Intelligently written and attractively illustrated and designed, this study of gay and lesbian history culture in San Francisco begins with the cross-dressing practices of 18th-century Native Americans and continues through to the signing of municipal transgender laws in 1995 in the "Gay Capital of the World." Some 300 well-chosen black-and- white and color photos document the history (though none are sexually explicit, there is some nudity). Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An innovative, data-driven explanation of how public opinion shifted on LGBTQ rights The Path to Gay Rights is the first social science analysis of how and why the LGBTQ movement achieved its most unexpected victory—transforming gay people from a despised group of social deviants into a minority worthy of rights and protections in the eyes of most Americans. The book weaves together a narrative of LGBTQ history with new findings from the field of political psychology to provide an understanding of how social movements affect mass attitudes in the United States and globally. Using data going back to the 1970s, the book argues that the current understanding of how social movements change mass opinion—through sympathetic media coverage and endorsements from political leaders—cannot provide an adequate explanation for the phenomenal success of the LGBTQ movement at changing the public’s views. In The Path to Gay Rights, Jeremiah Garretson argues that the LGBTQ community’s response to the AIDS crisis was a turning point for public support of gay rights. ACT-UP and related AIDS organizations strategically targeted political and media leaders, normalizing news coverage of LGBTQ issues and AIDS and signaled to LGBTQ people across the United States that their lives were valued. The net result was an increase in the number of LGBTQ people who came out and lived their lives openly, and with increased contact with gay people, public attitudes began to warm and change. Garretson goes beyond the story of LGBTQ rights to develop an evidence-based argument for how social movements can alter mass opinion on any contentious topic.

On October 14, 1998, five thousand people gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to mourn the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who had been murdered in Wyoming eight days earlier. Politicians and celebrities addressed the crowd and the televised national audience to share their grief with the country. Never before had a gay citizen's murder elicited such widespread outrage or concern from straight Americans. In Dying to Be Normal, Brett Krutzsch argues that gay activists memorialized people like Shepard as part of a political strategy to present gays as similar to the country's dominant class of white, straight Christians. Through an examination of publicly mourned gay deaths, Krutzsch counters the common perception that LGBT politics and religion have been oppositional and reveals how gay activists used religion to bolster the argument that gays are essentially the same as straights, and therefore deserving of equal rights. Krutzsch's analysis turns to the memorialization of Shepard, Harvey Milk, Tyler Clementi, Brandon Teena, and F. C. Martinez, to campaigns like the It Gets Better Project, and national tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting to illustrate how activists used prominent deaths to win acceptance, influence political debates over LGBT rights, and encourage assimilation. Throughout, Krutzsch shows how, in the fight for greater social inclusion, activists relied on Christian values and rhetoric to portray gays as upstanding Americans. As Krutzsch demonstrates, gay activists regularly reinforced a white Protestant vision of acceptable American citizenship that often excluded people of color, gender-variant individuals, non-Christians, and those who did not adhere to Protestant Christianity's sexual standards. The first book to detail how martyrdom has influenced national debates over LGBT rights, Dying to Be Normal establishes how religion has shaped gay assimilation in the United States and the mainstreaming of particular gays as "normal" Americans.

This anthology by former members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) captures the history and spirit of the revolutionary time just after Stonewall, when thousands came out of the closet to claim their sexuality, and when queer resistance coalesced into a turbulent, joyous liberation movement—one whose lasting influence would ultimately inform and profoundly shape the LGBT community of today. Personal essays explore the philosophy and culture of the stridently anti-assimilationist GLF: the actions, demonstrations and marches; views on marriage, religion and gender; the drugs, orgies and communes; and GLF’s relationship to the hippies, the Black Panthers, the straight Left, the women’s movement, civil rights and the antiwar struggle. The collection includes contributions from Martha Shelley, Cei Bell, Paola Bacchetta, Susan Stryker, Tom Ammiano, Nikos Diaman, Mark Segal, Barbara Ruth and Perry Brass.

"Never Silent is a gorgeous book . . . Peter Staley has written an electrifying primer for anyone who's thinking/worrying/wondering about how to change/save the world." —Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of Angels in America 2022 Lambda Literary Award Finalist The previously untold stories of the life of the leading subject in David France's How To Survive A Plague, Peter Staley, including his continuing activism In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex. A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—ACT UP—in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives. Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group's most spectacular actions, from shutting down trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to putting a giant condom over the house of Senator Jesse Helms. Never Silent is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow—years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence. Never Silent is guaranteed to inspire the activist within all of us.