Customer Reviews

Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians

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I read about gay rights in the news every week, but never knew much about the background of this movement. Gay L.A. is a great read and opens up a new world of activism, secret lives, and entire underground societies. It's easy to think that New York and San Francisco were responsible for all the gay breakthroughs, but Los Angeles has an amazing story. This book also tells the story of gay women as well as gay men, which is fascinating. This book is carefully footnoted, but is written like an epic novel, reaching back into the 1800s. It's free of the political dogma and academic jargon that can weigh down similar books. Like it or not, L.A. is one of America's major cities, and what's so interesting is that it's a bunch of small towns, beaches, immigrants and Hollywood all rolled into one. You learn so much about the city itself as well as the gay world, which had to be hidden until recently. I strongly recommend it.

The new book by Faderman and Timmons fills a major lacuna. For some years we have had the benefit of monographs on the gay and lesbian history of such major American cities as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Los Angeles, in some ways the most important city of all in this respect, has been missing. All in all, the new book was well worth waiting for. Clearly written and well-documented with footnotes, it presents a historical account from the pre-Hispanic berdache, through the early decades of Anglo LA, the movie colony, the rise of the gay movement, the development of gay institutions, and on down to a brief look at the present. A particular strength is the material on women, which must be credited to the diligence and resourcefulness of the senior author, a distinguished scholar in the field of lesbian studies.

Quite properly, the authors reject the stereotypes that Easterners (still!) cherish about Los Angeles. It is only fair that they should do a little boasting of their own. The city has its own particular aura, its genius loci. It is in this connection, though, that I detect the one flaw in the book. The authors give an account of the rise of the first substantial American gay movement in the years 1947-51, with the work of Harry Hay, Edith Eyde, Dorr Legg and others. However, they do not offer a convincing explanation of why this event, which has been of epochal and enduring significance to American gays and lesbians, should arise in that particular American city. A half century ago, other cities, with older traditions and more substantial populations, might have been expected to make the great leap forward. Instead it was done in Los Angeles. Why?

Gay L.A." is an important, very comprehensive and inspiring book--one that we've all been waiting for! It is packed with two-centuries worth of fascinating information, but it doesn't read like a boring history book at all. I was intrigued by all stuff I didn't know: the role of gay people in the city's early formation and especially the decades of corrupt oppression that were to follow. There is also a lot of new information about the Hollywood-studio era and the beginnings of the gay liberation movement in Los Angeles. This book really held my interest throughout. The Los Angeles Times gave it a full-page rave review, which "Gay L.A." certainly deserves.

[Disclaimer: Co-author Stuart Timmons is a friend of mine.]

I very much enjoyed the book. Certainly, those of us who lived through some of the events and who know or knew some of the people will enjoy the tale. And many folks, particularly newer generations, don't know much about this history at all. There's also plenty of new research, leading to rich detail that's never been told before.

Tales of Hollywood celebrities are culturally important, but are only one part of the much larger story of gay L.A. told in this book. More interesting to me, for example, are the variant sexualities of Native Americans ruthlessly suppressed by missionaries, the prominence of nineteenth century transvetites, the lurching evolution of sexual law and politics, and much more.

Too often San Francisco is noted as being the leader in the contemporary Gay/Lesbian movement in California. This book, GAY L.A., proves that there was and is more than one large city in our fine State that has played a significant role in the gay movement. Succinct and fascinating, Gay L.A. is a must read!

Lillian Faderman has done it again. She has done her research well and has written a very readable history of gays in LA.

Gay L.A. is fascinating from beginning to end, from the history of gay and lesbian actors in the 1920s to the LGBT community's political power and media visibility today. A surprising number of gay and lesbian cultural institutions had their start in Los Angeles: the Advocate magazine, churches and synagogues, groups representing the diverse ethnic communities in L.A., and countless others.

The history of oppression in the 1940s, '50s, and early '60s is especially chilling. Gay men and women in the post-war era could be arrested simply on suspicion of being gay. Gay activists were hindered by a legal system that forbade the mailing of any kind of publication that mentioned homosexuality until 1958, when the Supreme Court ruled they too had freedom of speech and press, something a lower court had denied.

If you read the sections on the mid-20th century along with books about that era like The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the DecadesBefore Roe v. Wade, about pregnant unmarried women who were forced to leave home to give birth and relinquish their children, it becomes clearer why nuclear families seemed ubiquitous during the 1950s: Everyone else had been silenced or exiled.

This book is a welcome surprise and a rare book at that. It is one of the few ever written on this specific subject .
I consider myself pretty up on the general history of Gay L.A. and still there were many surprises and a lot of new information here.
I also do not think there is anything wrong with saying that someone may have been gay after they are gone. It is no longer a crime to be gay, well not in LA anyway! And goodness knows historically people had many reasons to try to keep that fact a secret.
The truth is until we have equality, only some things can be proven as absolute fact. But we are not the first or only peoples who have either had our histroy destroyed or destroyed it ourselves out of phobia, fear or shame.
But getting back to the book, what stands out the most to me is the fact that an amazing amount of LGBT firsts and an amazing amount of LGBT leadership started here in LA and that is a very impressive fact!
Angela Brinskele Director of Communications , June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives

Amazing book! Lived in L.A. for a good chunk of my life and found this book a great tool to satisfy the gay historian in me!

I liked it. I liked this book very much. I enjoyed this book very much because it was just what I was looking for. I try to spread out my reading to keep a wide variety following. This book kept my interest. I liked the balance, the development of the characters and the over all pictures created. I share my reviews with two book clubs, one in New York and the other here in Aspen. I love to share reviews of book as it is so positive and I get great tips. This book will be an added showcase. I try my best to give either a positive review or nothing at all, negative review are worthless to me and those in our book clubs, we look for the positive. This book was just what I was looking for, not too much of anything, fun where it should have been and no so where it needed to be serious. Great job. Other book I recommend are: Obsession Into Darkness (Gay Thriller) this was a real read, I loved it, I've Always Known (Child Abuse) I cried when reading this true story, From Boys to Men (Gay Classic), this was a hot one, Reflections In The Looking Glass - A Murder Mystery That Will Surprise you (Gay Murder Mystery),Ride 'Em Cowboy (Gay Cowboy), The Lady In White (Gay Romance)and if your looking for hot stuff, you may want to try out Sinbad - The Balloon Kingdom (Gay Sailor).