World Turned
In this collection of essays, D’Emilio brings his historian’s eye to bear on these profound changes in American society, culture, and politics. He explores the career of Bayard Rustin, a civil rights leader and pacifist who was openly gay a generation before almost everyone else; the legacy of radical gay and lesbian liberation; the influence of AIDS activist and writer Larry Kramer; the scapegoating of gays and lesbians by the Christian Right; the gay-gene controversy and the debate over whether people are "born gay"; and the explosion of attention focused on queer families. He illuminates the historical roots of contemporary debates over identity politics and explains why the gay community has become, over the last decade, such a visible part of American life.
John D’Emilio is Professor of History and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 and Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (with Estelle B. Freedman). He was the first director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Policy Institute.