ABSTRACT
The U.S. gay and lesbian movement of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s laid the foundation for transformative social, cultural, and political developments in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first. In many respects, the work of gay and lesbian activism continued after 1990 and it continues today. In other respects, however, the gay and lesbian movement was replaced or superseded by the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) and queer movements in the 1990s and early 2000s. This distinction is more than semantic. Words matter and movements change. We should not assume that just because there was a gay and lesbian movement in the past there necessarily is one in the present.
