ABSTRACT
The analogy with the civil rights movement has value in understanding gay liberation since one of the major aspects of reform movements is that one type of reform begets another type of reform. Edward Sagarin in his study of organized homosexual movements compared the early Mattachine Foundation to Alcoholics Anonymous, since secrecy was a byword and its chief purpose was to help its members live a well-oriented and socially productive life. One of the contradictory aspects that appears in the account of the emergence of the pioneering gay organizations is that they appeared at a time when fear of homosexuality was great, when McCarthyism was at its height, and when any movement demanding greater sexual freedom could be regarded as subversive. The American Civil Liberties Union in 1964 in its Los Angeles affiliate and in 1965 on the national level had come out for a change in the laws dealing with homosexuality.
