ABSTRACT
This chapter examines gay liberation as a radical movement shaped by the politics of the 1960s, one that strove to be a multiracial, cross-class coalition, and yet struggled with issues of inclusion. Tracking the rising tide of radicalism from the mid-Sixties through the Stonewall Rebellion and into the 1970s, it shows tensions building within the homophile movement, the explosive release of Stonewall, and the new forms of mobilization undertaken through the rhetoric of gay liberation. Never a monolithic movement, liberation included everything from streetwalking “freaks” of color to middle class gay men, white lesbian separatists, black lesbian socialists, bisexual activists, and more.
