For decades, the stories of gay people were systematically wiped from public record or suppressed by governments:
: From 1937 to 1993, the FBI maintained a massive file on "sex deviates," using it to target gay rights groups and harass individuals in the press and government.
: In Sydney, Australia, attackers have used dating apps to lure gay teenagers into ambushes, filming themselves assaulting the victims.
: Some domestic leaders continue to use extreme rhetoric; for example, a Texas pastor was recently labeled a hate group leader after a sermon calling for gay people to be "shot in the back of the head". Psychological & Social Toll
: Practices like lobotomies and psychoanalysis were common until 1973, when homosexuality was finally removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Institutional Erasure
While legal progress has been made in many regions, the community faces modern, often violent, "shocks":
The "shock" of being gay often begins internally due to social pressure. The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness - The Huffington Post
: Some doctors, like Austrian endocrinologist Eugen Steinach, believed gay men simply lacked "masculine" hormones and performed testicle transplantations —castrating gay men and replacing their organs with those of "heterosexual" donors.