The influence of gays and lesbians on language, literature, theater, poetry, dance, music, and the arts is unmeasurable. In the era before AIDS, gay and lesbian culture had a defining, if unrecognized, influence on American life, an influence that is only now being acknowledged. This reissue of the classic anthology, Lavender Culture , serves as a provocative, dynamic, and wide-ranging reminder of American gay and lesbian culture in the days before the status of gay people received widespread attention in the media, religion, and politics, before Newsweek saw it fit to feature a cover story on LESBIANS, and before gays and lesbians took center stage in America's cultural landscape. Here we find the young, assertive voices of such activists, authors, and artists as Rita Mae Brown, Barbara Grier, John Stoltenberg, Julia Penelope, Andrea Dworkin, Andrew Kopkind, Jane Rule, Arthur Bell, Charlotte Bunche, and dozens more. Including essays on such diverse subjects as gay bath houses, the gay male image in classical ballet, images of gays in rock music, Judy Garland, lesbian humor, sports and machismo, the growing business of women's music, and the Cleveland bar scene in the 1940s, Lavender Culture, with new introductory essays by the editors and Cindy Patton, offers a panoply of gay and lesbian life, tracing the current influence and visibility of gay and lesbian culture back to its origins.

"Harvey Milk--eloquent, charismatic, and a smart-aleck--was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but he had not even served a full year in office when he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor. Milk's assassination at the age of forty-eight made him the most famous gay man in modern history; twenty years later Time magazine included him on its list of the hundred most influential individuals of the twentieth century. Before finding his calling as a politician, however, Harvey variously tried being a schoolteacher, a securities analyst on Wall Street, a supporter of Barry Goldwater, a Broadway theater assistant, a bead-wearing hippie, the operator of a camera store and organizer of the local business community in San Francisco. He rejected Judaism as a religion, but he was deeply influenced by the cultural values of his Jewish upbringing and his understanding of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. His early influences and his many personal and professional experiences finally came together when he decided to run for elective office as the forceful champion of gays, racial minorities, women, working people, the disabled, and senior citizens. In his last five years, he focused all of his tremendous energy on becoming a successful public figure with a distinct political voice."--Dust jacket.

Restore the foundations of moral order in America! Homosexual activists want their sexual lifestyles to be a civil right, but did you know that they seek to silence the truth about homosexuality and abolish moral judgment in any form? The Agenda takes you inside the culture war, exposing the shocking methods of the "gay" campaign and the strategies homosexual activists are employing to transform American society radically. Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, a prominent voice exposing the homosexual rights movement for thirty-three years, reveals their agenda and how it impacts Christianity, the business community, public schools, the church, and the media. Discover the powerful answers to these thought-provoking questions: *How and when did the homosexual movement get started? *How did militant homosexual activists force the American Psychiatric Association to abandon its official policy that classified same-sex attraction as a mental disorder? *How have the resources of the public health system and funds designated for AIDS research been co-opted by homosexual activists to promote their lifestyle to America's children? *Why is same-sex marriage a bad idea?You can help restore the moral fabric of the nation. This timely book will inform and motivate you to get involved in stopping the radical transformation of American culture and protecting future generations from the destructive forces of the homosexual agenda.