Customer Reviews

Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A collection of fascinating personal stories of individual and collection action against injustice! This book dispels myths that give central location to the Stonewall rebellion, showing instead a much more complex history of activism for gay and lesbian rights. Although the biographies are uneven (some are too short, and some are written by their subjects' partners, hence too celebratory), most of these approximately forty biographies show the successes and charms, foibles and failures of a remarkable group of people -- gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, transgendered, non-transgendered -- who all made a tremendous difference in the quality of life possible for gays and lesbians in the United States today.

Launched a half-century ago, the American gay and lesbian rights movement has achieved a remarkable success. Its influence has spread throughout the world, contributing enormously to the happiness, productivity, and self-esteem of homosexual citizens elsewhere. For the most part, those who launched this wonderful development in the 1950s did not realize, or did not record, the essence of their achievement. They were too busy doing their work. Now, under the guidance of Vern Bullough, a major scholar in the field, it has been written down. In biographies of some forty individuals, many fascinating in their own right, the story is told. It is as if one received a whole raft of biographies in one volume! This book must be seen and read in order to understand its remarkable contribution, a contribution that is significant for all of us.

Vern's introduction credited me with suggesting that he replace Wayne Dynes, after Dynes resigned, as the editor of Before Stonewall. I'm happy that John De Cecco, the editor at Haworth, accepted my suggestion. John, who has edited the Journal of Homosexuality and a number of other Haworth Journal and series, is beyond question the most important gay editor since Magnus Hirschhfeld. He has made the Journal the place of record for gay studies, and Vern Bullough, with over fifty books to his credit is also the leading living historian of sex. Both of those scholars have braved the slings and arrows of the religious right, the child abuse industry, and others suffering from sexual panic. They did a splendid job on this much needed work, which contradicts the present-minded, now the vast majority of the gay rights movement, who maintain that nothing significant happened before Stonewall.

I believe that someone should do a sequel - a book that would devote chapters to the most significant scholars and activists in the next generation, that is to those who took the lead after 1969, until the date when AIDS became significant enough to end Gay Liberation and sexual laissez-faire, which had dominated our movement after Stonewall. The terminal date of such a book should be during the early 1980's - I'm not sure which year. What was first dubbed GRID - Gay Related Immunity Deficiency - in 1979 or 80, became Karposi syndrome before it became AIDS.