Identities and Politics, Toward A Historical Undersanding of The Lesbian and Gay Movent

ldentities and Politics: Toward a Historical Understanding
of the Lesbian and Gay Movement

Mary Bernstein
Social Science History, Volume 26, Number 3, Fall 2002, pp. 531-581
(Article)
Published by Duke University Press
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Mary Bernstein
Identities and Politics
Toward a Historical Understanding of the
Lesbian and Gay Movement
Critics of identity politics often wax polemically as they charge contemporary
social movements with narrowly and naively engaging in essentialist politics
based on perceived dierences from the majority. Such essentialism, critics
charge, inhibits coalition building (e.g., Phelan 1993; Kimmel 1993), cannot
produce meaningful social change, and reinforces hegemonic and restrictive
social categories (Seidman 1997). It is even responsible for the decline of the
Left (Gitlin 1994, 1995). Social movement scholars similarly view identity
Social Science History 26:3 (fall 2002).
Copyright 2002 by the Social Science History Association.
532 Social Science History
movements as cultural rather than political movements whose goals, strate-
gies, and forms of mobilization can be explained better by a reliance on static
notions of identity than by other factors.
In this article, I use the national state-oriented lesbian and gay movement
as a case study to challenge the dichotomy, dominant in the social movement
literature, betweencultural andpolitical movements.
1
I integrate political pro-
cess and identity theory to create a political identity approach to social
movements, which shows that the lesbian and gay movement alternately and
even simultaneously emphasizes both political and cultural goals. I argue that
structural and contextual factors, rather than an essentialist view of identity,
account for a movements emphasis on cultural and political change. Draw-
ing on primary documents and key informant interviews, as well as secondary
sources, I showthat the materialist practices of the lesbian and gay movement
do not support the critique of identity politics.
The Critique of Identity Politics
Identity politics, to both critics and defenders, refers to politics based on es-
sentialist or xed notions of identity. In the case of lesbians and gay men,
homosexuality is seen as xed, whether it is conceived of as a result of nature
(genes, hormones, etc.) or of nurtureetched indelibly in early childhood so-
cialization resulting in a unitary identity that cannot be altered. Defenders
view identity politics as a strategy necessary to obtain liberal political goals of
freedom and equal opportunity in order to gain entry into the political main-
stream on the same level as other groups, without altering the structures of
society (Sullivan 1997). Critics of identity politics, by contrast, see the result
of embracing an essentialist identity as a limited and awed politics because it
relies on claims to a racial- or ethnic-like minority status (Altman 1982; Paul
1982; Escoer 1985; Epstein 1987, 1999; Seidman 1993; Gamson 1995; Vaid
1995). Despite these contrasting views, neither side explains why activists at
times embrace or at times fail to embrace such politics.
Critics from the Left as well as social movement scholars level two broad
categories of criticism at identity politics. First, they attribute the failure to
articulate a universal vision for social change to a reliance on xed identity
categories. Because identity groups tend to splinter into ever more narrow
categories, they cannot agree on or sustain anything but an opposition to
A Historical Understanding of the Lesbian and Gay Movement 533
a common enemythe omnipotent white, heterosexual male. By targeting
white heterosexual men, identity politics leaves no space for them to partici-
pate politically, resulting in an unproductive defensiveness (Kauman 1990).
Such politics leads to an inability to formcoalitions that could agitate for pro-
gressive or revolutionary social change (Gitlin 1994, 1995; Lehr 1999).
This critique, however, falsely attributes causality to the reliance on xed
identity. Instead, it is the failure to articulate a shared vision of social change
that included, for example, heterosexual women, gays, and lesbians that in-
spired the fragmentation of the Left. Feminists and other commentators have
shown the limits of Marxist and even neo-Marxist thought to adequately con-
ceptualize or simplyaddress discriminationbasedongender (e.g., Jaggar 1983;
Tong 1989) or sexual orientation (Padgug 1989). Furthermore, as the discus-
sion below illustrates, when lesbian and gay activists eschewed xed identity
categories, other oppressed groups still refused to work with them politically.
Until the stigma associated with homosexuality lessened, alliances would not
be possible. And nally, even when activists relied on xed identities, coali-
tions with other groups nonetheless formed.
The second broad criticism leveled at identity politics is that such poli-
tics cannot produce meaningful social change. Unfortunately, what consti-
tutes meaningful change depends on whom one asks. Some indict identity
movements for mistaking symbolic or cultural concessions for programmatic
change, whereas others charge that the focus on narrow minority-based po-
litical rights will result only in virtual equality (Vaid 1995) rather than in
transformative cultural change (i.e., that identity movements reinforce rather
than challenge dominant cultural norms).
2
On one hand, it seems, then, that
if identity movements seek programmatic change, they are apoliticalmis-
taking new laws and policies for lasting cultural change. On the other hand,
activists who seek cultural transformation are charged with mistaking sym-
bolic concessions for real change (Bronner 1992). Identity politics becomes
apolitical because it devolves into a politics of consumption, so that protest
becomes commodied as a t-shirt or ribbon to be purchased and worn. Life-
style or consumerism rather than political change becomes the goal (Evans
1993; Kauman 1990; Hennessy 1993).
The extent to which the lesbian and gay movement has created reformist
or revolutionary change remains a legitimate question. Its gains can largely be
classied within a liberal framework of rights that, to many, is sucient (e.g.,
Sullivan 1997; Bawer 1996). But even achieving a more progressive or radical
political agenda that recognizes same-sex desire would require some freedom
from state harassment achieved through the extension of rights. The political
and cultural implications of agitating for formal legal equality vary over time,
sometimes presenting challenges to dominant constructions of masculinity,
femininity, and sexuality and at other times suppressing the critical (cul-
tural) challenge of homosexuality.The lesbianandgay movement has battled
for political and cultural change, and the role of identities within that pursuit
has changed considerably over time.
Social Movement Theory and the
Construction of Culture and Politics
Part of the confusionover what constitutes real change arises fromthe prob-
lematic dichotomy between cultural and political, which is reected in
debates between new social movement and identity theorists (Touraine 1981;
Kriesi et al. 1995; Cohen 1985; Melucci 1985, 1989) on the one hand and re-
source mobilization (RM) (e.g., McCarthy and Zald 1977), political opportu-
nity (PO) (GamsonandMeyer 1996; Kitschelt 1986; Tarrow1988, 1993, 1998),
and political process (PP/PO) theorists (McAdam1982) on the other. Identity
movements are considered new social movements (NSM) in contrast
to the labor movement, which was the paradigmatic old social move-
ment, and to Marxism and socialism, which asserted that class was the
central issue in politics and that a single political economic transforma-
tion would solve the whole range of social ills. . . . The backdrop to the
idea of NSMs, thus, is the notion that labor struggles had an implicit
telos and were potentially transformative for the whole society. (Calhoun
1995: 173)
NSMs are said to dier from past movements in issues, tactics, and con-
stituencies (ibid.: 174). Such movements are conceptualized as internally
directed movements aimed at self-transformation that engage in expres-
sive action aimed at reproducing the identity on which the movement is
based (Duyvendak 1995; Duyvendak and Giugni 1995). According to Alberto
Melucci, NSMs ght for symbolic and cultural stakes (Melucci 1985: 798).
The mediumis the message (ibid.: 816; Duyvendak and Giugni 1995: 8485).
The contention that identity movements detract from the creation of a com-
mon good and thus cannot create meaningful social change is partly rooted
in this idealized vision of past movements.
Unfortunately, the portrait of past social movements promulgated by
NSM theorists not only caricatures and misrepresents the labor movement
but makes historically inaccurate claims that NSMs address fundamentally
new issues, tactics, and constituencies. Craig Calhoun illustrates that move-
ments of the nineteenth century shared many of the characteristics said to
be unique to NSMs (Calhoun 1995; see also Pichardo 1997: 418) and, con-
versely, that the labor movement shared manyof the same concerns with iden-
tity as NSMs. Nelson Pichardo also contends that contemporary NSMs do
not always exhibit the unique features attributed to them and thus are not
distinct (Pichardo 1997).
Despite these problems with the NSM perspective, RM and PP/PO
theories replicate similar divisions between culture and politics, albeit in more
subtle ways. In the view of RM and PP/PO, social movements engage in
instrumental action aimed at gaining new benets or recognition through
achieving changes in laws or policies (Tilly 1978; McAdam 1982; Gamson
1990). According to David Meyer (1999: 86), the extent towhich political pro-
cess theory can explain other sorts of movements including apolitical or cul-
tural movements is unclear because PP/POtheory explicitlyaddresses only
movements that make explicit political claims (see also Gamson and Meyer
1996: 277). Early attempts to bring culture back in to the study of social
movements examine movement culture, rather than movement attempts to
inuence the broader culture (e.g., Larana et al. 1994). Thus NSM, PP/PO
and RM theories characterize movements in essentialist terms, as expressive
or instrumental, cultural or political (Bernstein 1997a).
Several recent studies argue that cultural movements and strategies
should also be considered political (e.g., Katzenstein 1998; Taylor and Rae-
burn1995). Others emphasize the relationshipbetweencollective identityand
political conditions (Bernstein 1997a; Rupp and Taylor 1990; Whittier 1995;
Valocchi 1999; Robnett 1997). More explicitly, I seek to understand the mul-
tiple roles that identity plays in social movements, why activists alternately
emphasize cultural and political goals, and howthose strategies are inter-
related.
Whether or not activism is dened as political is a cultural construct that
changes over time. Activists sometimes challenge the division between politi-
cal and cultural, for example, when feminists claimpolitical meaning for what
is often viewed as cultural or personal behavior. Because these categories still
inform activist thinking, I continue to use these two separate terms. I dene
cultural change as transformations in the practices, norms, and values of the
dominant culture and political change, following William Gamson (1990), as
newadvantages (changes in laws or policies that benet the constituency) and
acceptance of the social movement organizationbyauthorities. For the lesbian
and gay movement, then, cultural goals include (but are not limited to) chal-
lenging dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity, homophobia,
and the primacy of the gendered heterosexual nuclear family (heteronorma-
tivity). Political goals include changing laws and policies in order to gain new
rights, benets, and protections from harm. Although I use the concepts cul-
tural and political, I underscore that activists seek both types of goals in both
the civil and political spheres.
Through an examination of the history of the national, state-oriented
lesbian and gay movement, this article adds to the literature on social move-
ments in twoways. First, it reveals that this movement incorporates aspects of
both identity and non-identity movements. Thus I suggest that theorists
abandon the dichotomy between political and cultural movements. Second,
this work shows that the relative emphasis on political and cultural strate-
gies in so-called identity movements is not the result of internal or essen-
tialist features of movements but of social networks, resources, and political
conditions. Thus what I call identity strategies should be considered one
aspect of a movements strategic repertoire (Tilly 1978, 1993; Tarrow 1993)
but only one aspect. Despite the unfortunate moniker identity movements,
such movements do not always engage in identity or expressive politics.
As Craig Calhoun (1993: 387) argues, States are institutionally organized in
ways that provide recognition for some identities and arenas for some con-
icts and freeze others out. States themselves thus shape the orientations of
NSMs as well as the eld of social movements more generally. As access to
the structure of political bargaining ebbs and ows, so too does the poten-
tial for coalition building and the focus on identity strategies. Although this
article does not address the broader macrohistorical shifts inrepertoires (Tilly
1978, 1993; Tarrow1993, 1998), it does examine the important issue of strategy
shifts over 50 years and the implications those changes have for a broader
understanding of politics, including politics loosely based on identities.
Recent research on the national lesbian and gay movement (e.g., Bull and
Gallagher 1996; Clendinen and Nagourney 1999) is impressive in scope but
does not systematically analyze the role of identity within the lesbian and gay
movement or the movements development over time (see Murray 1999 on the
latter). Steven Epsteins excellent account (1999) of the U.S. lesbian and gay
movement does not examine the relationship between dierent conceptions
of identity and political strategies, coalition-building, and political/cultural
change. Instead, he focuses on how resolving certain debates inuences les-
bian and gay politics (ibid.: 3233). Epstein and I concur over the centrality
of these debates for lesbian and gay politics (as he acknowledges [ibid.: 77]),
but the analysis that follows focuses less on these debates and more on under-
standing the ways in which movement strategies and goals are formed inter-
actively with the state and other institutions and howthe cultural and political
meaning of various strategies and goals changes over time.
This article integrates political process (McAdam 1982) and political op-
portunity perspectives focus on the external environment with new social
movement theorys emphasis on identityand culture to create a political iden-
tity approach to social movements. From the political process and political
opportunity perspectives I determine the key elements of the political envi-
ronment to include (Kitschelt 1986; Tarrow1993; Kriesi et al. 1995) long-term
shifts in national coalitions (Tilly 1978) as well as short- and medium-term
volatile (Gamson and Meyer 1996) political changes, including variations
in ruling alignments, the opening of access to participation, and the avail-
ability of inuential allies and cleavages among elites (Tarrow 1998; Kriesi
et al. 1995). Drawing on identity theory, I contend that challenging culture is
as important a goal of social movements as changing laws and politics but that
political and cultural goals are not mutually exclusive. I argue that available
resources, social networks, and external political conditions are better able to
explain a movements emphasis on political or cultural strategies and goals
than is a reliance on a xed notion of identity.
The history I describe herein is based on published accounts of the les-
bian and gay movement, the New York Times and Readers Guide indexes be-
tween 1965 and 1995, the newsletters of the national lesbian and gay organiza-
tions Lambda Legal Defense and EducationFund (Lambda) and the National
Gay and Lesbian Task Force (formerly the National Gay Task Force), the
SexuaLawReporter and Lesbian and Gay Law Notes (two legal periodicals, the
former published by the nonprot Sexual Law Reporter, the latter by the
Lesbian and Gay Law Association of Greater New York [LeGal]), and ma-
terials held by the Cornell University Human Sexuality Collection.
3
I also
conducted interviews with several key informants to supplement the archival
research. By bringing new sources to light, this article highlights a tradition-
ally marginalized area of history, so that the role of identities in politics and
the relationship between cultural and political strategies can be better under-
stood.
I discuss four periods of lesbian and gay activism, 194064, 196577,
197786, and 19862000. Any periodization is necessarily arbitrary and is
useful only for heuristic purposes. These years should not be considered
xed dates, but they are helpful in delimiting shifts in strategy, discourse,
and opposition because the seeds of one time period can be found at its bound-
ary with the previous time period. These dates also correspond to major court
decisions whose far-reaching impact echoed throughout national, state, and
local activist circles (Bernstein 1997b). I characterize each period by the pre-
dominant forms of mobilization, activist strategies, and issues targeted while
acknowledging that multiple strategies were employed concurrently. I also
trace attempts to formnational lesbianandgay political organizations. Finally,
I examine the national lesbian and gay response to the Religious Right and
howthose responses refract back on organizational development and strategy
choices within state and local lesbian and gay movements. The history of the
lesbian and gay movement I present provides the context in which to situate
case studies of local lesbian and gay politics.
Whats in an Identity?
The concept identity has generated volumes of literature by philosophers,
psychoanalytic theorists, social constructionists, and postmodernists, among
others. Theories abound, for example, about how both groups and individu-
als construct their identities and how those constructions change over time,
about the extent towhich internal and external material and ideological forces
inuence the creation and perception of identities, how collective identity is
created and maintained (e.g., Nagel 1994; Taylor and Whittier 1992), and the
degree to which personal identity, including gender identity, represents or
reects the interior self (e.g., Butler 1990; see generally Calhoun 1994).
Reviewing all theories of identity is beyond the scope of this article. In-
stead, I lay out some general parameters for understanding the concept iden-
tity as it relates to social movements and has been used in the social move-
ment literature (Bernstein 1997a). Identity movements have been dened
as much by the goals they seek, and the strategies they use, as by the fact that
they are based on a shared characteristic such as ethnicity or sex (ibid.: 533).
Because movement theorists use the term identity in a variety of conicting
ways in order to distinguish nonidentity from identity movements, im-
portant distinctions in meaning have been lost. The purpose of the following
framework is to untangle those levels of analysis so that instead of distinguish-
ing in an a priori way between identity and nonidentity movements, the
ways that identity gures into all social movements can be better understood.
Identity ts into social movements in multiple ways that go beyond
whether or not movements rely on a xed identity. Elsewhere I argue that
the social movement literature conates what I call identity for empowerment
and identity as a goal and suggest a third use of the term identityidentity as
strategy (Bernstein 1997a). In order to mobilize a constituency, a social move-
ment must drawon an existing identity or construct a newcollective identity,
known as identity for empowerment. The Civil Rights movement drew on a
black identity, whereas the labor movement had to create a workers identity in
order to mobilize (Calhoun 1993). Identity may also be a goal of social move-
ments, as activists challenge stigmatized identities, seek recognition for new
identities, or deconstruct restrictive social categories (Bernstein 1997a: 537).
The labor movement may seek protection for the rights of workers (once
a novel category), just as lesbian and gay activists may seek protection from
discrimination based on sexual orientation. Identity is also a goal of queer
activists as they seek to break downdivisions betweensexual categories (Gam-
son 1995; Epstein 1999).
Finally, identity may be used as a strategy so that the identities of ac-
tiviststheir values, categories, and practicesbecome the subject of de-
bate. Identities may be deployed strategically to criticize dominant categories,
values, and practices ( for critique) or to put forth a view of the minority that
challenges dominant perceptions ( for education). Such identities can be used
to stress similarities with the majority for the purposes of education or to
stress dierences from the majority for the purposes of cultural critique. For
example, in advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, femi-
nists deployed identity for education to emphasize their similarities to men in
order to justify equal treatment under the law(Mansbridge 1986). In the early
1900s, by contrast, women deployed identity for critique to argue that their
(alleged) dierences from menthat they were more caring, for example
justied extending surage towomen. At other times, women and lesbian and
gay activists advocated for antidiscrimination legislation by appealing to ab-
stract principles, such as the unfairness of discrimination, rather than making
the content of their identities subject to debate. Breaking identity into these
separate parts makes it possible for debates on the ecacy or advisability of
identity politics to become less polemical andmore analytical, as we sort out
the relationship between identity and the political environment and how that
aects whether activists pursue political or cultural change. Understood using
these conceptual tools, identity politics can be conceived of as multidimen-
sional, complex, and uid, and the roles identity plays in all social movements
can be better understood.
Homophile Politics, 194064
Between 1940 and 1964, state policies used against lesbians and gay men de-
marcated themas a group facing a hostile political climate and, although they
responded in various ways to discrimination, public protests were not yet
a part of the lesbian and gay political repertoire. The sodomy statutes that
prohibited anal intercourse in private between consenting adults were often
interpreted to prohibit any oral-genital contact, whether between same- or
dierent-sex couples, married or not (Apasu-Gbotsu et al. 1986). Although
the sodomy statutes prohibited sexual acts between dierent-sex couples,
they provided a convenient basis for state control of homosexuals (Copelon
1998; Cain 1993).
4
For example, police routinely raided gay bars and tar-
geted gay male cruising places in order to arrest lesbians and gay men for
solicitation and loitering with the intent to commit the illegal act of sodomy
(Barnett and Warner 1971; Gerassi 1966). Most arrests of homosexuals came
from solicitation, disorderly conduct, and loitering laws, which were based
on the assumption that homosexuals (unlike heterosexuals), by denition,
were people who engaged in illicit activity.
5
Bars could lose their liquor li-
censes for catering to known homosexuals (Leonard 1993). Senator Joseph
McCarthy scapegoated homosexuals for foreign policy failures and blamed
them for scandals within the State Department ( Johnson 199495). Homo-
sexuals were considered sinners by most, if not all, religious denominations,
and the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexualitya mental
disorder (Bayer 1987).
During this repressive time, lesbian and gay activism was marked by as-
similation and quiescence.
6
The predominant lesbian and gay organizations,
the Mattachine Societyandthe Daughters of Bilitis, focusedprimarilyonself-
help issues and did not launch political challenges. Instead, homophile activ-
ists tried to persuade psychological and religious authorities (and themselves)
that homosexuality is neither a sickness nor a sin, in the hope that these pro-
fessionals would then advocate for tolerance on behalf of homosexuals (Licata
1980/81; DEmilio 1983). Few demands for change were placed on the state,
though by the mid-1960s, local political challenges were becoming more com-
monplace.
By contrast, ONE magazine, an oshoot of the Mattachine Society,
maintained the then-controversial (even among homosexuals) belief that
homosexuals, not psychiatrists or religious authorities, were the experts
on homosexuality. The monthly magazine provided an alternative view of
homosexuality but was not involved in political organizing (DEmilio 1983).
The legal strictures against homosexuals meant that lesbians and gay
men inevitably ran afoul of the law. At times, mere survival required public
activism. For example, when ONE magazine was seized as pornography by
the U.S. Post Oce in 1954, ONE led suit in federal court and won. In an-
other case, a gay man arrested for lewd behavior in a public park admitted he
was gay and charged the Los Angeles police with entrapment (Cain 1993).
The sodomy and various solicitation laws, as well as prohibitive liquor licens-
ing regulations, meant that homosexuals could not lawfully gather in order
to organize politically or to meet socially. Increasingly throughout the 1960s,
bar owners challenged state liquor authorities and won (Stoumen v. Reilly, 37
Cal. 2d 713 [1951]; Leonard 1993; GAA1971a, 1971b). But these changes were
piecemeal, as there was no coordinated eort to pursue political change on
behalf of homosexuals.
Although some early homophile leaders felt homosexuality was a unique
characteristic that set themapart fromthe heterosexual majority, most wanted
to prove that they were, in fact, no dierent from the majority in any socially
important respect. Most understood their identity as xed, whether or not
it was seen as socially meaningful. But regardless of how homosexuals de-
ned their identity, the state dened them as criminal. Political organizing
of any sort by homosexuals was precarious at best, as activists risked loss of
jobs or homes, attack on the street, and, of course, imprisonment. Beyond
seeking pity or toleration from professionals, coalition-building and expres-
sive political action were out of the question, as mere survival ruled the day.
In the absence of legal space in which to exist, whether or not homosexu-
ality was a xed category was irrelevant. The idea that homosexuality might
be mutable was taken as evidence that homosexuality was a psychiatric dis-
order best treated by medical professionals (American Law Institute 1980).
The potential for homosexual identities to challenge dominant norms, values,
and practices lay in asserting the positive nature of homosexuality, not in de-
constructing it. Thus homosexuals stressed their similarities to the majority,
deploying identity for education, to show that they were upstanding citizens
despite their homosexual aiction and to limit state action against them. At
this historical juncture, reproducing dichotomous identity categories made
sense strategically and profoundly challenged dominant constructions of the
normal.
Paths to Visibility, 196577
Grassroots organizations proliferated as lesbians and gay men were embold-
ened by the sexual revolution of the 1960s and inspired by other political
movements of the day to engage in more visible and daring tactics (Epstein
1999; Marotta 1981; DEmilio 1983; Valocchi 1999; Weeks 1989). In 1965, les-
bian and gay activists engaged in their rst public protests in Washington,
D.C., and Philadelphia (Murray 1996: 60). Although leaders diered in the
extent to which they emphasized cultural over political change, they were
clear that to gain either, they needed to generate publicity by creating a po-
litical movement.
Invoking opposing constructions of lesbian and gay identity, some gay
activists demanded entrance into mainstream institutions, while gay libera-
tionists opposed those same institutions. Demands for institutional access
were coupled with a xed understanding of lesbian and gay identity, while
opponents of those institutions sought alliances across identities through
questioning the integrity of lesbian and gay identities. In contrast to the cri-
tique of identity politics, seeking concrete political gains helped transform
culture, while abandoning a xed notion of lesbian and gay identity did not
produce meaningful coalitions.
In 1961, the Mattachine Society dissolved its national structure, paving
the way for local chapters to introduce new strategies and goals. Departing
from the earlier homophile tradition, the Mattachine Society of Washington,
D.C. (MSW), recast homosexuality as a positive, empowering but nonethe-
less essentialist identity. The MSW contended that gays, not psychiatrists or
religious authorities, were the experts on homosexuality ( Johnson 199495),
laying the groundwork for mobilization eorts.
Made up primarily of federal government employees, the MSW was
uniquely situated to break with the cautious homophile tradition by making
demands onthe state. Many gay meninWashington, including MSWfounder
Franklin Kameny (see Marcus 1992), had been victims of military and U.S.
Civil Service Commission policies, which made immoral conduct (i.e.,
homosexuality) grounds for dismissal. Others feared job loss, should their
secret be discovered. Gay military employees could be denied security clear-
ances or simply red. The government dened homosexuals as a group and,
as a group, they responded.
Like earlier homophile organizations, the MSW continued to seek re-
dress from the courts but in this phase used other political tactics as well.
Dismissedfromgovernment jobs for charges relating to homosexuality, Bruce
Scott and Cliord Norton sued for reinstatement, and their cases were shep-
herded through the courts by Kameny, the MSW, and the National Capital
Area Civil Liberties Union ( Johnson 199495). While Scotts case was being
litigated in 1965, the MSW requested an audience with U.S. Civil Service
Commission chairman John Macy. Macy snubbed the MSW. Homosexuals
responded by staging a picket outside the commission to express their dis-
pleasure. Later that year, Bruce Scott won in the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit (Scott v. Macy, 349 F.2d 182 [1965]) and the
MSWwas granted a meeting with commission representatives. In 1969, Nor-
tons case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit, which ruled that, in order to justify dismissal, the commission must
show a rational nexus between o-duty behavior and job performance (Nor-
ton v. Macy, 417 F.2d 1161 [1969]; DEmilio 1983; Cain 1993). In 1973, the
commission stated that dismissal for o-duty conduct was permissible only
if evidence showed it aected job performance. Finally in 1975, new com-
mission regulations omitted the term immoral conduct from its employment
guidelines ( Johnson 199495).
Whether or not activists would have chosen to rally around a xed notion
of identity was moot, as this aspect of their identity/behavior was dened as
criminal, and as sucient grounds for dismissal. The concentration of (white)
gay men (few lesbians were involved) in Washington, D.C., who feared the
governments draconian employment practices, provided fertile ground for
mobilization.
7
The common threat helped MSW leaders to cultivate a politi-
cal consciousness among manyWashington homosexuals.The MSWpursued
a public, political agenda through litigation and public pressure. Because the
MSWs local battle challenged federal policies, their eorts had national im-
pact as states looked to the federal government for guidance in their employ-
ment policies. Divisions among lesbian and gay activists based on racial iden-
tities was unlikely at this historical juncture because few heterosexual people
of color, let alone gays of color, had access to these important federal jobs (e.g.,
Wilson 1978). By casting homosexuality in a positive light, the MSW chal-
lenged dominant cultural norms, despite the fact that homosexuality was not
considered a dening trait with transformative potential.
The MSWs moderate program for political reform centered on gaining
access to existing institutions, not changing them. In the context of the stu-
dent and nascent antiwar movements of the 1960s, wanting access to military
jobs seemed quite mainstream. Organizations in cities across the country also
began to pursue a political agenda as young activists, inuenced by the radi-
cal movements of the 1960s, joined older homophile organizations and new
organizations emerged. Often glaring incidents of police abuse and inequality
triggered the growth of new organizations and the use of more radical tactics
(Murray 1996: 6065). Activists pressed for an end to entrapment and police
harassment. In the late 1960s, marches took place in California to protest the
states sodomy statute (Los Angeles Advocate 1969) as well as private and pub-
lic employment discrimination. The Stonewall riots of June 1969 (Duberman
1993) were at the time but one in a series of uprisings (Murray 1996: 61).
Younger activists and a few elders tried to push the established groups in a
more radical (i.e., public) direction. In New York City, for example, younger
activists wanted the Mattachine Society to advertise its meetings in order to
gain new members (Marotta 1981). Activists also began pushing city govern-
ment agencies to investigate employment discrimination and to stop police
entrapment.
Considerable regional variation in tactics existed across local lesbian and
gay movements in the United States during this period as well. In places such
as Seattle, where organizations such as the Dorian group had gained com-
munity respect through business contacts (e.g., Marcus 1992: 305; Clendinen
and Nagourney 1999), tactics were moderate. Where access to the polity was
limited, however, activists became more militant, as in NewYork City (Bern-
stein 1997a).
The clashes over appropriate goals and tactics became more pronounced
in the mid-1960s and were particularly apparent in the rst national les-
bian and gay political coalitions, the East Coast Homophile Organizations
formed in 1963 and the North American Conference of Homophile Orga-
nizations (NACHO) formed in 1966 (DEmilio 1983). According to one ob-
server, NACHO has always been riddled with strife, threats of withdrawals,
walkouts, and vituperation (Donaldson 1969). At least three distinct view-
points emerged in the clashes within NACHO. Struggles took place be-
tween members of older organizations who continued to advocate educa-
tional tactics and newer organizations whose members championed militancy.
More established organizations wanted the continued support of sympathetic
heterosexuals, while newer groups advocated separatism (Wade and Cer-
vantes, c. 1970).
8
Main areas of conict included whether NACHO should
support other groups, such as the Black Panthers, or other causes, such as
womens liberation (Cole 1970). This single/multi-issue split recurs through-
out the history of the U.S. lesbian and gay movement (Epstein 1999; Murray
1996). Divisions also existed over whether NACHO should be exclusively
political in nature (including public education) or should also include social
organizations that focused on self-help and counseling issues. Radicals con-
sidered seeking the attainment of minor concessions from the existing politi-
cal structure to be an implicit acceptance of a awed regime; eorts would
be better spent allying with racially and ethnically based revolutionary lib-
erationist movements. The national movement quickly crumbled when faced
with such divergent interests (Los Angeles Advocate 1970; Licata 1980/81;
DEmilio 1983).
Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of Herbert Marcuse, gay lib-
erationists eschewed the idea that homosexuality is a xed identity and
sought alliances with other oppressed peoples. Liberationist ideology held
that humans are innately bisexual and therefore the movement should try to
free the bisexual within (Valocchi 1999). Despite this appeal to a common
humanity, liberationists attempts to ally themselves with people of color and
white women were rebuked. The Civil Rights movement had had a long his-
tory of sweeping homosexual issues under the rug. In a more blatant example
of discrimination, civil rights leaders forbade activist and homosexual Bayard
Rustin from speaking at the 1963 March on Washington, which he had orga-
nized, for fear that his homosexuality would discredit the movement (Bennett
and Battle 2001). Experiences with the Black Panther Party were mixed. Gay
activists tried to support the Panther cause but were alternately snubbed and
acknowledged. Similarly, lesbians involved in the womens movement found
that their concerns were systematically silenced (Teal 1971; Clendinen and
Nagourney 1999). Put simply, liberationists lack of adherence to a xed les-
bian and gay identity did not guarantee coalition building.
Alliances between lesbians and gay men also were fragile. Lesbians often
found gay men to be as sexist as heterosexual men and feminist issues to be
belittled or ignored (Clendinen and Nagourney 1999). Many lesbian femi-
nists withdrew from both the gay movement and the womens movement to
form separatist lesbian feminist organizations and communities. Politically,
these groups tended to focus on womens issues rather than on issues specic
to lesbians. They created battered womens shelters and rape crisis centers,
held self-defense workshops, and created an infrastructure of lesbian feminist
cultural events (Echols 1989; Whittier 1995). The degree to which mens and
womens communities were separate varied considerably according to time
and place (e.g., Bernstein 2002).
Gay liberationists abandoned a xed notion of a gay identity and actively
sought allegiances with womens groups and racially based organizations. Yet
the fusion of an unspoken, assumed heterosexual identity with a black,
womans, or Leftist identity precluded the types of alliances gay libera-
tionists sought. The fragmentation of the Left was not the result of xed les-
bian and gay (and white female and black) identities but rather the failure to
articulate a broad political agenda across the lines of race, gender, and sexual
orientation. Thus exclusion from other social movements propelled lesbians
and gay men toward claiming dened identities.
But in order to pursue political and cultural change based on a bounded
lesbian and gay identity, activists still had to contend with psychological and
legal authorities who dened them as either pathological or criminal. For ex-
ample, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) conrmed the laymans
view that lesbian and gay sexuality is sick by classifying homosexuality as
a mental disorder. Lesbian and gay liberation groups and lesbian and gay
psychiatrists challenged the authority of the sickness paradigm in the 1970s
(Marcus 1992: 21327). Protest movement pressure and contradictions in the
mounting psychiatric evidence, as well as dated assumptions about homo-
sexuality as sickness, led the APA to its landmark 1973 decision to remove
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders (Bayer 1987). Fighting the
APA helped solidify a politics based on a xed lesbian and gay identity.
Political conditions continued to vary across the states and even across
cities within the same state. Early forays into the political arena were usually
repelled, as candidates surveys by lesbian and gayactivists were ignored (e.g.,
The Advocate 1970), although in some locales, prior activism had gained the
attention of candidates who, at least, responded to lesbian and gay inquiries
( Johnson 199495). Nonetheless, lesbians and gay men became increasingly
important political constituencies. Frank Kameny ran for oce in Washing-
ton, D.C., in 1971, and in 1974, out-lesbian Elaine Noble was elected as a state
representative from Boston, while Minnesota state senator Allan Spear, al-
thoughcloseted during his campaignand early years inoce, came out (Clen-
dinen and Nagourney 1999: 10924, 22124, 23435). In other local races,
lesbian and gay activists provided the crucial margin for political victory of
gay-supportive candidates. Throughout the early 1970s, lesbians and gay men
slowly became a nationally recognized political constituency. In Pennsylvania
in 1975 and Oregon in 1976, activists successfully persuaded the governors
of those states to appoint task forces to study antilesbian/gay discrimination
(Coleman 1977). Although the issue was important in the McGovern presi-
dential campaign in 1972 (Clendinen and Nagourney 1999: 13247), signi-
cant federal political access would not occur until Jimmy Carters presidential
campaign and election in 1976. Despite being located squarely within main-
streampolitics, these out-lesbian and gayelected ocials and organizers radi-
cally challenged dominant cultural norms as they increased the visibility of
lesbians and gay men.
Lesbian and gay activists also had to win the legal right to formorganiza-
tions and work to protect themselves fromdiscrimination. Student groups, in
places as diverse as New Hampshire and Missouri (see Gay Lib v. University
of Missouri, 558 F.2d 848 [8th Cir. 1977], in Rubenstein 1993), sued their uni-
versities for ocial recognition and funding. Political organizations, such as
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Gay Activists Alliance
in NewYork City, went to court for the right to incorporate (GAA 1972; Cain
1993). Lesbian and gay activists fought to add sexual orientation to local
andstate humanrights ordinances, whichtypically protectedpeople fromdis-
crimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations, based on
characteristics such as race, sex, national origin, and religion. Through the
1970s, more than 30 cities and counties added sexual orientation to these laws
(Button et al. 1997).
Though both legallyand symbolically important, sodomy-lawrepeal was
a low-prole issue because many states were repealing their laws as part of
general penal code revisions, without pressure from lesbians and gay men.
Except for New Mexico, which included repeal as part of a broader package
of rape reformlegislation, and California, where activists lobbied for decrimi-
nalization, 20 other states repealed their laws as part of penal code reform.
The ght to repeal sodomy laws in the courts also helped consolidate a
xed notion of homosexual identity. Doe v. Commonwealths Attorney for City
of Richmond (403 F. Supp. 1199 [E.D. Va. 1975]), a class action suit launched
by lesbian and gay activists naming the district attorney of Richmond as de-
fendant, challenged Virginias punitive sodomy laws (Leonard 1993; ACLU
1974). The district court ruled that the sodomy law was constitutional, and
the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was summarily
armed (425 U.S. 901, 985 [1976]). A case is summarily armed when no
arguments are heard and no opinion is issued. Because there was no opin-
ion, courts were divided over the precedential value of Doe, but the general
tendency was more conation of lesbian and gay status (identity) with sexual
conduct (behavior) than there had been prior to Doe. For example, the Immi-
gration and Naturalization Service could infer criminal sexual activity from
admission of homosexualityand denycitizenship to someone otherwise quali-
ed. Marching in lesbian and gay pride parades could be considered homo-
sexual conduct and therefore sucient grounds to deny employment, even
absent claims about or evidence of criminal sexual activity (i.e., sodomy) (Cain
1993). Ina legal (if not cultural) sense, at least, homosexuality was constructed
as a xed identity. After Doe, lesbian and gay litigators embraced an iden-
tity/behavior split, arguing that being lesbian or gay was an identity that was
not necessarily related to behavior. In the wake of Doe, this construction of
lesbian and gay identity, which contributed to the essentialist view of homo-
sexuality, was strategic, designed to limit government harassment of lesbians
and gay men.
In the early 1970s, members of the Gay Activists Alliance started Lambda
andthe National GayTask Force (NGTF) inNewYork City to create national
legal and political change (Clendinen and Nagourney 1999). These organi-
zations foreshadowed a shift in conceptions of identity and ushered in a new
professionalized style of organizing. The NGTF, which incorporated in 1973
(Cain 1993), focused its eorts on federal agencies, with minimal success. By
the late 1970s, the NGTFwas still struggling for survival. For example, when
approached by the NGTF board in the late 1970s to become executive di-
rector, Charles Brydon recalls, I had lots of reservations, particularly the
unwieldiness of the organization, its nancial poverty, and its small member-
ship (quotedinMarcus 1992: 310). Lambda beganas a volunteer organization
in the apartment of co-founder WilliamThom. For the next ve years, surviv-
ing and achieving credibility were Lambdas primary goals (Lambda 1993a).
For many years, Lambda pursued important test-case litigation in isola-
tion. The NGTF pursued typical interest group strategies, such as lobbying,
litigation, electoral campaigns, and meetings with administration ocials as
well as public education. Committed to working within the existing political
system, the NGTF stood in stark contrast to the more radical gay liberation
groups (Bernstein 1997b). The NGTFavoided identity strategies and did not
seek to deconstruct identity categories or to challenge stigma but only to gain
rights and narrowprotection fromharm. The NGTFwas not concerned with
mobilizing a wider lesbian and gay constituency by empowering grassroots
activists. Committed to working within the system, the NGTF emphasized
political goals and avoided identity strategies.
The 1976 presidential campaign and election of Jimmy Carter inaugu-
rated a newperiod of unprecedented political access for lesbians and gay men
that the NGTF, with its focus on national politics, was ready to seize. Al-
though the NGTF failed in its bid to add a gay rights plank to the Demo-
cratic and Republican party platforms, activists gained some inuence within
the increasingly liberal national Democratic party. Then co-executive di-
rector of the NGTF, Jean OLeary, became the rst openly gay or lesbian
delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Out lesbians were also
elected to Carters presidential campaign advisory committee (NGTF 1976a,
1976b, 1976c).
Despite the unprecedented access to federal agencies under the Carter
administration, lesbians and gay men lacked political power in most states,
and this precluded the possibility of federal legislative victories. For example,
the federal lesbian and gay civil rights bill had only 24 co-sponsors in the
House in 1975, up from 5 when the bill was rst introduced in 1974 (Rockhill
and Voeller, n.d.). That number grew to a less than impressive 44 supporters
in 1981, attesting to the uneven success of the movement across the United
States (NGTF 1981b).
Nonetheless, the election of a Democratic president meant that federal
agencies might be more receptive to lesbian and gay (as well as other mi-
nority) demands. NGTF representatives opened communications with vari-
ous federal agencies and supplemented their lobbying eorts withlitigationto
pressure recalcitrant policy makers. In 1977, representatives fromthe NGTF
and the Metropolitan Community Church and prominent lesbians and gay
men met twice with presidential assistant Margaret (Midge) Costanza, who
had been appointed to foster relations between the administration and mi-
nority groups. This was the rst time in U.S. history that openly gay men
and lesbians met ocially with a member of a presidential administration.
Discussions centered on the policies of several federal agencies, including the
armed forces, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department
of Defense, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the
U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (NGTF
1977d). According to the NGTF, which honored Costanza in 1978, she was
responsible for a marked acceleration in our ability to contact and present
our case for the human rights of gay people to the agencies of the Federal
government (NGTF 1978d: 2).
In January 1977, the Commission on Civil Rights refused to acknowledge
any jurisdictionover sexual orientationunless anduntil the Congress speci-
callyauthorizes it andprovides funds for it. InAugust, after the two meetings
with Costanza, the commission grudgingly agreed that it could investigate
and advise in certain areas such as courts, correctional institutions, and law
enforcement, probation, and parole ocers (NGTF 1977c).
9
In 1977, the
NGTFalsowon its lawsuit challenging the denial of tax exemptions to lesbian
and gay charitable organizations. Earlier regulations had allowed donations to
be tax deductible only if the organization stated in its literature that homo-
sexuality is a sickness, disturbance, or diseased pathology (NGTF 1977e).
The NGTF and other groups successfully sued the director of the Federal
Bureauof Prisons, whichbarred inmates fromreceiving gay publications.The
lawsuit coincidedwiththe start of the NGTFs prisonproject (NGTF1978b).
Finally, the NGTF, together with the American Psychiatric Association, the
American Psychological Association, and the American Public Health Asso-
ciation and Health Service tried to persuade the U.S. Public Health Service
to change its classication of homosexuality as a mental illness. The Immi-
gration and Naturalization Service relied on the U.S. Public Health Services
diagnosis to deny citizenship to lesbian and gay aliens (NGTF 1978c). Court
decisions in 1977 resulted in a new policy declaring that homosexuality is
not an inherent index of poor moral character (NGTF 1977d). The fol-
lowing year, the U.S. Public Health Service adopted the APAs decision that
homosexuality is not a pathology. The NGTF and over 100 lesbian and gay
organizations persuaded the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Com-
munications Commission to require local broadcasters to accommodate les-
bian and gay community needs as a prerequisite to license renewal (NGTF
1979a). In 1978, President Carter signed the Civil Service Reform Act, which
prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in 95% of federal civil
service jobs (NGTF 1980).
The reigning ideology among homophile organizations and the harsh
legal strictures against homosexuals made mass mobilization in the 1950s
and 1960s dicult because they prevented the development of dense social
networks and organizations from which activists could draw. By contrast,
the Civil Rights movement emerged in the 1950s because of the increased
strength of the black church, black colleges, and the NAACP in the South,
which provided the resources and set the stage for the movements emergence
(McAdam1982; Morris 1984). Lacking similar institutions and resources, the
lesbian and gay movement used attention-getting tactics that generated na-
tional publicity and led to mass mobilization. By challenging cultural norms
and ghting publicly for political change, lesbians and gay men mobilized a
constituency and increased their ability to gain political power.
A xed or essentialist notion of a homosexual essence was not a pre-
movement given and cannot explain mobilization forms, strategies, and goals.
First, dierent sets of activists within the movement constructed the mean-
ing and implications of their identities in disparate ways during this period.
As the self-proclaimed vanguard for sexual freedom, gay liberationists de-
ployed identity for critique as they challenged restrictive gender norms and
constraining social institutions, such as marriage. Identity was also a goal as
liberationists championed the transformative potential of uncovering every-
ones true bisexual nature. They tried to form coalitions with heterosexual
women and revolutionary organizations of people of color. Snubbed by those
they saw as allies and riddled with organizational problems (Clendinen and
Nagourney 1999; Marotta 1981; Adam 1987), the gay liberation movement,
like other radical movements of the 1960s, went into decline. The inability
of the Left generally to articulate a shared vision of change across race, gen-
der, and sexual orientation left gays and lesbians the choice between pursuing
their own political interests or returning to the closet.
As gay liberation organizations disappeared, single-issue lesbian and gay
organizations relied on (or at least portrayed publicly) a more xed identity
and sought political power and rights for lesbians and gay men as a group.
Organizations such as the MSW and the NGTF sought access to dominant
societal institutions. At times, they deployed identity for education, illustrat-
ing their similarities to the majority. But often they avoided identity strate-
gies altogether, working to secure rights for a homosexual minority by ap-
pealing to abstract principles, such as fairness, rather than by focusing on
the content of lesbian and gay identities. In the face of rejection by move-
ments on the Left, and absent state capitulation to their demands, for these
organizations, consolidating a lesbian and gay identity was a strategic move
based on political conditions, the availability of resources, and the decisions
of activists.
Neither the term identity politics nor the distinction between cultural
and political movements can adequately capture the disparate strategies and
goals pursued by lesbian and gay activists. Liberationists sought recognition
for a new transformative identity that challenged dominant understandings
of both heterosexual and homosexual identity. Liberationists and, at times,
rights activists challenged the social stigma attached to being lesbian or gay,
a goal that recongures the meaning of identity. These goals are not recog-
nized by RM and PP/PO theorists but are consonant with NSM theory. On
the other hand, seeking basic rights and protection already established for
other groups, based on a new identity, leaves intact the dominant identity
framework, although it can reconstitute the content of that identity. Such
a goal ts squarely within the scope of RM and PP/PO theory. Use of the
reductionist term identity politics or distinguishing new from old or politi-
cal from cultural movements obscures these important distinctions among
the uses of identity by social movements and impairs an understanding of
movement emergence, strategies, and goals. Furthermore, expressive strate-
gies that challenged dominant cultural norms helped mobilize a mass move-
ment with political results in the absence of well-developed indigenous in-
stitutions. Changes in broadcasting regulations, for example, helped shift the
cultural climate as the eects of new programming rippled through society
(e.g., Walters 2001). A seemingly conservative political agenda challenged the
cultural views of authorities and ultimately produced lasting eects.
From Liberation to Equal Opportunity,
197886
Before the mid-1970s, opposition to lesbian and gay rights was routine,
coming from policy insiders or those with regular access to decision makers.
The successes of the lesbian and gay and womens movements, however,
roused the dormant religious opposition. The 1970s sawthe formation of con-
servative evangelical groups whose agenda was to inuence national poli-
tics on freedom for Christian schools, prayer, abortion, pornography, and, of
course, homosexuality (Diamond 1989; Liebman 1983; Clarkson and Porte-
ous 1993). Antilesbian and antigay activism began in an unsuccessful eort
to halt Californias repeal of its sodomy statute in 1975 (NGTF 1976d). In
1977, Anita Bryants Save Our Children campaign, which repealed Dade
County Floridas recently passed lesbian and gay rights ordinance, became
the rst antilesbian/gay campaign to gain national prominence. Bryant was
assisted by a powerful network of southern churches (Adam 1987). Before
founding the Moral Majority in 1979, Jerry Falwell associated himself with
Anita Bryants antigay campaigns, claiming credit for the defeat of the gay
rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. Bryants campaign generated far
more publicity than lesbian and gay activists had ever been able to garner
themselves. For example, before 1977, the Readers Guide to Periodical Litera-
ture listed, on average, 7 articles a year on lesbian and gay civil rights. Be-
tween 1977 and 1980, that number jumped to 20. Other fundamentalist eorts
to repeal lesbian and gay rights ordinances followed in St. Paul, Minnesota
(NGTF1977b); Eugene, Oregon; Wichita, Kansas (NGTF1978a); Washing-
ton, D.C.; and Seattle, Washington (NGTF 1978d). Antilesbian/gay organi-
zations were successful in Eugene and St. Paul. In California, state senator
John Briggs led an unsuccessful drive to pass a referendumthat would expel
from the school system gay men and lesbians as well as those who presented
homosexuality positively (Adam 1987: 105). Although the Briggs initiative
and the repeal referendum in Seattle were both defeated (NGTF 1979b), the
mobilization of the opposing movement changed the character of the lesbian
and gay movement.
Opponents of gay rights reframed the debate over lesbian and gay rights
as they spread myths (Herek 1991) about gay men as pedophiles and about
homosexuals as spreaders of disease and as threats to the nuclear family (Pat-
ton 1993; Herman 1994). After the Religious Rights success in Dade County,
Wichita, and St. Paul, the organized Religious Right (as opposed to the in-
formal church-based movement prior to 1978) engaged in more sophisticated
legal techniques. For example, in the eort to repeal Eugenes lesbian and
gay rights ordinance, the Religious Right invoked competing rights claims,
arguing that owners of small rental units or multifamily houses should be al-
lowed to rent to whomever they want and that religious institutions should be
exempt fromthe law(Gay Writers Group 1983). Since 1978, Religious Right
organizations have used legal arguments mixed with emotional, homophobic
appeals (e.g., Herman 1994; Cicchino et al. 1991) in their opposition to gay
civil rights.
With the demise of gay liberation and the emergence of the Religious
Right, professionalized lesbian and gay organizations aimed at the national
arena grew stronger. These organizations generally relied on dichotomous
views of sexuality and played a more signicant role in framing the debate
over sexual orientation than they had before. In many ways, the movement
seemed to have abandoned its most radical cultural goals in favor of tting into
the system. Between 1978 and 1986, national lesbian and gay organizations
and the movement more generally embraced a xed homosexual identity yet
nonetheless formed alliances with other civil rights groups.
Just as Stonewall had been a call to arms in 1969, the Dade County re-
peal was another shot heard around the lesbian and gay world. The NGTFs
membership nearly doubled in the four months after the Dade County defeat,
and its number of weekly volunteers jumped from between 4 and 10 to over
25 (NGTF 1977a, 1977d; ). Dozens of new local organizations committed
to passing state and local antidiscrimination ordinances sprang up across the
country (CLGR c. 1978).
Activists felt that the threat posed by the Religious Right demanded a co-
ordinated national response. For the rst time since the demise of NACHO,
lesbian and gay organizations attempted to work in concert.
10
In 1979, lesbian
and gay activists from across the country held a series of national meetings to
plan a march on Washington to protest the growing antilesbian and antigay
backlash and to place concrete demands on elected ocials. Local grassroots
organizations, not the NGTF, provided the inspiration for the march. On
14 October 1979, the rst national lesbian and gay march on Washington took
place. In the wake of the march, activists formed the short-lived National Les-
bian and Gay Communications Network (NLGCN) to continue cooperation
between local grassroots organizations (NLGCN 1980).
In quick response, the Religious Right organized a March for Jesus,
held on 29 April 1980. The month prior to the march, the Anita Bryant Spec-
tacular airedontelevision(CLGR1980).Theweekendimmediately preceding
the Jesus march, CBS-TV aired a documentary entitled Gay Politics/Gay
Power. The special alleged that lesbians and gay men had inltrated the politi-
cal regimes inSanFrancisco andother major U.S. cities. Soonno onewouldbe
safe from common homosexual practices, such as sadomasochism, which
was portrayed as sick, nonconsensual, predatory behavior (Rubin 1981). As
activist Andy Humm observed about the proximity of the shows to the Jesus
march, Its too much of a coincidence not to believe the timing was inten-
tional (CLGR 1980). In addition to the routine opposition that lesbian and
gayorganizations had always faced, they nowfaced a well-organized opposing
movement.
The growing Religious Right helped elect Ronald Reagan president in
1980. Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals, who had celebrated born-
again Christian Jimmy Carters 1976 election, had been severely disappointed
by his liberal stance on the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, and homo-
sexuality. The election of Reagan, who had actively courted the conserva-
tive religious vote, delighted the Religious Right and caused alarm in les-
bian and gay circles. The easy access to federal agencies enjoyed by activists
under Carter ended abruptly. In a letter to the membership, NGTFboard co-
chairs statedthat withthe advent of the Reaganadministration, we have been
shunned by the White House. Our contacts at the numerous agencies of the
federal government have been cut o or severely restricted (NGTF 1981a).
Local drives to repeal the sexual orientation clauses of antidiscrimina-
tion ordinances continued to proliferate. Additionally, lesbian and gay groups
now had to contend with proactive antilesbian/gay federal legislation. For
example, by 1981, the House of Representatives had repeatedly passed the
McDonald Amendment, which would cut o free legal services to low-
income gay people (ibid.). In the same year, Congress, which has veto power
over legislation passed by the District of Columbia, blocked the Districts re-
peal of its sodomy law (Ikiko and Pianin 1981). Finally, conservatives sought
to pass the Family Protection Act, the provisions of which included with-
drawal of Federal support for child and spouse abuse programs, bilingual edu-
cational programs, voluntary prayer in the schools . . . [and the barring of ]
Federal funds frombeing made available to any individual or organization for
the purpose of advocating, promoting, or suggesting homosexuality, male or
female, as a lifestyle (NGTF 1982).
Many prominent civil rights groups, including the American Civil Lib-
erties Union (ACLU), Bnai BrithWomen, the Ms. Foundation, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Educa-
tion Association, People for the American Way, Womens Action Alliance,
the League of Women Voters, and the Childrens Defense Fund, as well as
Lambda and the NGTF, banded together to defeat the Family Protection
Act. The common enemy was not the elusive heterosexual white male but a
very real threat to women, lesbians and gays, people of color, as well as the
separation of church and state.
The conservative political climate that fostered openly homophobic dia-
tribes by Religious Right organizations was correlated with an escalation of
antilesbian/gay violence. Although lesbians and gay men in the 1980s had less
need to fear state violence than in the 1960s and 1970s, antilesbian/gay hate
crimes appeared to be on the rise ( Jenness and Grattet 1996).
11
The lesbian and gay movements response to the newly organized oppo-
sition and to their decreasing political access produced newforms of mobiliza-
tion, strategies, and goals. Although local, grassroots groups continued to be
important, national lesbian and gay organizations began to play a greater role
in mobilizing activists at the state and local levels than they had before. The
1980s witnessed an institutionalization of lesbian and gay organizations, cre-
ating professional, paying jobs for activists. Lesbians and gay men became im-
portant constituencies courted by many politicians for both money and votes.
In response to the increase in gay-bashing, the NGTFstarted an antivio-
lence project designed to help victims of hate crimes. Local lesbian and gay
organizations also emerged, supported, in part, by the NGTF (Vaid 1995).
Lambda, similarly, began to take a proactive leadership role in precedent-
setting litigation. In 1983, Lambda leaders called a meeting of lesbian and gay
litigators to coordinate a search for an ideal test case with which to challenge
the remaining sodomy statutes (Cain 1993). In part, this meeting was possible
because the network of lesbian and gay legal interveners had grown steadily
over the past decade, including groups such as the Michigan Organization
for Human Rights and the Texas Human Rights Foundation. The ACLUs
Gay and Lesbian Rights Project was one indirect result of Lambdas Ad Hoc
Task Force to Challenge the Sodomy Statutes (Hunter 1995). In 1976, the
Gay Rights National Lobby was founded to lobby Congress, and in 1980, the
Human Rights Campaign Fund was founded to support political candidates
sympathetic to gay rights (Clendinen and Nagourney 1999; Epstein 1999).
The lesbian and gay movement of the 1970s and 1980s also became more spe-
cialized, with the formation of lesbian and gay professional associations, gay
groups centered on race, class, and physical disability, and gay organizations
aimed at monitoring the media.
Often excluded from both the mainstream lesbian and gay movement
and from African American organizations, lesbians and gays of color formed
the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays in 1978. The coalition
organized national conferences and tried to combat racism within the lesbian
and gay movement and homophobia within African American organizations
(Epstein 1999). Asian American gay and lesbian organizations in the 1990s
also fought racism within the mainstream lesbian and gay movement (e.g.,
Yoshikawa 1994).
The ideological challenge to sex roles and gender norms that had moti-
vated gay liberationists began to take a backseat to achieving concrete policy
goals as activists avoided identity strategies. In part, increased political access
at the state andlocal levels ledmanyactivists to abandonthe emphasis onchal-
lenging dominant cultural patterns. Rather than engage in identity strategies
by drawing attention to homosexuality or lesbian and gay individuals as the
terrain of conict, activists increasingly worked within the political system
and appealed to abstract principles of fairness and equal opportunity. De-
pending on the political context, local groups alternated between deploying
identity for education and for critique (Bernstein 1997a). Nationally, activists
formed coalitions with other civil rights groups, lobbied, and participated in
political parties in increasing numbers.
In the early 1980s, a tiny virus that would come to be called HIVradically
changed the face of lesbian and gay politics and, I would argue, the direction
in which it was moving. AIDS temporarily reversed the move toward non-
identity strategies that had accompanied the increasing professionalization of
the movement.
AIDS and HIV devastated gay and lesbian communities. The havoc
wreaked by the virus was exacerbated because it came at a time when lesbians
and gay menlacked national political access, whengay-bashing appeared to be
on the rise, and when an organized opposition was only too happy to portray
the epidemic as evidence of Gods wrath against gay people (Herman 1994).
Because the health agencies responsible for combating new epidemics were
federally based, the state and local access lesbians and gay men had achieved
was sorely inadequate to persuade the federal government to shell out money
to research a disease that, at rst, seemed mainly to aect gay men (Shilts
1987; Epstein 1996).
Absent a satisfactory government response to the epidemic, AIDS ser-
vice organizations, designed to care for the sick and dying and to reduce ir-
rational public fears about transmission, quickly formed(Flanagan1995).The
Gay Mens Health Crisis, which became a model for AIDS service organiza-
tions (Bull and Gallagher 1996: 29), formed in New York City in 1981. The
early AIDS service organizations were essentially an extension of the lesbian
and gay movement, with overlap in personnel, ideology, and political outlook
(Flanagan 1995). It was not until 1986, with the formation of the AIDS Coali-
tion to Unleash Power (ACT UP), that AIDS activists took a more radical
path, despite earlier pleas for such action (Gould 2000).
Although a complete treatment of AIDS activism is beyond the scope of
this research (but see Epstein 1996 for a thorough analysis), it is important to
try to assess the eect of AIDS on lesbian and gay policies and on the move-
ment more generally. The personal toll of the AIDS epidemic, from death to
the loss of friends and loved ones, is incalculable. But AIDS had distinct and
traceable eects on the lesbian and gay movement.
AIDS profoundly aected the leadership and composition of lesbian and
gay organizations. The movement, of course, lost many prominent leaders.
But AIDS also facilitated cooperation between lesbians and gay men. Al-
though lesbians had always participated in the lesbian and gay movement,
they were less involved than gay men, and many still preferred separatist les-
bian organizations. With the advent of AIDS, many lesbians began to work
with gay men, bringing the groups closer together politically (Whittier 1995:
17375; Cruikshank 1992: 183; Stoller 1995: 27583).While compassionlikely
motivated lesbian participation in the AIDS movement, the growth in jobs
produced by AIDS service organizations and leadership positions within new
activist groups created a vacuum that lesbians could ll (e.g., Hunter 1995).
AIDS, probably more than any other external threat, mobilized huge
numbers of formerly apathetic gay men and lesbians (Vaid 1995). Not every-
one became politically involved, but many helped to raise money, worked
on the AIDS Quilt, or volunteered as buddies for homebound people with
AIDS. AIDS signicantly aected which issues the movement targeted as
well as policy outcomes. While lesbians had always been concerned with
family policies, particularly child custody, such issues were largely ignored by
the movement. With the advent of AIDS, family policies, such as domestic
partnership, access to a sick or dying partner, andinheritance became critically
important to gay men (Cruikshank 1992).
In the 1980s lesbians and gay men began more coordinated eorts to
achieve the rights and privileges accorded married couples. They fought for
domestic partnership policies allowing same-sex domestic partners to re-
ceive the benets (such as health insurance and bereavement leave) to which
a legally married spouse would be entitled, for adoption reform, and for the
right to inherit from a lesbian or gay spouse. One signicant case involved
lesbian Sharon Kowalski, who was severely injured in a car accident in 1983.
Karen Thompson, Kowalskis partner, was forced to wage a prolonged legal
battle against Kowalskis parents, who refused to allowher a say in Kowalskis
care (ibid.). Ensuring recognition of lesbian and gay families became a main
focus of lesbian and gay politics whose importance was underscored by losses
due to AIDS.
The AIDS epidemic also made the issue of lesbian and gay rights more
compelling. People were dying. From the viewpoint of lesbian and gay poli-
cies, AIDS made discrimination against lesbians and gay men more obvious
to the heterosexual population. It may have also made the lesbian and gay
population more human to the heterosexual majority (e.g., Vaid 1995: 7981).
For example, a gay man whose lover died of AIDS sued in NewYork State for
the right to take over the lease of the apartment they had shared (74 N.Y.2d
201 [1989]; see Braschi v. Stahl in Leonard 1993). AIDSsignicantly increased
the number of cases litigated by gays.
By the mid-1980s, AIDS policies overshadowed much of the policy work
of lesbian and gayorganizations. Nan Hunter, then director of the ACLUGay
and Lesbian Rights Project, later recalled: There were hundreds of AIDS-
related bills that got introduced instate legislatures during that period of time.
Literally hundreds! It was just amazing. It was . . . a tornado of AIDS-related
legislation. Between roughly 1986 and 1990, AIDS policies were nearly in-
distinguishable from lesbian and gay policies (Hunter 1995).
Culture, Politics, and the Meaning of Identity,
19872000
In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Bowers v. Hardwick (478 U.S. 186
[1986]), that the U.S. Constitution grants no right to privacy for homosexual
sodomy (see Rubenstein 1993). The defeat was a severe blow to lesbian and
gaycommunities andsymbolizedthe intransigence of homophobia (Bernstein
2001). Although any periodization of a movements history is somewhat ar-
bitrary, several distinctly new mobilization patterns appeared in response to
Hardwick that departed from the forms of mobilization, political strategies,
and goals that characterized the previous time period. Between1977 and 1986,
liberationist ideology no longer motivated movement debates and discourse
to the extent that it had previously. Asserting a xed, positive gay identity did
not challenge dominant cultural norms in the ways it had during the 1960s
and 1970s. Although deploying identity for education challenged dominant
perceptions of the minority and by extension cultural norms, the goal was
more acceptance than transformation. As political goals were stressed over
cultural goals and lesbian and gay similarities to the majority emphasized,
homosexuality was mostly portrayed as a socially neutral dierence, as benign
as left-handedness. After 1986, discourse once again centered on the content
and meaning of lesbian and gay identities and their political and cultural im-
plications.
In response to Hardwick, national lesbian and gay organizations called for
a march onWashington, which took place the following year, in 1987, bringing
several hundredthousandpeople to the U.S. capital andsparking a resurgence
in grassroots activism. Following the Hardwick decision, ACT UP formed to
challenge the years of inadequate government attention to AIDS. Followed by
Queer Nation, these neworganizations reframed the discourse around sexual
orientation as they employed new tactics and drew on Foucauldian under-
standings of sexuality and identity to challenge the very categories of iden-
tity that had previously motivated activism. Self-proclaimed queer activists
sought alliances with people of color, bisexual and transgendered people, and
anyone else dened by dominant discourse as somehow transgressing domi-
nant cultural norms. Debates over queer politics versus gay rights seeped into
lesbian and gay communities across the country (Warner 1993; Gamson 1990;
Seidman 1993). Even the generally more timid national organizations began
to focus again on the cultural meanings and challenges to the mainstreampre-
sented by lesbians and gay men. Whether to focus on challenging culture by
deconstructing categories of identity based on gender and sexual orientation
or to win political victories by reifying identity categories and denying any
challenge to dominant cultural norms or somehow to do both became central
to lesbian and gay politics and discourse as activists sought to repeal sodomy
laws, pass antidiscriminationandhate crimes legislation, ght antilesbian/gay
initiatives, end the militarys ban on lesbian and gay personnel, and obtain the
right to marry. These continuing debates center on the political and cultural
meaning of an identity based on sexual orientation.
While AIDS service organizations had provided crucial assistance to the
sick and dying, they failed to secure adequate government funding for re-
search and services for people with AIDS. Government-sponsored educa-
tion for the uninfected was similarly lacking. Fury over government inactivity
around AIDS, anger at what had come to be seen as the timidity of the AIDS
service organizations, and anguish over the mounting number of AIDS casu-
alties required radical action. According to Gould (2000), the 1986 Hardwick
decision was the nal straw, and in 1987, New York City activists formed the
radical direct action group ACT UP.
ACTUPhadmultiple targets, ranging fromcity, state, andfederal elected
ocials who were seen as ignoring the epidemic to the Centers for Disease
Control and the Federal Drug Administration (Shilts 1987; Flanagan 1995).
AIDS communities mobilized to attain access to drugs, allocation of federal
funding for research and treatment, and protection fromdiscrimination based
on and involuntary disclosure of HIV status.
ACT UP is often viewed as the heir to the gay liberation organizations
of the 1970s (e.g., Vaid 1995; Bull and Gallagher 1996). Its militant, headline-
grabbing and trac-stopping actions included a die-in on Wall Street to
protest the lack of corporate leadership around AIDS. Activists surrounded
the Federal Drug Administration building in Washington to protest the pro-
longed time it took to test new AIDS drugs before they were given FDA ap-
proval.While newdrugs were leisurely being tested, AIDSactivists continued
to remind anyone who would listen that people were dying (Flanagan 1995).
The trendtowardavoiding the use of identity strategies andtowardwork-
ing within rather than outside the political system that had characterized the
late 1970s and early 1980s was reversed during the latter half of the 1980s.
Increased political access at the state and local levels, the threat fromthe Reli-
gious Right, and the now well-developed lesbian and gay communities had
largely divorced cultural from political change. But ACT UPs formation in
1987, as a reaction to the governments neglect of the gay plague, marked a
return to the use of strategies that made individuals, as lesbians and gay men
(and by this time as bisexuals and transgendered people, too), the contested
terrain. After all, AIDS was still branded a gay disease, even after the dis-
covery (or acknowledgment) that AIDS aects other groups (ibid.; Altman
1986; Epstein 1996; Shilts 1987). To lesbians and gay men, the lack of fund-
ing for the disease was personal. I am not arguing that gay AIDS activists
should not work with nongay groups aected by the virus, such as IV drug
users (some of whom, of course, may be gay as well), only that the denition
of AIDS as strictly a gay problem constrained opportunities for alliances. By
its shameful neglect of AIDS, the government once again singled out gay men
and (to a lesser extent) lesbians as a group, and, once again, they responded
as a group.
By 1992, ACT UPs radicalism had waned. Groups working coopera-
tively with health care providers and government research agencies, such as
the ACT UP oshoot Treatment Action Group, gained prominence (Epstein
1996). Despite continued overlap in organizations and personnel, by 1990 the
AIDS movement had become distinct from the lesbian and gay movement
(Flanagan 1995).
ACT UPs radicalism reinvigorated the lesbian and gay movement and
was welcomed by those who criticized the movement for abandoning the lib-
erationists emphasis on cultural critique (e.g., Johansson and Percy 1994).
ACTUPs ideals and its return to emphasizing transformative identities were
taken up by Queer Nation, formed in 1990. According to former OutWeek
publisher Michelangelo Signorile (1993: 88): Queer Nation went on to be-
come known as a colorful and brash vehicle to create awareness, rather than
a direct-action group committed to civil disobedience. . . . Utilizing ACT
UPs in-your-face tactics to take on gay-bashers and increase visibility, Queer
Nation spawned chapters across the country. Its members invaded bars and
restaurants to hold kiss-ins. Dressed in the most fabulous gay regalia, Queer
Nation went into suburban shopping malls. Queer nationals also reappropri-
ated the term queer to include those lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered
(LGBT) people and anyone else who challenged the dominant sex/gender
system (Gamson 1995). Queer was not a demarcation of ones sexual ori-
entation but a statement against the normal (Warner 1993). ACT UP and
Queer Nation transformed discourse about sexual orientation, and queer
theory remains a prominent strand of thought. Radical and progressive activ-
ists cheered the renewed emphasis on culture that moved beyond formal legal
equality (Vaid 1995), while other lesbian and gay activists cringed as radicals
appeared to threaten their virtually normal status (Sullivan 1997; Bawer
1996). The cultural climate fostered by Hardwick along with queer activism
inuenced the national organizations as well.
After Hardwick, it appeared that the only way to challenge the sodomy
statutes would be on a state-by-state basis. The Ad Hoc Task Force to Chal-
lenge the Sodomy Statutes became the Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights Round-
table (e.g., Lambda 1988). In 1986, the NGLTF formed the Privacy Project
to help activists overturn their states sodomy statutes legislatively (e.g.,
NGLTF 1986). In the context of Hardwick, the Privacy Project emphasized
both cultural and political change. Although the project continued to em-
phasize an individuals right to privacy to justify decriminalization, it also
acknowledged the symbolic dimensions of the sodomy statutes and the ways
in which such laws malign lesbian and gay identity. Working in consort with
the Privacy Project, activists refused to compromise and challenged the sym-
bolic and cultural dimensions of those laws, even when doing so risked failing
to enact legal change. For example, in Maryland in 1987, activists felt that
the symbolic dimensions of reform were too important to ignore. Thus they
decided against adopting a Wisconsin-style preamble in which the state ac-
knowledges its citizens right to privacy, but at the same time, supports the
institution of the heterosexual nuclear family. The whole notion of that kind
of preamble was more than we could bear, though, and we dropped the idea
rather quickly (NGLTF 1987).
12
At an Atlanta rally in 1990, Privacy Project
director Sue Hyde declared, We make a particular demand today that . . .
states . . . not only repeal these odious statutes, but also apologize to us for
the unpardonable oense of dening us as a sexually criminal class of citi-
zens (quoted in Ross 1990). The defense of a sexually based identity was,
for the moment, more important than obtaining a political victory. Publicly
defending same-sex sexuality directly challenged dominant cultural norms.
During the late 1980s and1990s, the Religious Right workedto place anti-
lesbian/gay referenda on the ballots of dozens of cities and states (Newcombe
1992; Goldberg 1993). Gay rights opponents often placed similar initiatives
on the ballot year after year. If passed, such laws (with some variation) would
make it illegal for lesbians and gay men to organize politically, remove protec-
tion based on sexual orientation from existing antidiscrimination legislation,
and essentially legalize antilesbian/gay discrimination (e.g., Goldberg 1993;
Lambda 1993b, 1994).
Lambda launched a project to combat the Right in the early 1980s. The
deluge of antilesbian/gay legislation required resources and organizing skill,
which activists in many states lacked. Preventing antilesbian/gay referenda
from being placed on state ballots would be far easier than defeating the ini-
tiatives at the polls. Thus Lambda and the NGLTFbegan to take on a greater
leadership role and litigation became ever more important to the movement.
During the 1990s, Lambda attorneys, such as Suzanne Goldberg, provided
crucial legal assistance to local lesbian and gay organizations (e.g., Goldberg
1993; Lambda 1993b, 1994), and the NGLTF and the Human Rights Cam-
paign Fund hired political consultants to help state organizations defeat their
gay rights opponents (Vaid 1995). In 1992, Colorado passed Amendment 2, its
statewide antilesbian/gay referendum (LeGal 1992; Rhoads 1993). Lambda
and local Colorado lawyers immediately challenged Amendment 2 (LeGal
1993). In 1996, after years of costly litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court found
Amendment 2 unconstitutional, putting a temporary end to one form of un-
abashed homophobic legislation.
13
Divisions among LGBT activists over the cultural and political implica-
tions of sexually based identities and over whether identity is xed or uid
were exacerbated during these campaigns. Movement leaders often tried to
avoid identity strategies altogether or to deploy identity for education. Often
these strategies entailed hiding those LGBTs who presented any challenge
to dominant constructions of masculinity/femininity or to the generally as-
sumed one-to-one correspondence between sex, gender, and sexual object
choice (Bernstein 1997a). In practice, leaders often attempted to hide butch
lesbians, feminine gay men, transgendered people, and bisexuals from the
public eye, creating internal divisions within LGBT communities (Bull and
Gallagher 1996).
Faced with virulently homophobic opposition, lesbian and gay activ-
ists often embraced an essentialist politics. Despite relying on xed notions
of identity, they formed coalitions with religious, labor, and other minority
groups even as they excluded members of their own communities. Battles
raged over whether to emphasize the cultural challenge presented by many
LGBTs and risk losing political rights or whether political rights in the ab-
sence of cultural change and at the cost of dividing communities would really
be victories (e.g., Halle 2001).
In other arenas, lesbians and gay men advocated for rights, benets, and
protection based on lesbian and gay identities. For example, some activists de-
manded domestic partnership benets from corporations, unions, and cities
(Raeburn 2000). Lambda helped lead the charge for domestic partnership
policies, with then Lambda attorney Paula Ettelbrick providing crucial assis-
tance (e.g., Lambda 1992a, 1993c) to grassroots eorts that sprang up across
the country. In the early 1990s, Lambda opened regional oces in Los Ange-
les and Chicago (Lambda 1992b, 1993b). Lesbianand gayactivists alsoworked
in coalition with other minority groups to pass hate crimes laws. Despite the
still foundering federal lesbian and gay rights bill and a decade of Republican
rule, lesbians and gay men helped get the Hate Crimes Statistics Act passed
in 1990. The new federal law mandated the collection and publication of data
on bias-related violence based on religion, race, ethnicity, and sexual orienta-
tion (Cruikshank 1992; Vaid 1995). This was the rst time that Congress had
ever passed any positive legislation that included the term sexual orientation.
The success of this identity-based coalition has inuenced national discourse
on homophobia and gay-bashing.
Bill Clintons election as president in 1992 marked the end of 12 years of
Republican presidential rule. During his election campaign, candidate Clin-
ton had promised to end the militarys ban on lesbian and gay personnel (Bull
and Gallagher 1996), pushing the issue to the forefront of lesbian and gay
politics. Internal dissent over the priority of ending the military ban notwith-
standing, many activists jumped on the gays-in-the-military bandwagon.
14
Until the 1990s, the ght to reformthe militarys antigay/lesbian policies had
been waged primarily in the courts. Ironically, the movement had returned to
Frank Kamenys original goal of gaining access to existing institutions. The
campaign against the militarys ban on gays was less the result of relying on
a xed identity and more the result of an opportunity presented by Clintons
election. Nonetheless, the Dont Ask, Dont Tell policy that eventually re-
sulted helped solidify and reify a lesbian and gay identity, as mere statements
by military personnel about being gay or lesbian became evidence of a pro-
pensity to engage in homosexual acts (Cole and Eskridge 1994: 320).
The emphasis on the military was a major source of conict within the
lesbian and gay movement because many activists decried militarism and saw
the ght for inclusion as regressive. But when pushed, even those lesbians
and gays opposed to the military as an institution agreed that sexual orien-
tation should not be grounds for exclusion. The internal debate was paral-
leled by an external debate that challenged the cultural conation of sexual
object choice (the biological sex of ones sexual partner) with gender inver-
sion (taking on the gender role associated with the other sex). That gay men
(whether their identity was perceived of as xed or not) could kill challenged
dearly held cultural beliefs about masculinity (e.g., Connell 1995). In other
words, if gay men in the military could be as successful as heterosexual men
in a culture that equates gay men with penetration and thus with femininity,
then the very cultural denition of masculinity would be threatened (see also
Murray 1996: 13839). By emphasizing a xed identity, dichotomous cultural
categories were complicated and challenged while also being reied. Formal
legal equality may be a limited goal, but it nonetheless is a vision based on one
view of the universal good.
The other major issue arose when three same-sex couples sued the state
of Hawaii for the right to marry. Convinced that yet another challenge to the
marriage statutes was futile, national lesbian and gay groups wanted nothing
to do with the case at rst. When it looked as though the case had a chance of
winning, Lambda attorney EvanWolfson joined the case as co-counsel. Wolf-
son eventually became the countrys rst full-time organizer around the issue
of same-sex marriage. Lesbian and gay activists (and their Religious Right
opponents) predicted a pilgrimage of lesbian and gay couples to Hawaii, who
would then return to their home states, demanding recognition for their mar-
riages. Wolfsons job was to help state activists lay the political groundwork
for the eventuality of same-sex marriage. Wolfson began to tour the coun-
try, helping state organizers to defeat the antisame-sex marriage bills that
were ooding state legislatures (Bull and Gallagher 1996). Activists across
the country quickly mobilized around same-sex marriage, sometimes work-
ing with and other times competing with the national organizations ( Javors
with Reimann 2001).
In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court made history when it declared that
the states refusal to sanction same-sex marriages was impermissible, man-
dating that the legislature provide some form of redress (Baker v. Vermont,
744 A.2d 864 [Vt. 1999]). The following year, Vermont established a system
of civil unions for same-sex couples that are legally (although not symboli-
cally) equivalent to marriage, in terms of access to state benets in Vermont,
but are not recognized by other states or the federal government (2000 Ver-
mont Laws 91).
Gaining access to the most conservative of American institutions, mar-
riage and the military, caused considerable dissent within LGBT communi-
ties (Ettelbrick 1989; Stoddard 1989). Conservative commentators lauded les-
bian and gayaccess to marriage and even thought it would eliminate what they
saw as the worst excesses of gay male sexual culture (Sullivan 1997). Others
felt that rather than ape the patriarchal institution of marriage, the movement
should create new ways of gaining legal protection for intimate relationships
(Walters 2001). Still others argued that gaining access to marriage is the rst
step toward reforming it.
Despite the continued contestation over the relationship between politi-
cal and cultural goals and the meaning of sexual identity, Queer Nation was
short-lived. I argue that Queer Nationcould not sustainitself because, inpart,
LGBTsubcultures hadbecome sowell developed. Lesbianandgay leaders no
longer needed to focus on community building as a prerequisite to mobiliza-
tion.The threat posedby the Religious Right was enoughto spark the creation
of lesbian and gay movements in states where none had previouslyexisted. Al-
though groups such as Queer Nation could not sustain themselves and failed
to gain hegemony within the movement, the ideology underlying Queer Na-
tion maintains a solid base in the halls of the academy, in the form of queer
studies (Seidman 1993), and debates over queer politics and the meaning of
identity continue to animate LGBT politics and discourse (e.g., Bawer 1996).
Since 1987, the line between political and cultural goals has continued to
blur. I argue that the two types of goals have become fused, as rational cal-
culations about what will inuence legislators vie with attempts to challenge
cultural norms when determining political strategies (see Vaid 1995). Even
whenactivists avoididentitystrategies inthe political realm, cultural concerns
motivate collateral tactics, such as speak-out campaigns designed to educate
the public about issues such as same-sex marriage. Lesbian and gay politics
have been realigned now that the movement is more outwardly focused, due
in large part to the successful creation of a thriving subculture and political
organizations. Challenging dominant cultural patterns and attaining concrete
policy reforms are now inextricably linked, although the meaning of the cul-
tural challenge remains contested. The strategies used to obtain those goals
and the role and meaning of identity within that pursuit vary over time and
in relation to the political context.
Conclusion
In sketching the history of the national, state-oriented lesbian and gay move-
ment, I have argued against conceiving of social movements as either political
or cultural. Instead, I have contended that political conditions, resources, and
networks are better able to explain the forms of mobilization, strategies, and
goals of the lesbian and gay movement than is the fact that segments of the
movement, at times, rely on claims to a xed identity. I also have argued that
diverse constructions of identity in the political arena have generally been the
strategic responses of activists and organizations to the political context and
the resolution of internal movement struggles. Those diverse constructions
inuence both politics and culture, and no construction of identity is inher-
ently more radical or transgressive than another. Instead, the impact of those
constructions depends on the cultural and political climate in which they are
advanced. The dichotomy in the social movement literature between identity
and political movements hinders a complete analysis and understanding of a
movements mobilization, strategies, and goals.
Denied basic rights of association, faced with laws against sodomy that
denedthemas criminal, andsubject to police harassment andmedical treat-
ment, homosexuals and the edgling homophile movement struggled for
survival between 1940 and 1964. Understanding their identity as xed, homo-
phile activists deployed identity for education by emphasizing their similari-
ties to the heterosexual majority and thus challenged cultural views about
homosexuality while laying the groundwork for political change. Activists
rejected the idea that homosexuality might be mutable, an idea that would
only fuel the res of medical and legal intervention. Educating straight pro-
fessionals, activists hoped, would, in turn, help to increase tolerance toward
homosexuals and to ease legal sanctions against them.
Lacking access to political institutions and absent dense social networks
from which to mobilize, lesbian and gay activists began to demonstrate pub-
liclyas homosexuals inthe second time period, beginning in196465. Inorder
to mobilize a mass movement, activists needed to empower lesbians and gay
men. Relying on a xed but positive notion of a lesbian and gay identity, activ-
ists challenged cultural understandings of homosexuality and achieved po-
litical gains. By contrast, liberationists championed a universal bisexuality in
order to challenge dominant gender and sexual norms. Although they articu-
lated a universal vision for social change and challenged the foundation of a
sexually based identity, liberationists could not produce meaningful coalitions
with heterosexual women and people of color.
As organized opposition and political access increased in the late 1970s,
activists often stressed similarities to the majority or avoided identity strate-
gies altogether as they began to work with state agencies and focus on ab-
stract principles of discriminationinorder to obtainpolitical and legal change.
Activists no longer dened themselves against the heterosexual majority but
against the stereotypes wielded by the Religious Right. Challenging domi-
nant constructions of gender had given way to achieving changes in laws and
policies. Nonetheless, political activism inuenced culture as lesbian and gay
visibility increased and the majoritys view of the minority was challenged.
By 1986, the governments lack of response to the AIDSepidemic and the
constitutional defeat of Bowers v. Hardwick had sparked a reevaluation of the
cultural and political meaning of sexual orientation. Denied meaningful po-
litical access, groups such as ACT UP, Queer Nation, and even the NGLTF
stressed strategies designed to criticize dominant cultural practices. Activists
deployed identity for critique as they sought cultural and political gains. But
the necessity of creating a radical identity for mobilization was not the same as
it had been in the 1960s and 1970s. The expansion of lesbian and gay institu-
tions had created a solid niche where lesbians and gay men could thrive even
if the dominant culture still frowned on homosexuality. By contrast, others
sought access to the most conservative institutions, marriage and the military.
By relying on xed notions of identity, these campaigns have achieved politi-
cal change and have once again challenged dominant cultural norms. Debates
over queer politics, which undermined the very identity categories on which
the lesbian and gay movement drew, inuenced the discourse of both those
who saw sexual orientation as xed and central to ones identity and those
who did not. The cultural and political meaning of sexual orientation remains
contested, but it is clear that diering constructions of identity are responses
to changes in the political climate and that the cultural and political impact of
these diverse constructions (or deconstructions) varies over time and place.
This history of the national, state-oriented, U.S. lesbian and gay move-
ment suggests that distinguishing between new and old, cultural and
political movements impairs an understanding of all social movements.The
relative emphasis on identity and culture on the one hand and politics on the
other, even in one social movement, is shifting, multidimensional, and com-
plex, depending on resources, networks, and political conditions. Further-
more, the implications of such strategies change over time, as what was radical
in 1965 seemed tame by 1995.
This article also challenges the critique of identity politics by elaborat-
ing more fully the ways in which identity gures into social movements. In
the case of the lesbian and gay movement, relying on xed identities has not
resulted in an inability to formcoalitions, nor has the movement become apo-
litical, devolving into a politics of consumption, reinforcing rather than chal-
lenging the status quo. While it would be inaccurate to attribute one political
view to even the national state-oriented lesbian and gay movement, much of
the movement has advanced a liberal politics seeking formal legal equality. Al-
though froma radical or Marxist perspective such a viewof social change may
be limited and lack the transformative potential that the Left once appeared
to have had, it nonetheless provided opportunities for coalition building, de-
spite the reliance on xed identities. Gaining access to existing institutions
or achieving protection from bias-related violence or the right to engage in
certain sexual acts have at times profoundly challenged dominant cultural
patterns, practices, and beliefs and have gone a long way toward shaking up
dominant conceptions of gender. While at this historical juncture it may be
strategic to deconstruct rather than rely on xed gay and lesbian identities (a
point obviously open to debate) in order to achieve certain goals, imposing
current political and cultural congurations and calculations back onto earlier
time periods shows a lack of historical perspective.
Rather than attribute the fragmentation of the Left to the assertion of
xedminority identities, I suggest that future researchmust examine theways
in which identity was used by the Left for empowerment, howit was deployed
strategically, and the extent to which it was a movement goal. Through de-
tailed historical analysis that examines the multiple ways in which identity
gures into all social movements in specic historical contexts, we can begin
to understand the relationship between cultural and political change and the
role of identity within that pursuit.
Notes
Direct all correspondence to Mary Bernstein, Department of Sociology, University of
Connecticut, Unit 2068, 344 Manseld Rd., Storrs, CT 062692068. This research was
supported in part by National Science Foundation grant 9623937.
1 I dene the state-oriented movement as being made up of those groups and orga-
nizations that operate within the political sphere, as opposed to organizations such as
the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation that seek to change cultural insti-
tutions. This distinction should not be interpreted to mean that cultural goals cannot
be the primary goals of even state-oriented activism.
2 This critique comes primarily from postmodern or queer commentators who see
categories suchas gay and lesbian as restrictive. Inthis view, adopting rather than
deconstructing those categories reinforces rather than challenges a cultural system
that will always mark the nonheterosexual as inferior.
3 I examined several collections from the Cornell University archives, including the
papers of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 1973 to 1993, and the collection
of veteran gay activist Bruce Voeller.
4 I use the term homosexual as it was used historically. I am uncomfortable with the
clinical undertones of the term, and the use of this term does not mean that I en-
dorse or promote the idea that homosexuals and heterosexuals are two distinct types
of species. Rather, I feel that we should not impose contemporary understandings of
sexual identity on past generations.
5 The repeal of sodomy statutes did not by itself radically alter the states opposi-
tion to homosexuality (Bernstein 2001), but repeal did mean that states could no
longer argue against extending rights to homosexuals because they were dened as
criminal.
6 I am not arguing that the 1950s and early 1960s were a dull and dreary dark ages for
gays and lesbians. In fact, research suggests that a thriving gay culture existed (e.g.,
Kennedy and Davis 1993; Newton 1993). I am referring only to the states ocial
stance toward homosexuals codied in state policies and practices.
7 Some would argue that gay men had more to fear from the authorities than did les-
bians because gay male cruising in parks and public toilets made their activities more
visible. However, others suggest that lesbians also suered from government repres-
sion (e.g., Kennedy and Davis 1993; Nestle 1987; Simpson 1976).
8 Austin Wade is the pseudonym assumed by Arthur Warner during the 1960s.
9 The U.S. Civil Rights Commission was strictly an advisory and investigative agency
with no power to enforce compliance, although its ndings held weight in Congress
(NGTF 1977c).
10 In 1976, Advocate publisher David Goodstein invited selected activists to an
invitation-only conference. Goodstein wanted to challenge the NGTF and to rid the
movement of the radicals who, he felt, were giving the lesbian and gay movement a
bad name. The Gay Rights National Lobby, which was not a coalitional organization,
emerged fromthe meeting but was short-lived (Clendinenand Nagourney 1999: 257
60) and ultimately was folded into the Human Rights Campaign Fund (Vaid 1995
6162).
11 It is not clear whether violence against gays and lesbians was on the rise or whether
more people were reporting violent events or whether record-keeping was becoming
more accurate. Nonetheless, the perception that gay-bashing was on the increase and
the recognition that it was a social problem inuenced the political climate.
12 Wisconsin repealed its sodomy statute in 1985 (Wis. Stat. 944.01 [Supp. 1985]).
13 In 2000, the Oregon Citizens Alliance returned with a bill entitled the Parental Re-
sponsibility Act, which would give parents complete control over what their children
were exposed to in the schools, justifying the elimination of any positive mention of
homosexuality in the schools or libraries.
14 Some argue that lesbian and gay activists waited too long to act, accounting for the
failure to end the ban (Bull and Gallagher 1996).
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Identities and Politics, Toward A Historical Undersanding of The Lesbian and Gay Movent

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ldentities and Politics: Toward a Historical Understanding

of the Lesbian and Gay Movement

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