The fight for gay and lesbian civil rights -- the years of injustice, the early battles, the defeats, and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers -- is an important civil rights issue of the present day. In this book, Lillian Faderman tells this unfinished story through the accounts of passionate struggles with sweep, depth, and feeling. The Gay Revolution begins in the 1950s, when gays and lesbians were criminals, psychiatrists saw them as mentally ill, churches saw them as sinners, and society victimized them with hatred. Against this dark backdrop, a few brave people began to fight back, paving the way for the revolutionary changes of the 1960s and beyond. Faderman discusses the protests in the 1960s; the counter reaction of the 1970s and early eighties; the decimated but united community during the AIDS epidemic; and the current hurdles for the right to marriage equality.

A brief history of changing terminology -- Lawbreakers and loonies -- America hunts for witches -- No army of lovers: Toward a homosexual-free military -- America protects its youngsters -- Mattachine -- The daughters -- Jousts with the Four Horsemen -- Slivers of space and justice -- Throwing down the gauntlet -- The homosexual American citizen takes the government to court -- The riots -- Say it proud, and loud: New gay politics -- Less talk and more action: The Gay Activists Alliance -- A parallel revolution: Lesbian feminists -- Dressing for dinner -- How gays and lesbians stopped being crazies -- The culture war in earnest -- Enter, Anita -- How to lose a battle -- Grappling with defeat -- Learning how to win -- Of martyrs and marches -- The plague -- Family values -- New gays and lesbians versus the old military -- Don't ask, don't tell, don't serve -- "Get 'Don't ask, don't tell' done!" -- How lesbians and gays stopped being sex criminals -- "The first law in American history that begins the job of protecting LGBT people" -- A forty-year war: The struggle for workplace protection -- "The status that everyone understands as the ultimate expression of love and commitment" -- Getting it right, and wrong, in the West -- The evolution of a president and the country.