Dr. Sharon Valente, PhD, coauthored a book with Simon LeVay which Bailey uses in his human sexuality course.

Valente is assistant professor and RN-BSN coordinator, is internationally known for publications and scholarship in mental health, particularly suicide. Her research on suicide, life threatening illness, and professionals' attitudes toward suicide/assisted suicide, and media presentations have helped set suicide prevention postvention standards. Her appointments include the National Youth Suicide Council, Death with Dignity, American Academy of Nursing Expert Panel on Culture, and she was elected to membership of American Academy of Nursing, Phi Kappa Phi and Chi Eta Phi, Int. She conducts writing workshops and serves as consultant at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her research has been funded by Oncology Nursing Society, Glaxo, Bristol Myers, Zumberge, and American Cancer Society.

She's taught at USC, won some accolades, began in nursing, has some "obsessive / compulsive disorder" presentations to her credit. Interestingly she was, however, one of the additional editors to the book "Before Stonewall" by Vern Bullough, and apparently published a paper on suicide risk in the Gay & Lesbian community. Also involved with the Death with Dignity folks (assisted suicide on terminal illness).

There's nothing else really tying her to the G&L community per se. Just with this cursory look, I'm going to go out on a limb and say she's not really the prime culprit here. Rather, I think she was brought in more as the emotional pathology expert from a risks sensibility, rather than a LeVay who appears more inclined toward questioning the ulterior mental motivations. Valente probably is the input of anything dealing with "risks of depression / suicide among those who feel they made a mistake" and the prevalence data relating to that, if I had to venture a guess.

On this LaVey/Valente book, Dartmouth noted this as one of their new texts, as well as Michigan State's Psych 492 Syllabus, Univ. of Nottingham (UK), Univ. of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio, and presumably one would think USC as well.