ABSTRACT
Understanding the gay and lesbian movement is, to a certain extent, more complicated than grasping an instrumental movement like the environmental movement. Whereas the latter’s goal realization depends almost 100 percent on the external world—adversaries, authorities, and allies—in the history of the gay and lesbian movement, campaigns directed toward authorities and against adversaries alternate with internally oriented activities. These internal activities in particular confront us with the following conceptual problem: how do we draw the boundary between movement and subculture if both their activities are aimed at identity construction? In order to comprehend the gay and lesbian movement, we propose to distinguish between politicized identities (constituting a movement) and purely subcultural identities—often formed in the commercial subculture—that do not challenge the outside world. 1
