Also, Gay Lib. The Gay
Liberation movement arose in the late 1960s and exploded after the
Stonewall riot in 1969 with the formation of radical gay groups like the
Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. Movement
leaders broke decisively with their homophile
forebears, dismissing them as gutless accommodationists,
and advocated a project of cooperation with the profusion of other
radical groups that flowered during the 1960's and early '70's like
Women's Liberation, the Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black
Power movement. These groups all shared a sense that Western
capitalist societies were structurally flawed and nothing short of
revolution could insure justice and freedom.
Gay Libbers' battle cry,
"Out of the closets, into the streets," mobilized gay people
in a way that the tepid liberal strategy of the homophiles never could,
largely because their audience was different. Enraged by the
Vietnam War, the despoliation of the environment, and the oppression of
women and minorities, the college students who constituted most of the
gay lib movement were ready for a more radical message.
The radical movements of the
'60's and ''70's were remarkably successful. Environmentalist
helped spawn the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Women's Libbers
and Black radicals spurred the government into passing
anti-discrimination laws, and Gay Libbers triumphed over their greatest
enemy, the psychoanalysts, when they forced the American Psychiatric
Association to remove homosexuality from its official list of mental
diseases.
