ABSTRACT
The abrupt public revelation of a gay American community in 1969 led rapidly to a unique transitional social structure. is structure-what is known as the “gay subculture”—is a complex eld of values and relationships that is suused with both traditional American middle-class values and intense reactions against those values. Contemporary French cultural critics have claimed that homosexuality, because of its uniquely subversive relationship to Western values, has a crucial social function in breaking down repressive structures. In spite of this idealistic concept, the gay subculture reacted to the awareness of its own existence by creating both rigid and diused social structures in an atmosphere o en fraught with tension and social uncertainty.1
