Nanette Gartrell, MD and Diane (Dee) Mosbacher, MD, PhD are psychiatrists in love. Dee is also a filmmaker and social justice activist; and Nanette is also a researcher and writer whose 53 years of scientific investigations have contributed to the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights. Individually, they are formidable leaders, thinkers, and activists; as a team, they are a force of nature.

Within a few months of arriving at Stanford for her undergraduate degree, Nanette had fallen in love with a woman, come out as a lesbian, and made it her personal mission to remove the word “homosexuality” from the DSM. As a pre-med student at Stanford, her faculty mentor Dr. Keith Brodie encouraged her to do a special project on homosexuality because, as a lesbian, she’d bring a unique perspective to the research.

Meanwhile, while taking pre-med courses at George Washington University, Dee saw her first “real live lesbian” speak at a reproductive rights speak-out. The role modeling she saw there “threw open the closet door” for her.

In 1975, Nanette got an externship at the National Institute of Health in Washington, DC. She’d never been to the east coast, but a friend found her a spot in a lesbian collective household in DC, where she met Dee. They bonded over their research, their activism, and their mutual enjoyment of the TV show “Little House on the Prairie.” Nanette ignored the housemates’ warning that Dee was a “heartbreaker” — and rightly so – as the two women have now been together for 47 years.

From DC, Nanette became a psychiatric resident at Harvard. As the first out lesbian on the full-time Harvard Medical School faculty, she found herself in the position of trailblazer multiple times. She published a paper on homophobic stresses associated with being lesbian in The American Journal of Psychotherapy, likely the first paper of its kind to appear in that journal. And when the American Psychiatric Association blocked a groundbreaking curriculum based on a single sentence written by Nanette, “Homosexuality is a normal form of sexual expression,” she pulled out of the project. In solidarity, many of her colleagues follow suit.

Once Dee finished her PhD in social psychology, she went to medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. As an out lesbian, Dee was often invited to speak at schools. She created a slideshow presentation called “Closets Are Health Hazards: Gay and Lesbian Physicians Come Out,” which was shown in med schools all over the country. In a way, the slideshow started Dee’s career as a filmmaker. She eventually directed and/or produced nine documentaries, including the Academy Award-nominated Straight from the Heart, about religious parents coming to terms with their children’s homosexuality.

In 1986, Nanette began a study of lesbian families. The study continues to this day, and has been cited internationally in litigation and legislation concerning equality in marriage, foster care, and adoption. The study’s findings played a critical role in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ affirmation of same-gender marriage. Nanette also spearheaded a 10-year project documenting sexual misconduct in physicians, which led to the creation of ethics codes and laws outlawing the sexual abuse of patients. For this work, Nanette was featured in a PBS “Frontline” documentary, My Doctor, My Lover.

Dee, among her many other descriptors, is also the daughter of Robert Mosbacher, who was George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Commerce from 1989-1992. Motivated by the virulent homophobia Dee witnessed at the 1992 Republican National Convention, she founded Woman Vision, a nonprofit promoting equality through educational media. She also served as San Mateo County’s Medical Director for Mental Health and Senior Psychiatrist at San Francisco’s Progress Foundation.

In 2004, Drs. Gartrell and Mosbacher raced to San Francisco City Hall and were married one hour after the first same-sex marriage ceremony was performed for Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, improvising with their pinky rings. When the Supreme Court of California annulled these marriages, the couple wed again the following year in Victoria, British Columbia.

Since sharing the stories of their careers and their relationship with OUTWORDS, Dee and Nanette have become close friends of the project, always at the ready to offer a word of encouragement and support. In this way, the strength and warmth of their personal bond has fortified OUTWORDS’ quest to ensure that stories like Nanette’s and Dee’s are preserved and shared for many generations to come.