IGF CultureWatch

These days, it's pretty hard to walk the streets of a California city without seeing same-sex couples - shopping, strolling, holding hands, sometimes accompanied by children. What used to be called, self-consciously, "public displays of affection" are now merely public displays of ordinary family life. For gay folks, then, it is all the more stinging an irony that the one place where same-sex couples are invisible is in the advertising war over Proposition 8.

Proposition 8, of course, is the constitutional ballot initiative on whether to retain or reject same-sex marriage, which was legalized by the state Supreme Court in May. Given California's power to shape national trends, the stakes for both sides could not be much higher. But given the sheer size of the state's media market, TV advertising could not be much more expensive. For both sides, the premium is on common-denominator messaging that appeals to the largest possible number of swing voters while causing a minimum of political backlash.

The need to walk that tightrope helps explain why the actual subjects of next month's initiative, gay couples, were "inned" by the "No on 8" campaign's ads. (Full disclosure: I am a "No on 8" donor.) One ad, for example, features a gray-haired straight couple. "Our gay daughter and thousands of our fellow Californians will lose the right to marry," says mother Julia Thoron.

A subsequent ad, all text with voice-over narration, mentions marriage only once ("Regardless of how you feel about marriage, it's wrong to treat people differently under the law") and never uses the phrase "gay marriage" or even the word "gay." Just as oblique was a spot, released Wednesday, in which state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell reassures viewers that "Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage." A casual viewer could have come away from these ads puzzled as to exactly what right thousands of Californians might be about to lose.

Asked about the absence of gay couples, a senior "No on 8" official told KPIX-TV in San Francisco that "from all the knowledge that we have and research that we have, [those] are not the best images to move people." Children, also, were missing; showing kids with same-sex parents could too easily backfire.

The pro-Proposition 8 forces, by contrast, featured a child prominently in their TV advertising: A schoolgirl comes home with a book called "King and King" and announces, to her mother's consternation, that she learned in school that "I can marry a princess." Another ad attacks overweening judges, mocks San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for saying, "It's going to happen whether you like it or not," and goes on to claim that gay marriage could cause people to be sued for their beliefs and churches to lose their tax exemption.

Notice, again, that gay couples were missing, though for a different reason. Nowadays, swing voters are more leery of anti-gay discrimination than of same-sex couples. So the "yes" ads changed the subject, focusing on alleged (and disputed) follow-on effects of same-sex marriage rather than on the thing itself. If homosexuals can get married, look what else might happen! Arrogant judges, politicians and school bureaucrats will harass churches, torment dissenters and inappropriately sexualize education!

What might such ads show? Well, one might feature someone like my friend Brian, who married his partner, Doug, on Saturday. They already had a domestic partnership, but that could not begin to match the power of marriage, sealed before parents and friends in a ceremony in San Francisco. "It's how you say this is forever and do it publicly," Brian says. "It's very different from getting a form notarized at Mailboxes Etc."

An ad might show Brian driving Doug to the hospital and sitting at his bedside after surgery. Marriage is unique because of the high social expectations that go with it. Chief among those expectations is that spouses will do whatever is necessary to care for each other - which is valuable, because census data show that almost a third of California's gay couples have only one wage-earner, and almost a fifth have at least one disabled partner (about the same, by the way, as for straight married couples). By supporting and reinforcing the care-giving commitment, each marriage, gay no less than straight, creates social capital for the whole community.

Brian and Doug don't have kids, but a fourth of California's gay couples do, according to census data. An ad might show some of those kids watching as their parents, previously denied marriage, tie the knot. For children, no other arrangement matches the security and stability afforded by married parents, because no other arrangement confers comparable status and social support. If they could cast ballots, how many of the more than 50,000 children being raised in California's same-sex households would vote to deprive themselves of married parents?

Or an ad might feature a gay teenager celebrating his parents' 20th wedding anniversary and dreaming of his own someday. There are countless gay youths for whom the prospect of marriage will be so much more tangible if it is embraced by the nation's largest state. The breakthrough effect of same-sex marriage is not on the mature gay couples who can finally get marriage licenses, important though that is; it is the effect on generations of gay kids who will no longer grow up assuming that their love must separate them from life's most essential institution.

Keeping marriage available to gay couples in California, and giving it the blessings of a popular majority, would be a game-changer for gay culture. It would signal that the transformation from a pariah culture in the 1950s, to a promiscuity culture in the 1970s, and then to a commitment culture in the AIDS era and beyond, has taken its last and greatest step: to a culture of family.

Ellen DeGeneres, the comedian and TV personality, made an unofficial anti-Proposition 8 ad calling her marriage "the happiest day of my life." For the most part, however, you have seen and heard least about those who benefit most from gay marriage. That does not mean, however, you shouldn't think about them.

My friends, I'd like you to meet someone, a true American, a great American: Jane the Plumber.

Jane, my friends, is an actual plumber, as opposed to that Joe the Plumber guy, who didn't have a plumber license and may have been related to a big financial scandal.

No, Jane is an actual plumber. Maybe she lives in Michigan. Maybe she lives in Arizona. Maybe she lives in Florida. But she is a plumber, and she is a lesbian.

Let me tell you about our friend Jane the Plumber. Jane stays up at night because her partner, Sue, has breast cancer. If the couple lives in Michigan and Jane is a plumber for a public facility, then Jane isn't allowed to share her health benefits with Sue. In May, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's constitutional amendment saying that "the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose" means that public employers can't give domestic partnership benefits.

So Sue will either need to have benefits of her own, or must look to public assistance for help.

Jane is worried about whether the law will recognize her as the parents of the two children she raised with Sue, the birth mother, if Sue should die.

If Jane lives in Mississippi or Florida, her kids are in particular danger - both states have gay adoption bans. Judges in Florida keep ruling the ban unconstitutional - the latest judge said so this past September - but the law still stands.

Jane also worries about visiting Sue in the hospital, especially if they're traveling. She's heard horror stories from friends who say that, despite the fact that they carry legal paperwork around with them at all times giving each other power of attorney, some hospitals arbitrarily forbid gay partners to stand by their partner's sick beds and make decisions for them.

Because Jane and Sue live in a state that doesn't recognize domestic partnership benefits for public employees - maybe Michigan, but perhaps also Florida, if Amendment 2 passes there in November - then Jane also won't get bereavement leave if Sue dies. She'll have to take vacation time or sick time.

Jane is also worried that Sue's parents may fight Sue's will, and take their house away. Jane and Sue were married in a United Church of Christ chapel, but their state doesn't legally recognize the marriage - and Sue's parents have said that if the state doesn't recognize them, they won't either. If Sue dies, her parents would be able to make decisions about burial and cremation in absence of a will, not her partner Jane.

Jane and Sue pay more for their home and auto insurance policies; they also pay more in taxes. Depending on the whim of the franchise owner, they may pay more to rent a car; hotels in some states can refuse them a room. In many states, an employer can fire Jane or Sue just because they're gay, or deny them a promotion. Only 12 states protect Jane and Sue from employment discrimination. Twelve.

My friends, this election matters for Jane the Plumber. It is a decision between a candidate - John McCain - who says he doesn't believe in gay adoption, and whose running mate "tolerates" gay people; and a candidate - Barack Obama - who believes that gay people should have all the civil rights of straight people, and whose running mate said he believes the rights of gays and lesbians are protected under the Constitution.

Joe the Plumber, if he really were a plumber, may have to pay more taxes on his $250,000 a year income when he buys his plumbing business, but Jane the Plumber will suffer significant harm under a McCain administration - harm that can cost her her children, her home, and her last hours with her partner.

My friends, Jane the Plumber is counting on us. She is counting on us to go to the polls on election day - and she is counting on us to vote for Obama. She has a lot at stake. Let's not let her - or ourselves - down.

John McCain has made it hard to vote for him. Linking Barack Obama to terrorism was odious. Choosing Sarah Palin was reckless. Still, an advocate of gay equality who's otherwise closer to McCain's views on economic and foreign policy can support him with a clear conscience. That's because the differences on gay issues - as a practical matter - are less dramatic than we've been told by the organized "GLBT movement." As the practical differences on gay issues get smaller, non-gay issues grow in salience.

You wouldn't know it by listening to gay pundits and organizations, but McCain is the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee ever. That's not just faint praise. Despite election-season pandering to the religious right, he's not one of them and they know it. He has openly gay staffers and campaign officials. He has defended his gay colleagues in public office against attacks by religious conservatives. The convention that nominated him was free of anti-gay rhetoric. Even marriage, long a crowd-pleaser, was rarely mentioned. In fact, 49 percent of the delegates to the GOP convention supported civil unions or gay marriage. And unlike Bush in 2004, McCain's campaign has not exploited homophobia.

There's much more. In a first for a Republican presidential nominee, McCain recently responded in writing to questions from the Washington Blade, DC's gay newspaper. The responses, while occasionally mealy-mouthed, were encouraging. Yet gay activists replied to the interview as if he'd called for death camps for gays.

Take the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which McCain voted against in 1996. Gay organizations' scorecards continue to say that he "opposes" ENDA. The truth is more complicated. McCain told the Blade that he now supports "non-discrimination in hiring for gay and lesbian people" and will "give careful consideration" to ENDA. Moreover, his lingering reservations about ENDA are not "anti-gay": if drafted too broadly, the law will needlessly erode religious liberty and generate frivolous and costly litigation.

Skeptics will say these are excuses for vetoing ENDA, no matter what form it takes. They may be right. But it's significant that McCain, who unlike Obama has a long record of actually working productively with the other party, also promises to consult Congress to meet these concerns. Unlike Obama, McCain could actually get around a possible GOP filibuster in the Senate to pass the bill.

Still, Obama would sign ENDA no matter how broadly drafted. A Democratic Congress wouldn't have the votes to override a McCain veto, which would at least mean a narrower bill than we'd get under Obama. So the advantage goes to Obama, but the difference is smaller than once supposed.

Obama supports a hate-crimes law covering sexual orientation. McCain would veto it largely on federalism grounds because controlling crime is primarily the responsibility of the states. Again, that's not an "anti-gay" view; indeed, protecting the states' prerogatives to decide important policy matters was the basis for McCain's and many congressional Democrats' opposition to a federal marriage amendment in 2004 and 2006. In any case, there's no evidence such laws actually deter hate crimes, so Obama is better on an issue that doesn't much matter in practice.

Then there's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which Obama opposes. As gay organizations like to remind us, McCain supported it in 1993 (as did Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress back then).

But, in another sign of a thaw ignored or belittled by gay leaders and writers, McCain told the Blade he "will have the policy reviewed." He is open to ending DADT, he said, but only if military leaders agree. So the upshot, one might think, is that Obama will end DADT while McCain will only "review" whether to end it. That's a big difference between them, you say.

Not so fast. Like McCain, Obama would need the support of military leaders to end the ban. He would then have to pressure Congress on a matter involving military policy and national security, areas of perennial Democratic political vulnerability.

Neither persuading military leaders nor wary congressional Democrats to end DADT is a given in an Obama administration. Unlike McCain, Obama has no military background and little credibility with the military brass. (If, on the other hand, McCain decided to end the ban, he would be uniquely positioned to do so, like Richard Nixon traveling to China.) Also unlike McCain, Obama has an undistinguished legislative record, which bodes ill for pressuring his own party or Republicans on the issue.

Thus, it's unlikely that DADT would be repealed in an Obama administration. I agree that it's better symbolically to have a president on record against DADT than one who's agnostic about it, but the outcome is likely to be the same: no end to DADT in the next administration.

Both men oppose gay marriage. But McCain supported the Defense of Marriage Act (along with Bill Clinton and most congressional Democrats) back in 1996, and continues to support it, while Obama opposes it. This another area in which the conventional gay-rights scorecard favors Obama.

But here we have another distinction that makes little practical difference. Repealing DOMA would be very difficult, requiring full presidential commitment and masterful legislative skills. Obama might be up to this task, but there's little evidence of it so far.

Gay pundits and leaders love to remind us that Obama opposes California's Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage. But they never mention that Obama's "opposition" has consisted of a single letter sent several months ago to a local gay Democratic group in San Francisco. No public statements. No TV or radio ads. McCain supports Prop 8, but never mentions it in his campaign. Again, there's a paper advantage to Obama here, but neither his nominal opposition to Prop 8 nor McCain's nominal support for it has had any practical impact.

Despite what he once erroneously said, McCain does not oppose gay adoptions. His campaign clarified that he supports adoptions by loving parents, without regard to sexual orientation. In fact, McCain told the Blade that he "respect[s] the hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian people" struggling and doing their best to raise adopted children. Gay groups have pounced on McCain's original misstatement as evidence that he's "anti-gay," but they never get around to explaining the context and the subsequent clarification.

Also on the subject of gay marriage, we should never forget that McCain led the charge against the Federal Marriage Amendment, loudly bucking his own party and President Bush when it really counted. Though he seems genuinely accepting of gay people, Obama has never taken a position on gay rights that cost him politically. McCain did so on the single most important gay issue of this generation.

It's true that Sarah Palin recently broke with McCain and endorsed the FMA, just as Dick Cheney broke with Bush in 2004 to oppose the FMA. But Palin is not the presidential candidate in this race, McCain is. Amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage is off the table politically, regardless of what Palin thinks - thanks in part to McCain.

The upshot legislatively is this: Under Obama we'd likely get ENDA and a symbolic hate-crimes law. Under McCain, we might get a narrower ENDA and no hate-crimes law. That's all. It's a difference that gay voters are surely right to take into account, but it's hardly a huge difference.

Finally, Obama's judicial nominees will be more gay-friendly and more aggressive about using judicial power to support gay rights than McCain's will be. But McCain will face a strongly Democratic Senate, which will moderate his choices. He also tends to favor judicial-restraint conservatives who respect precedent rather than judicial-activist conservatives who want a right-wing legal revolution.

So while they won't advance the cause, McCain's nominees probably won't reverse prominent gay-rights legal victories, either. Despite what you may have heard, it's unlikely the Supreme Court's decision overturning sodomy laws will even be reviewed, much less reversed, because of appointments by McCain.

None of this will persuade a liberal voter who prefers Obama on lots of non-gay issues. Nor will it persuade a single-issue gay-rights supporter who cares about nothing else. I respect these choices. I myself opposed Bush in 2000 and 2004 because he backed sodomy laws and the FMA. These were red lines for me and Bush crossed them.

But this year is different. While Obama is undisputedly better on gay issues than McCain, the differences in likely results are not so great that a vote for McCain is unforgivable. For those gay and gay-supportive voters who worry about the effect of an Obama administration combined with a Democratic Congress on taxes, spending, trade, Iraq, and national security against terrorism, a vote for McCain this year is not a betrayal of gay rights. For such voters, it's the right choice.

I've been doing a lot of same-sex marriage debates lately, and thus interacting with opponents-not just my debate partner, but also audience members, some of whom will soon be voting on marriage amendments.

Recently one of them asked, "Where does your standard of marriage come from?"

From her tone, I could tell she meant it more as a challenge-a purely rhetorical question-than as a genuine query. Still, I wanted to give her a good answer.

But what is the answer? My own "standard" of marriage, if you can call it that, comes from my parents and grandparents, whose loving, lifelong commitments I strive to emulate. That doesn't mean mine would resemble theirs in every detail-certainly not the male/female part-but I can't help but learn from their example.

That wasn't the answer she was looking for, so she asked again. This time I tried challenging the question: talking about "THE" standard of marriage suggests that marriage is a static entity, rather than an institution that has evolved over time. Historically, marriage has been more commonly polygamous than monogamous; more commonly hierarchical than egalitarian. It changes.

I pointed these facts out, adding that our standard for marriage-or any other social institution-ought to be human well-being. Since same-sex marriage promotes security for gay and lesbian persons and, consequently, social stability, it meets that standard.

She wasn't satisfied. "But if we don't have a single fixed standard," she continued, "then anything goes."

There's something rhetorically satisfying when an opponent's fallacies can be identified with neat names: in this case, "false dilemma." Either marriage remains solely heterosexual, she was saying, or else society embraces a sexual free-for-all-as former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum put it, "man on man, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

No, no, no. The fact that boundaries change and evolve does not entail that we should have no boundaries at all, or that where they're drawn is entirely arbitrary. Again, the standard is societal well-being, and everyone agrees that "man on dog" marriage fails to meet that standard. Let's not change the subject.

Her challenge reminded me of those who cite the dictionary and then object that same-sex marriage is "impossible by definition," since marriage by definition requires a husband and wife. Dictionaries reflect usage, and as usage evolves, so do dictionaries. (Ever try to read Beowulf in the original Old English?)

More important, the dictionary objection founders on the simple fact that if something were truly "impossible by definition," there would be no reason to worry about it, since it can't ever happen. No one bothers amending constitutions to prohibit square circles or married bachelors.

But my rhetorical satisfaction in explaining "false dilemma" and the evolution of language was tempered by the reality I was confronting. My questioner wasn't simply grandstanding. She was expressing a genuine-and widely shared-fear: if we embrace same-sex marriage, than life as we know it will change dramatically for the worse. Standards will deteriorate. Our children will inherit a confused and morally impoverished world.

Such fear is what's driving many of the voters who support amendments in California, Florida, and Arizona to prohibit same-sex marriage, and we ignore or belittle it at our peril.

And so I explained again-gently but firmly-how same-sex marriage is good for gay people and good for society. When there's someone whose job it is to take care of you a vice-versa, everyone benefits-not just you, but those around you as well. That's true whether you're gay or straight.

I also explained how giving marriage to gay people doesn't mean taking it away from straight people, any more than giving the vote to women meant taking it away from men. No one is suggesting that we make same-sex marriage mandatory. Our opponents' talk of "redefining" marriage-rather than, say, "expanding" it-tends to obscure this fact.

Not all fears bend to rational persuasion, but some do. In any case, I don't generally answer questions in these forums for the sole benefit of the questioner. Typically, I answer them for benefit of everyone in the room, including the genuine fence-sitters who are unsure about what position to take on marriage equality for gays and lesbians.

To them, we need to make the case that same-sex marriage won't cause the sky to fall.

If the election were held tomorrow, it's quite likely that gays would lose marriage in California.

That's California, our most populous state, home of San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi and the liberal Hollywood elite. What progressive California giveth, progressive California may taketh away.

It surprises (and frankly, depresses) me how few gay people know or care what's happening. Here's the quick version: in May, the California Supreme Court declared the state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Prior to the decision, California had domestic partnership legislation granting nearly all of the statewide legal incidents of marriage. But the Court held that denying marriage to gay and lesbian couples deprived them of a fundamental right and constituted wrongful discrimination.

Gays began legally marrying in June, making California the second state (after Massachusetts) to support marriage equality.

Meanwhile, opponents collected enough signatures for a November ballot initiative to amend the constitution so that "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." (The amendment would leave domestic partnerships intact, but it would make it impossible for California to recognize same-sex marriages from Massachusetts or elsewhere.)

For several months we seemed poised to win. That changed in the last few weeks, with recent polls showing us losing 47-42 percent.

Why the shift? One reason is that we're being out-fundraised and outspent, and the opposition's advertising is effective. Recent figures posted by the Los Angeles Times show our opponents raising $26.1 million to our $21.8. A substantial chunk of the opposition's money has come from out of state, 40 percent of it from Mormons.

You read that last line correctly: 40 percent of the financial support for one-man-one-woman marriage in California is coming from members of a church that little over a century ago was pro-polygamy (and still has many polygamist offshoots). Forty percent of the support is coming from a religious denomination that makes up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.

What's even more shocking are some of the individual reports about donors. The Sacramento Bee tells the story of Pam and Rick Patterson, who live with their five children in a modest three-bedroom home in Folsom. They withdrew $50,000 from their savings and donated it to Yes on 8. Pam says that it wasn't an easy decision, "But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children."

Or consider David Nielson, a retired insurance executive from Auburn. He and his wife Susan donated $35,000. They plan to forgo vacations for the next several years and make other sacrifices to cover their donation, "because some causes are worth fighting for."

If I didn't know better, I would think that California had just made same-sex marriage mandatory.

And this is what's both baffling and frustrating. We gays have a direct and palpable stake in the outcome of this referendum. Yet few of us (myself included) are willing to make the kinds of sacrifices made by the Nielsons and the Pattersons-people whose marriage was, is, and will remain heterosexual regardless of what happens. They are free to choose so-called "traditional marriage" if it suits them. So what are they so afraid of?

I think the gay-rights movement's failure to grapple with this question is another important reason why we may lose. We frame our arguments in terms of rights and liberty, forgetting that some people want the liberty to live without exposure to certain ways of life. They want a world where no one sees marriage for gays as an option-not their government, not their neighbors, and definitely not their children.

They want that world badly, badly enough to sacrifice for it.

In a democratic society, they are free to want that simpler world, and to spend money to get it, and to vote in favor of it. We are free to fight back. But that fight must include thoughtful responses to their concerns. It is not enough to assert our rights, especially when the documents embodying those rights can be amended by popular vote.

We need to make a positive moral case to our opponents. We need to show them that our lives are good, that our relationships are healthy, that our happiness is compatible with theirs. We need to show them that marriage is good for gays, and that what's good for gays is good for society.

We need to tell them the story of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the first same-sex couple to marry in California, a couple who were together for 56 years until Del Martin's death in August at the age of 87. We need to tell them: these are the kind of people you are trying to take marriage away from.

I wouldn't put my money on winning over the Pattersons and the Nielsons. But there are undecided voters who share their concerns-concerns about the world their children will inherit. We need to make the case to them. We need to raise money to communicate that case. And we need to do it fast.

In case you hadn't noticed, we are in the middle of October's annual observance of Gay History Month. Nor would anyone's failure to notice be surprising.

Gay History Month has been institutionally homeless in recent years, so no organization is really publicizing it. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation was once eager to host it, but quickly lost interest. A few gay Web sites, email lists, gay community centers and gay newspapers have continued to promote gay history, but too few and too little.

I suppose the question arises, Why should anyone bother with gay history? After all, the past is only prologue to our own time. It's over. The important point is to move on from here. So learning about gay history is a merely antiquarian enterprise.

True enough, you can live a reasonably happy and satisfying life without knowing any gay history. But I don't see it as quite so irrelevant to our own time. I think knowing gay history has some continuing value. For one thing, we can be encouraged and energized by learning about the lives and pioneering activist efforts of many gays in the past.

I admire the courage and self-confidence of the gay men and women who came out in the 1950s and 1960s-before the "Stonewall" street theater of late June 1969 gave a populist boost to the gay movement. And I admire the continuous struggle, sometimes successful, sometimes not, to find an audience for gay-affirming arguments among politicians and the media in order to confront the culture's homophobia at a time when it was much more pervasive than now.

No one can fail to be moved by the story of San Francisco city supervisor (i.e., city councilman) and pioneering activist Harvey Milk who was assassinated on Nov. 27, 1970s. Milk had a premonition that he might at some point be assassinated, and in a tape of his "political will" he made the now famous statement, "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Randy Shilts's book "The Mayor of Castro Street" (1982) tells the story. It also contains Milk's speeches, including one called "The Hope Speech," in which he said our goal as gay activists is to provide hope for isolated young gays in such places as Altoona, Pa., and Richmond, Minn. Longtime Chicago activist Tim Drake once told me he re-reads that speech at least once a year.

Another reason to learn some gay history is that we can find out from the experiences of gays in the past what survival techniques and what activist measures worked better and worse and what ones didn't work at all, all the more important since so much of the world (and the U.S.!) is still not very enlightened about gays.

Most people find it helpful to think of themselves as part of a community. And that community extends not only to other gays in the neighborhood and the city but back in time. From there it is but a short step to realizing that each of us is the latest but not last element in that community. There are young gays just being born and there are gays yet to be born who will continue our struggle for legal equality and social acceptance. They will build on whatever we are able to achieve culturally and politically and whatever institutional structures we are able to create.

At present, learning gay history is a "do it yourself" project. Fortunately, there are several good books covering different phases of gay history. If they aren't available to bookstores, public libraries probably have them. The earliest good one is John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities (1983) which covers the period 1940 to 1970. The more recent Out for Good (1999) by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney covers the period from 1969 to the late 1980s.

Three collections of accounts of gay activists provide valuable historical perspective: Before Stonewall (2002) begun by Wayne Dynes and completed by Vern Bullough contains brief biographies of nearly 50 early gay figures. The others are Eric Marcus's two overlapping but enjoyable collections of interview material, Making History (1992) and Making Gay History (2002).

And there are plenty of books on specialized topics-the history of the AIDS epidemic, homosexuality in 17th-century England, gay activism internationally, gays in the military, homosexuality in ancient Greece and homosexuality in New York City from the late 1890s to the 1930s. Perhaps the most comprehensive book of all is Louis Crompton's beautifully illustrated Homosexuality and Civilization (2003). Do not deprive yourself of the pleasures of these books.