 Hartmann and the CoCP also participated in the APA's selection of Melvin Sabshin (1925-2011), a psychiatrist and social reformer open to broader membership participation in the APA, who served as the organization's medical director from 1974 until 1997.Through his membership on the Social Issues Committee of the Northern New England Psychiatric Society (NNPS), Hartmann and Richard PIllard (b.1933) who had just become one of the country's first psychiatrists to identify himself publicly as gay, drafted a position paper for the NNPS arguing that the homosexuality did not meet the scientific or clinical criteria for a diagnosis of mental illness, and that homosexuals deserved full civil rights.With minor modification, this paper was adopted by the NNPS and forwarded to the Assembly of the APA which passed a resolution drawn largely from the paper.