Lawrence D. Mass
Encyclopedia
Lawrence D. Mass, M.D. is an American physician and writer. A co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis
, he wrote the first press reports on the epidemic that later became known as AIDS
. He is the author of numerous publications on HIV
, hepatitis C
, STDs
, gay health, psychiatry and sex research, and on music, opera, and culture. He is also the author/editor of four books/collections. In 2009 he was in the first group of physicians to be designated as diplomates of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Since 1979, he has lived and worked as a physician in New York City
, where he resides with his life partner
, writer and activist Arnie Kantrowitz
.
, in 1946, received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969, and his M.D. from the University of Illinois' Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine in 1973.
After completing his residency in anesthesiology at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital
in association with Harvard Medical School
, the homophobia
Mass encountered when he came out as gay during interviews in Chicago for a second residency in psychiatry
became the catalyst for the activism he pursued via journalism, making him the first openly gay physician to write for the gay press on a regular basis.
in 1973 declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Besides writing for the gay press, Mass became newsletter editor for the Gay Caucus of Members of the American Psychiatric Association, the fledgling organization of gay psychiatrists that began organizing in the aftermath of the declassification. Under Mass, the newsletter ran politically charged headlines such as its first, "Psychoanalytic Statute Prevents Legal Entry of Gay Aliens," calling attention to the fact that discredited psychoanalytic theories of "the homosexual" as a form of "psychopathic personality" were still sources of discriminatory public policies.
, Richard Pillard
, Thomas Szasz
, John Money
, Charles Silverstein
, Masters and Johnson
, Richard Green, Mary Calderone
, John Boswell, John D'Emilio
and Estelle Freedman, and Martin Duberman
. A selection of these interviews is republished in his two "Dialogues of The Sexual Revolution" collections.
As a physician writing for the gay press, Mass also was one of the first to address the 1970s spread of a number of sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis
, gonorrhea
, hepatitis B and amebiasis. In May 1981, Mass authored the first press report appearing in the New York Native
, followed in July of 1981 by the first feature article, "Cancer in the Gay Community," on the then-new HIV-AIDS epidemic. The New York Native cover story was among the opening displays of the Newseum
in Arlington, Va., now in Washington, DC. Mass continues to report on HIV-AIDS.
, Edmund White
, Paul Rapoport
, Paul Popham and Nathan Fain in co-founding Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), the world's first and still largest AIDS information and service organization. For 10 years, through four revisions, Mass authored GMHC's guide, Medical Answers About AIDS, which usually concluded with an appeal for civil liberties for sexual minority persons and the sanctioning of same sex relationships as "essential considerations in the preventive medicine of AIDS and other STDs."
At the start of the AIDS epidemic, the issue of anti-Semitism
also interested Mass. As described on the dust jacket of his memoir, "Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite":
"Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite" is the story of Mass's voyage of discovery from his adolescent infatuation with Wagner to his friendship with the great-grandson of the composer and life-partnership with a fellow gay activist and Jewish-American writer.
The anthology,"We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer", begins with "Larry versus Larry," the story of Mass's sometimes stormy 40-year relationship with Kramer, and includes contributions from a number of key figures from the AIDS movement, including historical and critical evaluations by Rodger McFarlane, Anthony Fauci, Michelangelo Signorile, Gabriel Rotello, Tony Kushner, and John D'Emilio. While Kramer is likely to remain best known for his achievements around AIDS and grass roots activism, Mass was most inspired by Kramer's experience as a writer, especially his very personal voice, bravery and perseverance in the face of harsh criticism and rejection. Chapters by Andrew Holleran, Christopher Bram, Alfred Corn, Michael Denneny and others complete the picture of, as the dust jacket puts it, "one of the most original and influential voices of the twentieth century."
Beginning in the late 1990s, Mass extended his public health interests to the bear subculture of the gay community. He has addressed in a regular column a range of health topics of interest to this subculture, initially consisting of middle-aged overweight men, first for American Bear Magazine and later for A Bear's Life magazine.
Mass's papers, and those of his life partner, Arnie Kantrowitz
, are designated collections of the New York Public Library
.
Gay Men's Health Crisis
The Gay Men's Health Crisis is a New York City-based non-profit, volunteer-supported and community-based AIDS service organization that has led the United States in the fight against AIDS.-1980s:...
, he wrote the first press reports on the epidemic that later became known as AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
. He is the author of numerous publications on HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
, hepatitis C
Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C is an infectious disease primarily affecting the liver, caused by the hepatitis C virus . The infection is often asymptomatic, but chronic infection can lead to scarring of the liver and ultimately to cirrhosis, which is generally apparent after many years...
, STDs
Sexually transmitted disease
Sexually transmitted disease , also known as a sexually transmitted infection or venereal disease , is an illness that has a significant probability of transmission between humans by means of human sexual behavior, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex...
, gay health, psychiatry and sex research, and on music, opera, and culture. He is also the author/editor of four books/collections. In 2009 he was in the first group of physicians to be designated as diplomates of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Since 1979, he has lived and worked as a physician in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he resides with his life partner
Life partner
A life partner is a romantic or otherwise very close friend for life. The partners can be of the same or opposite sexes, married or unmarried, and monogamous or polyamorous....
, writer and activist Arnie Kantrowitz
Arnie Kantrowitz
Arnie Kantrowitz is a gay activist, college professor emeritus, and writer.-Biography:Arnold Kantrowitz was an early secretary and vice-president of the pioneering New York City group Gay Activists Alliance. He is a co-founder of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation...
.
Biography
Mass was born in Macon, GeorgiaMacon, Georgia
Macon is a city located in central Georgia, US. Founded at the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is part of the Macon metropolitan area, and the county seat of Bibb County. A small portion of the city extends into Jones County. Macon is the biggest city in central Georgia...
, in 1946, received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969, and his M.D. from the University of Illinois' Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine in 1973.
After completing his residency in anesthesiology at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital and biomedical research facility in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts...
in association with Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
, the homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
Mass encountered when he came out as gay during interviews in Chicago for a second residency in psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
became the catalyst for the activism he pursued via journalism, making him the first openly gay physician to write for the gay press on a regular basis.
Early focus on psychiatry
Mass focused initially on the field of psychiatry, which retained many of its past homophobic practitioners, practices and positions even after the American Psychiatric AssociationAmerican Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
in 1973 declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Besides writing for the gay press, Mass became newsletter editor for the Gay Caucus of Members of the American Psychiatric Association, the fledgling organization of gay psychiatrists that began organizing in the aftermath of the declassification. Under Mass, the newsletter ran politically charged headlines such as its first, "Psychoanalytic Statute Prevents Legal Entry of Gay Aliens," calling attention to the fact that discredited psychoanalytic theories of "the homosexual" as a form of "psychopathic personality" were still sources of discriminatory public policies.
Writing for the gay press, first to report on AIDS epidemic
His writing for the gay press examined the leading roles of sociology and sex research in shaping contemporary thinking about sexuality and homosexuality. Mass chronicled the shift in academic and scientific thinking about homosexuality and sexuality. He conducted and published many interviews with such leading figures in the discourse as Judd MarmorJudd Marmor
Judd Marmor was an American psychiatrist known for his role in removing homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.-Life and career:...
, Richard Pillard
Richard Pillard
Richard Colestock Pillard is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine best known for his work on biology and sexual orientation. He was the first openly gay psychiatrist in the United States....
, Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz
Thomas Stephen Szasz is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990 he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social...
, John Money
John Money
John William Money was a psychologist, sexologist and author, specializing in research into sexual identity and biology of gender...
, Charles Silverstein
Charles Silverstein
Dr. Charles Silverstein is an American writer, therapist and gay activist. Dr. Silverstein is a licensed psychologist in the states of New York and New Jersey, and a national leader in providing non-judgmental psychotherapy for men and women...
, Masters and Johnson
Masters and Johnson
The Masters and Johnson research team, composed of William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual disorders and dysfunctions from 1957 until the 1990s....
, Richard Green, Mary Calderone
Mary Calderone
Mary Steichen Calderone was a physician and a public health advocate for sexual education. She served as president and co-founder of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States from 1954 to 1982. She was also the medical director for Planned Parenthood...
, John Boswell, John D'Emilio
John D'Emilio
John D'Emilio is a professor of history and of women's and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1982, where his advisor was William Leuchtenburg...
and Estelle Freedman, and Martin Duberman
Martin Duberman
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School...
. A selection of these interviews is republished in his two "Dialogues of The Sexual Revolution" collections.
As a physician writing for the gay press, Mass also was one of the first to address the 1970s spread of a number of sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
, gonorrhea
Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea is a common sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The usual symptoms in men are burning with urination and penile discharge. Women, on the other hand, are asymptomatic half the time or have vaginal discharge and pelvic pain...
, hepatitis B and amebiasis. In May 1981, Mass authored the first press report appearing in the New York Native
New York Native
The New York Native was a fortnightly Pre-Immunization Revolution newspaper published in New York City from December 1980 until January 13, 1997. It was the only paper in New York City during the early part, and pioneered the notion of cancer in combination with AIDS, when most others ignored it...
, followed in July of 1981 by the first feature article, "Cancer in the Gay Community," on the then-new HIV-AIDS epidemic. The New York Native cover story was among the opening displays of the Newseum
Newseum
The Newseum is an interactive museum of news and journalism located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. The seven-level, museum features 15 theaters and 14 galleries. The Newseum's Berlin Wall Gallery includes the largest display of sections of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany...
in Arlington, Va., now in Washington, DC. Mass continues to report on HIV-AIDS.
Co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), world's first AIDS service organization
In 1982, Mass joined Larry KramerLarry Kramer
Larry Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for Women in Love in 1969, earning...
, Edmund White
Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...
, Paul Rapoport
Paul Rapoport
Paul Israel Rapoport , an attorney, was a co-founder of both the New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center and Gay Men's Health Crisis...
, Paul Popham and Nathan Fain in co-founding Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), the world's first and still largest AIDS information and service organization. For 10 years, through four revisions, Mass authored GMHC's guide, Medical Answers About AIDS, which usually concluded with an appeal for civil liberties for sexual minority persons and the sanctioning of same sex relationships as "essential considerations in the preventive medicine of AIDS and other STDs."
At the start of the AIDS epidemic, the issue of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
also interested Mass. As described on the dust jacket of his memoir, "Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite":
"Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite" is the story of Mass's voyage of discovery from his adolescent infatuation with Wagner to his friendship with the great-grandson of the composer and life-partnership with a fellow gay activist and Jewish-American writer.
Editor of anthology on Author and AIDS activist Larry Kramer
Mass's entangled concerns about Jews, Jewishness, anti-Semitism, and the internalization of antisemitism provide an unanticipated lens through which to view the subject of his subsequent book, a collection on the life and legacies of author and AIDS activist Larry Kramer.The anthology,"We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer", begins with "Larry versus Larry," the story of Mass's sometimes stormy 40-year relationship with Kramer, and includes contributions from a number of key figures from the AIDS movement, including historical and critical evaluations by Rodger McFarlane, Anthony Fauci, Michelangelo Signorile, Gabriel Rotello, Tony Kushner, and John D'Emilio. While Kramer is likely to remain best known for his achievements around AIDS and grass roots activism, Mass was most inspired by Kramer's experience as a writer, especially his very personal voice, bravery and perseverance in the face of harsh criticism and rejection. Chapters by Andrew Holleran, Christopher Bram, Alfred Corn, Michael Denneny and others complete the picture of, as the dust jacket puts it, "one of the most original and influential voices of the twentieth century."
Ongoing interest in gay health issues
By the mid-1990s, thanks largely to the efforts of Kramer and ACT UP, HIV infection had become largely manageable with medical care, and gay activist concerns began to shift. Mass has continued to write about more recent health problems afflicting gay men, including the escalation of HIV among minority teens and the elderly, the crystal meth epidemic, hepatitis C and anal cancer.Beginning in the late 1990s, Mass extended his public health interests to the bear subculture of the gay community. He has addressed in a regular column a range of health topics of interest to this subculture, initially consisting of middle-aged overweight men, first for American Bear Magazine and later for A Bear's Life magazine.
Mass's papers, and those of his life partner, Arnie Kantrowitz
Arnie Kantrowitz
Arnie Kantrowitz is a gay activist, college professor emeritus, and writer.-Biography:Arnold Kantrowitz was an early secretary and vice-president of the pioneering New York City group Gay Activists Alliance. He is a co-founder of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation...
, are designated collections of the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
.
Books
- "We Must Love One Another Or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer". St. Martin's Griffin, New York, copyright Lawrence D. Mass 1997,1999, 400 pages with index.
- "Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America", Cassell, Villiers House, London, 1994, 268 pages, Foreword by Dr. Gottfried Wagner (copyright of Foreword, Gottfried Wagner) 1994.
- "Homosexuality and Sexuality: Dialogues of The Sexual Revolution, Volume 1", Haworth/Harrington Park, 1990, 251 pages.
- "Homosexuality as Behavior and Identity: Dialogues of The Sexual Revolution, Volume II", Haworth/Harrington Park, 265 pages.
Select publications
- "Genocide By Sloth: AIDS Denialism, The Early Years and The Catastrophe in South Africa," Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, May-June 2011.
- “AIDS and Hepatitis C: Lessons from AIDS.” from Emerging Illnesses and Society, Negotiating the Public Health Agenda, edited by Randall M. Packard et al., Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
- “C-Sick”: feature article on Hepatitis C (New York Magazine), March 29, 1999.
- “Musical Closets: A Personal and Selective Documentary History of Outing and Coming Out in the Music World," from Taking Liberties: Gay Men's Essays on Politics, Culture and Sex, edited by Michael Bronski, A Richard Kasak Book, Masquerade, 1996, p 387-440.
- “Bears and Health”: Bears on Bears: Interviews and Discussions, by Ron Jackson Suresha.
- “An Interview with Ned Rorem”: Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, 2nd Edition by Gary C. Thomas.
- “Introduction” to The Golden Boy by James Melton (Haworth/Harrington Park).
Contributions to periodicals
- The New York Native, Christopher Street, Gay City News, Opera Monthly, The Advocate, American Bear Magazine, A Bear's Life Magazine, Journal of Homosexuality, Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy.
Sources
- Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo, by Michael Schiavi, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. References to Lawrence (Larry) D. Mass, pp. 212-214, 215, 222, 227, 230, 234, 235, 236, 244, 246, 247, 248, 249, 253, 271-272, 273, 275, 280.
- Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America, by John-Manuel Andriote, University of Chicago Press, 1999. References to Lawrence D. Mass, pp. 33-34, 38, 82, 216, 399; founding of AIDS services organizations: 53, 63, 73, 87-88; reporting on AIDS epidemic, 49-51, 55, 57, 58, 70, 73, 77, 173.
- Out for Good: The Struggle to Building a Gay Rights Movement in America, by Adam Nagourney and Dudley Clendinen, Simon & Schuster, 1999.
- Covering the Plague: AIDS and the American Media, by James Kinsella, Rutgers University Press, 1989. References to Lawrence D. Mass, pp. 18, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34, 45, 259.