Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 14:07:52 -0500
From: ASLeonard@aol.com

Responding to requested info about history of US exclusion of gays:  The
McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, dating from 1952, excluded gays under the
rubric of "persons afflicted with psychopathic personality."  In 1967, the
Supreme Court found that this was intended to exclude all homosexuals, in the
case of Boutilier v. INS, 387 U.S. 118 (1967).    Meanwhile, Congress had
amended the law expressly to exclude those "afflicted" with "sexual
deviation."  In 1979, U.S. Surgeon General Julius Richmond wrote a letter to
INS, announcing that the Public Health Service would no longer "diagnose"
homosexuality as a medical condition.  Subsequently, in Hill v. U.S. INS, 714
F.2d 1470 (9th Cir. 1983), the court ruled that homosexuals could not be
excluded in the absence of Public Health Service diagnosis, since such was
required under the procedural provisions of the Immigration law.  (The 5th
Circuit reached a contrary conclusion in Longstaff, 716 F.2d 1439 (1983),
cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1219 (1984).)  Things stood at rather an impasse,
complicated by Congressional enactment in 1987 of a ban on immigration of
persons with HIV-infection.  In 1990, Congress totally revised the medical
exclusion provisions of the Immigration law and dropped the ban on
immigration by gays.  However, discretion was left with administrative
officials to determine exclusion for medical conditions presenting a serious
public health threat, and under those provisions the HIV ban continues.
You can read all about it in chapter 8 of my book, Sexuality and the Law: An
Encyclopedia of Major Legal Cases (Garland, 1993).
Art Leonard, NY Law School