Jay, Karla, and Allen Young, eds. Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation. New York: NYU Press, 1972.

Summary
This book is a collection of essays and manifestos that document the early writings of Gay Rights activists, as this book was only a spate of books published about Gay rights in the early 1970s. John D. Emilio, in his foreword, writes that this anthology “is also a historical document” and is a “product of a particular moment in time.” Gay Liberation is the struggle by homosexuals for dignity, respect, and civil rights as well as the termination of the system of male supremacy. This movement (as many of the essays underscored) came out of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York; yet, gay activists had articulated liberatory ideas dating back to the 1950s and had successfully fought to publish a gay magazine (One Magazine) and had won employment discrimination cases in federal courts. The civil rights movement, Black Power, and student unrest on campus all further propelled gay rights activism and made Stonewall seem inevitable. The Movement also drew on tactics and ideas of other movements: National Liberation Front (name), Black Power (solidarity), and feminism (tactics). Reflecting the radicalism of the 1960s, these gay liberationists claimed a revolutionary political identify; saw the battle against sexism as the very heart of their struggle; broke decisively with hegemonic conceptions of homosexuality and sexual identity, and politicized everything, including sexual behavior and relationships. Jay and Young similarly emphasize the connections, noting that the initial thrust of the post-Stonewall gay liberation movement was shaped by 1960s counterculture, black civil rights movement, the New Left, and radical feminism. By the mid-1970s and through the 1980s, however, gay politics was transformed and moved away (like other movements of change) from its more radical edge to a reformist one that aimed to gain civil rights through the court systems. Nonetheless, by drawing on these various movements in the 1960s, the Stonewall Generation “invented a new language and style of homosexuality.” Stonewall was thus a turning point in the sense that it marked the moment in Gay History as it initiated a move toward mass public affirmation of homosexual desire.