Medical gay pride pin
![medical gay pride pin medical gay pride pin](https://i0.wp.com/localnewsmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/90344301_640999116697645_4860039885340908246_n.jpg)
I signed up for Twitter and loudly and proudly put the pride flag in my bio. I thought “Hey, this seems cool,” having no idea what I was getting myself into. The following year my friend texted me a link to a Twitter account run by a gay doctor in Maine. A gay doctor?! Who had heard of such a thing?! Many people, apparently. Emmett Whitaker, a pediatric anesthesiologist and a gay attending who has been married to his husband, Andrew, for several years now. The homophobia that I had experienced growing up (and still sometimes do) had really, deeply affected me and continued to affect me.Īs luck would have it, I was paired with Dr. I remember cynically saying to my partner “yeah I’ll sign up for the program, if there are any gay doctors.” Deep within me I still carried the notion that the identities “gay” and “medical doctor” were mutually exclusive. The aim of the project was to pair me up with a gay attending physician who could help mentor me through medical school and the residency application process. Eileen CichoskiKelly, asking if I wanted to be in a mentorship program specifically designed for underrepresented in medicine (URiM) minority and LGBTQ+ students. I was entering my second year in medical school and received an email from Dr. I quickly and swiftly gave up the idea of becoming a doctor and promised myself I would never come out.
![medical gay pride pin medical gay pride pin](https://www.rushu.rush.edu/sites/default/files/rushprideart.jpg)
Most of what I found was a slew of homophobia imbibed in incorrect notions of the AIDS epidemic, and how gay doctors could possibly spread the infection to their patients. The Google results were disheartening to say the least. I knew exactly zero queer people, had no social connections to any doctors in or out of my family, and could never conceive of the next steps to becoming a doctor, let alone a gay one. It was 2009 and I was sitting at home in small town Connecticut. “Can doctors be gay?” I typed the question into the Google search bar, I held my breath, and clicked search. This is the story of his journey to that day and what he’s learned since then. The tweet has since garnered 21 comments, 12 retweets, and 702 likes. The tweet was accompanied by two photos of Clarke – one, a selfie he took of his reflection in a mirror – dressed in his white coat and business attire with a stethoscope around his neck, and the other, a close up of his white coat with the Pride pin he refers to clipped to his lapel. On August 4, 2020, University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine Class of 2022 medical student Patrick Clarke posted a tweet on his Twitter profile wrote “ok so apparently we left fear in July? because I am wearing my med Pride pin for the first time ever and we’re feelin it”