay people, and for his publications.Silverstein's 1973 historic presentation before the Nomenclature Committee of the American Psychiatric Association led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the diagnostic manual. He was in the vanguard in the fight to stop the use of aversion therapy on gay people, and founded two gay and lesbian counseling centers in New York, Identity House and the Institute for Human Identity. He was also the founding editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, now in its fifty-seventh volume.In publishing, he is best known for the groundbreaking 1977 The Joy of Gay Sex (with Edmund White), subsequently translated into five other languages. His A Family Matter: A Parents' Guide to Homosexuality was the first book to assist parents who learn that a son or daughter is gay. Man to Man: Gay Couples in America was the first book to examine the nature of gay male love relationships.In August 2011, Silverstein was awarded a Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Practice of Psychology from the American Psychological Foundation.
