The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

“Getting to know you and your family, I saw it differently.”

“Someday, by God, I want to throw a wedding for that kid. I hope that’s exactly what I can do,” she concluded.

Bill Clinton, avowed champion of gay people, had virtually killed the same-sex marriage movement.

If anyone missed the meaning of the oblong object that covered the house, the message printed on it informed them what it was: “A Condom to Stop Unsafe Politics: Helms Is Deadlier Than a Virus.” “What does this mean?” an Associated Press reporter superfluously asked Peter Staley. The newspapers quoted him faithfully: “We’re saying if you mess with

By now the American Civil Liberties Union had made a 180-degree turn from the days when it declared that the government was justified in firing homosexuals because they were a threat to the nation’s security.

Probably for the first time in the history of the world, hundreds of lesbians, dressed to the nines, drove up to a posh hotel in their Mercedes and BMWs and Cadillacs, asked the doorman the way to the dining room where a lesbian luncheon was being held, and there joined an overflowing crowd of other affluent lesbians for a public lesbian event whos

April 11–12, 1953, was the first time in America that a hall full of homosexuals came together for political purposes.

Harry Britt, Harvey Milk’s chosen successor, introduced a bill to the board of supervisors that would give health insurance benefits to the live-in partners of city employees. It passed—only to be vetoed by Mayor George Moscone’s successor, Dianne Feinstein, who caved to pressure from San Francisco’s Roman Catholic churches. “To reduce the sacred c

Thompson, tireless and unrelenting, brought her case to the Minnesota Court of Appeals. There her lawyers argued eloquently that it was “astonishing” that a judge would issue an order that would “have the effect of limiting Sharon Kowalski’s contact with Thompson and the love Karen feels for her.” The lawyers demanded to know, “In what moral framew