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Sex, Gender, and the Family

Hugh McLeod

in The Religious Crisis of the 1960s

This chapter discusses the sexual revolution, gay liberation movement, ‘second wave feminism’, and changes in family life that had a significant impact on religion. The 1960s and early 1970s were a ... More

This chapter discusses the sexual revolution, gay liberation movement, ‘second wave feminism’, and changes in family life that had a significant impact on religion. The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of crisis for the churches in most Western countries. Of the changes in this period in the field of sex, gender, and the family, those that had an impact on the largest numbers of people were the increasing focus of life on the home and the nuclear family, the influence of the ‘companionate marriage’ ideal, and the declining importance of the neighbourhood and of customs enforced by pressure from neighbours and extended families. The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements exercised a powerful influence, but on much smaller numbers of people, revolutionizing the thinking of those who joined, becoming for many of them a complete way of life, and often placing attachments to religion or the churches under severe strain.Less

Coming Out and Coming Together: Anglo-American Gay Liberation

in Special Relations: The Americanization of Britain?

This chapter offers a detailed description on Anglo-American Gay Liberation. Gay Liberation was the third of the triad of militant late-1960s movements grounded in the retrieval and affirmation of ... More

This chapter offers a detailed description on Anglo-American Gay Liberation. Gay Liberation was the third of the triad of militant late-1960s movements grounded in the retrieval and affirmation of the self. The challenge to conventional psychological diagnosis and therapy by R. D. Laing was the Anglo-American counterculture's most explicit legacy to the gay movement. The Gay Liberation movement in the States and, recently, in Britain, has attached onto Black Power rhetoric while investigating a separatism that was motivated by the logic of identity politics and a defensive reaction to the prejudice. Gay Lib in London closely covered and replicated tactics and modes of the New York, L.A., and San Francisco movements. It is observed that the reconstruction of the gay self in the late twentieth century was as much a matter of “performance discourse” as manifesto argument and political lobbying.Less

Beyond the Gay Ghetto: Founding Debates in Gay Liberation

Emily K. Hobson

in Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left

Between 1969 and 1973, gay liberationists began to define radical alliances as central to sexual liberation. Gay men drew on Black radicalism, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and other causes to ... More

Between 1969 and 1973, gay liberationists began to define radical alliances as central to sexual liberation. Gay men drew on Black radicalism, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and other causes to analyze anti-gay oppression and to draw analogies between sexuality and race. They pursued solidarity with the Black Panther Party and defined gayness as a means to resist U.S. militarism. They also distinguished leftist gay liberation from a different politics termed gay nationalism, as by opposing a gay nationalist scheme to colonize California's Alpine County — a project gay leftists argued would replicate capitalism, imperialism, and anti-gay oppression. In contrast to such proposals, Bay Area gay radicals organized gay solidarity with a multiracial and socialist left.Less

Gay liberation 1969–73: praxis, protest and performance

Lucy Robinson

in Gay Men and the Left in Post-war Britain: How the Personal Got Political

The history of homosexuality has often presented gay activism as spontaneously erupting in a fit of excitement at the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in New York City was ... More

The history of homosexuality has often presented gay activism as spontaneously erupting in a fit of excitement at the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in New York City was formed in reaction to the Stonewall Riots, but the Front took its political inspiration from the wider counter-culture, feminism, black power and anti-war, anti-psychiatry and free Speech movements. The GLF announced itself through three major campaigns; the defence of Louis Eakes which tackled the legal oppression experienced by lesbians and gay men, demonstrations against the evangelical National Festival of Light which challenged religious oppression and GLF's campaign against Dr Reuben's book Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex but Were to Afraid to Ask, which opposed oppression by medical institutions. It was when the GLF tried to act on the third liberational stage, to Change the World, that it came most directly into conflict with both the existing homosexual reform movement, particularly the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, and the Trotskyite Left.Less

The next big thing: from Gay Left Collective to Greater London Council, paedophile identity and the state of the Left

Lucy Robinson

in Gay Men and the Left in Post-war Britain: How the Personal Got Political

Punk and Rock Against Racism took on the liberation movements' emphasis on culture and lifestyle. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) had not helped to build a world-wide revolution. For all intents and ... More

Punk and Rock Against Racism took on the liberation movements' emphasis on culture and lifestyle. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) had not helped to build a world-wide revolution. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that many of the original aims of gay liberation ‘[could] be gained this side of socialism’. This chapter looks at what gay activists did instead of the third liberational stage. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, post-GLF organisations took on the self-conscious role of discerning ‘what went wrong?’ in the liberation years and what opportunities there were now for gay left politics. Groups such as the Gay Activist Alliance and the Gay Workers Movement continued to work to unite gay activism with the Left, alongside the Gay Left Collective's more theoretical stance. The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) explored the lessons learnt from lesbian and gay politics and tried to relate them to a different, more challenging, sexual identity. Meanwhile, other gay activists edged closer to the mainstream, for example by supporting the Greater London Council.Less

Liberation Porn

Ryan Powell

in Coming Together: The Cinematic Elaboration of Gay Male Life, 1945-1979

This chapter looks at a strand of seventies gay hardcore porn films that operated as a site for gay liberation politics and philosophy. It considers how elements such as music, spatiality, and ... More

This chapter looks at a strand of seventies gay hardcore porn films that operated as a site for gay liberation politics and philosophy. It considers how elements such as music, spatiality, and performance are organized within utopian frameworks meant to elaborate the sociosexual potentials of gay liberation, premised on new ways of situating popular hardcore sex tropes in relation to couple, group and public formation. The chapter shows how hardcore tropes such as the come shot and what Linda Williams has called “maximum visibility” are further mediated to work within a gay liberationist ethos that emphasizes polymorphous perversity, the socializing capacities of non-monogamy, and activities that eschew divisions between public and private space. This chapter also considers how the cinematic spaces of gay hardcore and actual spaces, such as the porn theater and the bathhouse, may operate in homologous relation to one another in how they orchestrate sociosexual activities. It explores Boys in the Sand (1971) within the context of both black power and gay liberation movement activities of the early 1970s, alongside the diptych L.A. Plays Itself/Sex Garage (1972), the agitprop of Jean-Claude Van Itallie’s “The Office” from American Cream (1972), and Joe Gage’s popular “Working Man Trilogy” (1976-79).Less

Limp Wrists and Clenched Fists: Defining a Politics and Hitting the Streets

Emily K. Hobson

in Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left

By the mid 1970s radical gay men were building a gay left and forging alliances with lesbians. They sharpened their politics through socialist feminism and Chilean solidarity, confronted police ... More

By the mid 1970s radical gay men were building a gay left and forging alliances with lesbians. They sharpened their politics through socialist feminism and Chilean solidarity, confronted police brutality, and challenged racism in gay men's life. The organization Bay Area Gay Liberation built grassroots power while the Third World Gay Caucus networked gay and lesbian people of color. While gay and lesbian leftists pursued anti-imperialism over liberal reform, by the late 1970s they also joined strategic left-liberal coalitions against the New Right. Radicals played key roles in defeating the Briggs Initiative's attack on gay and lesbian teachers, and though unable to stop a death penalty measure, evidenced resistance to state violence in the White Night Riots.Less

Visibly Hidden: Postwar Disorientation, Queer Community, and Queer Ambivalence

Vincent L. Stephens

in Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music

This chapter illuminates how Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace achieved mainstream commercial success by discussing the dynamic gender norms of the postwar era. Drawing on Wini ... More

This chapter illuminates how Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace achieved mainstream commercial success by discussing the dynamic gender norms of the postwar era. Drawing on Wini Breines, the chapter frames the era as one of “disorientation”--notably, the outgrowth of gender conformity was pervasive alienation. These tensions generated spaces of gender rebellion that were stigmatized in mainstream media exposés and publicized simultaneously. This visibility reflected a public interest in deviance and helped gay men and lesbians develop an awareness of a community that catalyzed the Homophile and Gay Liberation movements. Parallel to these political movements was a subcultural movement among queer artists in film, literature, and popular music that is discernibly queer yet trafficked in sexual ambiguity at the time.Less

Gay Liberation and The Spirit of ’68

Simon Hall

in Reframing 1968: American Politics, Protest and Identity

This chapter considers the historical significance of 1968 for the gay rights movement in the context of the Stonewall Riots of June 1969. The gay rights movement of the 1970s embodied the animating ... More

This chapter considers the historical significance of 1968 for the gay rights movement in the context of the Stonewall Riots of June 1969. The gay rights movement of the 1970s embodied the animating spirit of late 1960s activism, with its emphasis on the revolutionary potential of personal politics; embrace of direct action and street theatre; commitment to building alternative institutions; and idealistic faith that a more equal world was possible. For a time, gay liberationists echoed the activists of 1968 by denouncing American imperialism and calling for revolution. Yet, within months of the Stonewall riots, such militancy was already on the wane, as groups like the Gay Activists Alliance emerged to lead the fight for full equality and first-class citizenship rights. This more liberal, integrationist stance has, in many ways, come to define the gay rights movement in the years since Stonewall, and helped deliver some of its signature triumphs. As well as charting this post-1968 moment, the chapter also considers those who still hold true to the revolutionary values of 1968.Less

Reporting change: law reform, homosexual identity and the role of counter-culture

Lucy Robinson

in Gay Men and the Left in Post-war Britain: How the Personal Got Political

When the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 partially decriminalised homosexuality, it also exposed the limits of reform. Of all Labour Party's reforms, the decriminalisation of homosexuality was most ... More

When the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 partially decriminalised homosexuality, it also exposed the limits of reform. Of all Labour Party's reforms, the decriminalisation of homosexuality was most clearly not a simple party issue. This chapter focuses on the choices made by homosexual men as new arenas of political and cultural activism instead. It looks through the eyes of a variety of key participants, some of whom experienced at first hand the limits of traditional law reform and party politics: Anthony Grey, Allan Horsfall, George Melly, Colin MacInnes and Ray Gosling. In different ways, all these characters had a lasting impact on gay politics and each is emblematic of the different strands that fed into the gay liberation movement. Through these men's experiences, we can see the pull of single issue identity politics in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the emergence of a counter-culture around events such as the Wholly Communion in 1965 and the Dialectics of Liberation conference in 1967. The counter-culture offered a place for gay men to move away from reformism's apologies and the Left's silences.Less

Founding New Sodom: Radical Gay Communalist Spirituality, 1973–1976

Daniel Rivers

in Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States

This essay looks at the worldview of gay male communalists across the United States in the mid-1970s as seen in the rural gay magazine Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in the critical years from 1973 to ... More

This essay looks at the worldview of gay male communalists across the United States in the mid-1970s as seen in the rural gay magazine Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in the critical years from 1973 to 1976 as well as in other extant archival sources related to gay communalism. As a clearinghouse for gay men involved in radical, back-to-the-land ventures, RFD provides a complex view of the creation of a largely white, gay male counterculture spirituality that fused the sexual politics of early gay liberationists with ecofeminist, animist, New Age understandings of sexuality, the natural world, and spirit. Gay men who were or who wanted to live in communal spaces nationwide sent letters and stories into RFD, which was published in a variety of gay male communal spaces during these years.Less

The Limits of Liberation

Kevin J. Mumford

in "Not Straight, Not White": Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis

In the era of black and gay liberation, activists attempted to forge coalitions that only temporarily provided space for black gay men. The Black Panthers fleetingly supported gay causes while ... More

In the era of black and gay liberation, activists attempted to forge coalitions that only temporarily provided space for black gay men. The Black Panthers fleetingly supported gay causes while relatively few black men joined gay liberation fronts. But the beginnings of a new black gay activism were visible.Less

The Disavowal of Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald

Kevin J. Mumford

in "Not Straight, Not White": Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis

At the intersection of liberation movements of the 1970s, Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald emerged to speak out for gay rights and religious freedom. A member of a Catholic order based in Milwaukee, ... More

At the intersection of liberation movements of the 1970s, Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald emerged to speak out for gay rights and religious freedom. A member of a Catholic order based in Milwaukee, Fitzgerald developed a new literature on sexual minorities for presentation to a leading organization of priests. He also advanced one of the first platforms from which to espouse black gay liberation.Less

Flight Attendants, Women’s Liberation, and Gay Liberation

Phil Tiemeyer

in Plane Queer: "Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants"

Chapter 5 examines the flight attendant corps of the 1970s, when the profession became more attuned to both women’s liberation and gay liberation. This chapter examines how women and gays ... More

Chapter 5 examines the flight attendant corps of the 1970s, when the profession became more attuned to both women’s liberation and gay liberation. This chapter examines how women and gays cooperated—and sometimes fought—in both the workplace and the union hall to find common ground that respected all employees. I link these developments with the backlash against a feminist, pro-gay ethic, whether that backlash came from airline executives or larger conservative social movements. These increasingly severe skirmishes in the culture wars also influenced the legal legacy of Diaz v. Pan Am, as conservatives continued to portray women’s rights initiatives like the Equal Rights Amendment as backdoor pathways for queers to gain equal rights.Less

Homosociality, “Human Contact,” and the Specter of the Arab Man in the Post-’68 French Gay World

Todd Shepard

in Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962-1979

This chapter explores how gay male discussions outside of the FHAR, most of which took place after the sharp rise and quick fade of radical gay liberation in France, continued to include a lot of ... More

This chapter explores how gay male discussions outside of the FHAR, most of which took place after the sharp rise and quick fade of radical gay liberation in France, continued to include a lot of Arab men and why this sex talk mattered. Other perspectives also appear, offered by individuals who kept the issue of homosexuality alive while declining to identify as gay. Maghrebi (male) commentators and authors were the most significant. Their interest in “gay male” sex talk about Arab men challenged claims from gay observers even as it also suggested the importance of the topic. By the late 1970s, such tensions between explicitly “gay” and “Arab” depictions and explanations provoked a sharp division between some of the most audible gay voices, including celebrations and critiques of the emerging gay world and its relationship to the larger “hetero” world.Less

Out of the Closets, into the Woods: the Post-Stonewall Emergence of Queer Anti-Urbanism

Scott Herring

in West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977

RFD quarterly (once referred to as “Rural Fairy Digest”) was one of the first queer journals to extend the non-normative intersectional politics of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) to nonmetropolitan ... More

RFD quarterly (once referred to as “Rural Fairy Digest”) was one of the first queer journals to extend the non-normative intersectional politics of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) to nonmetropolitan U.S. audiences. This chapter extends recent historical scholarship on 1970s lesbian and gay US print cultures to analyze the anti-urban politics of RFD’s early stylistics. It offers an aesthetic archaeology of what one initial contributor, Donald Engstrom, later termed RFD’s “separatist fag community,” and what one historian of regional US cultures, James T. Sears, sees as the quarterly’s “anarcho-effeminism.” Extending their findings, the chapter explores how a particular version of gay male urbanity began to reprint itself as a normalizing print style in 1970s glossy magazines, and how RFD, alongside rural feminist journal Country Women, responded to this historical packaging with oppositional stylistics of its own.Less