‘Sex variants’ were everywhere

The Supreme Court's recent decision in Bostock v. Clayton County outlawed employment discrimination based on sexual orientation for all Americans. Yet amid the justifiable jubilation surrounding that decision, an important scientific history lesson for our community has gone overlooked. In an amicus brief filed with the Court in the case, a group of gay and lesbian historians cited a scientific work that's been mostly forgotten in the eight decades since it was published. Even more thoroughly forgotten, and unmentioned in the historians' brief, were the contributions to that study by a lesbian named Jan Gay whose work and passion made the whole project possible.