Book Review — Gay Power by David Eisenbach

History professor David Eisenbach documents the decades-long movement for LGBT+ equality in the United States

Photo by the Author

Throughout 2024’s Pride Month, I took it upon myself to proactively delve more deeply into the history of my community. After all, the agonizing journeys of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other queer Americans are rarely given attention in American classrooms.

As a starting point, I read *Gay Power: An American Revolution*. Authored in 2006 by Columbia University historian David Eisenbach, this compilation follows the struggles of LGBT+ folks from the aftermath of World War II up through the AIDS panic of the 1980s.

Eisenbach is skilled at painting a chronology of Queer America’s unfolding story. He lays out the realities and approaches taken by queer activists, over time, in the face of adversaries and apathetic audiences. Through Eisenbach’s narration, he draws together a wide array of variables and obstacles weighed by the LGBT+ community as its leaders ventured into uncharted territories of activism.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK

If you want a clearer picture of why Queer Americans have been perceived as a threat by our enemies, Gay Power assesses those sentiments with objectivity.

Through his judicious usage of quotations and footnotes, Eisenbach shows us how mindful leaders of the gay liberation movement were when considering their options for action. They often disagreed with one another as to what their approach should be. But they shared the common goal of bringing dignity to all people regardless of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Speaking as a gay person, I want to make it clear that the heterosexual Eisenbach’s clear and factual presentation of queer history — as contained within this book — makes him a straight ally, in my eyes.

STYLE / FORMAT

Eisenbach fills 309 pages with a buffet of facts and eyewitness accounts. Afterward, he follows that up with acknowledgements, a bibliography, notes, and an index.

Following his foreword, there are ten main chapters as well as an epilogue. The book moves mostly in a chronological manner — starting in the 1950s and focusing its denouement on where the movement had landed once the 1980s concluded.

Foreword — entitled “An American Revolution,” the author emphasizes how popular support for queer rights has always hinged on Americans seeing that gay people weren’t a threat. He invokes visceral strides forward in this realm that have included *Queer Eye, [Brokeback Mountain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokeback_Mountain)*, and the 2004 Democratic Party platform. Eisenbach previews the significance of 1970s-era “zaps” and AIDS stigmatization during the 1980s.

If I have one criticism, upfront, it’s that Eisenbach lets President George W. Bush off the hook a little too easily for Bush’s support of the Federal Marriage Amendment — a proposal that posed the threat of having even more far-reaching negative ramifications for LGBT+ people than the FMA’s proponents would have had us believe.

Chapter One — entitled “The Greatest Homosexual Population in the World,” Eisenbach talks about the simultaneous freedom and repression of a closeted gay New Yorker in 1950s. Celebrities such as J. Edgar Hoover, Rock Hudson, Liberace, and Roy Cohn were closeted…forced to pretend they were heterosexual. He covers the “Chickens and Bulls” rings of blackmail and extortion — along with how the NYPD waged undercover raids and stings of entrapment, especially in gay bars.

David Webster Cory (birth name “Edward Sagarin”) broached public discussion over sexual orientation by writing The Homosexual in America in 1951. Eisenbach explores aspects such as gay creativity, psychological stability, recognition of minority status, affinity groups, liberal allies (e.g. the ACLU), media representation, queer literature, and the need for a “gay hero” within pop culture. He credits Cory with calling for all of these elements as part of a greater movement for authentic portrayals of queer people.

Chapter Two — entitled “Breaking the ‘Conspiracy of Silence’,” the author focuses on the homophile movement, including the Mattachine Society (and its magazine, One) founded by Harry Hay. Some activists rejected Hay’s vision of declaring homosexuality to be a separate minority class — instead promoting integration into straight society. Eventually, Hay left the deradicalized Mattachine Society and partnered with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon to found the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). When the West Coast Mattachine chapters dissolved their affiliation with the national organization, it gave greater independence to the NY-based Mattachine Society.

Eisenbach then refocuses on how Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols moved Mattachine in a more radical direction after feuding with U.S. Congressman John Dowdy. Kameny modeled queer liberation after black liberation, founding another gay-centric publication called The Homosexual Citizen. Meanwhile, Randy Wicker advocated for diverse portrayals of homosexual people — he felt Mattachine was too conflict-averse, so he started the Homosexual League of America. The main difference was that old-guard homosexual organizations wanted to assimilate into straight society, whereas Kameny and Wicker wanted to liberate gay people. Kameny also founded the conference of East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO).

George Weinberg became one of the first high-profile straight allies. Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen were inspired by Martin, Lyon, and Weinberg to raise the public image of lesbian women. Many gay people were skittish because they wanted to live low-key, uneventful lives outside of the spotlight. Nichols pushed for homosexuality to be declassified as no longer a “sickness,” normalized as a casual orientation. However, members of the old guard viewed the “deviant” classification as an acceptable middle ground. Cory himself regressed to the point of advocating for conversion therapy, speaking out against Mattachine as he’d now altered his position and claimed homosexuality needed to be treated through psychotherapy. Rejecting this accommodationist mindset, Dick Leitsch challenged systemic discrimination against gay people in New York City, thereby rallying peers to create the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO).

This chapter was critical in delineating how a major schism had widened between gay rights leaders when mulling over the matter of assimilation versus liberation.

Chapter Three — entitled “Pride of Lions,” Eisenbach spotlights Bob Martin as the first true gay liberation leader. Mentored by Kameny, Martin forged alliances with Foster Gunnison and James Millham to create the Student Homophile League (SHL) at Columbia University in 1966. The SHL became the first gay student group in America to gain official university recognition.

New York Times reporter Murray Schumach reported on SHL’s eventual recognition by Columbia. Schumach’s journalism humanized homosexual students, which amplified Martin’s voice through the platform. Columbia’s alumni were worried about bad P.R., whereas Leitsch was jealous of the attention Martin had gained. When Leitsch tried to tarnish Martin’s reputation, it reflected older queer activists’ fears that younger queer activists would outshine them.

Eisenbach emphasizes SHL’s pre-Stonewall influence. By hosting on-campus “dance-ins” and making demands of Columbia’s administration, they induced a turning point in the transition where queer folks blossomed from homophiles into liberators. By 1971, there were 60 formally-recognized gay rights student groups on American college campuses — largely due to Martin and his coalition.

Chapter Four — entitled “From ‘Boys in the Band’ to ‘Street Fighting Man’,” the author opens by illustrating how 1968’s *The Boys in the Band was an authentic Broadway theatre production depicting gay male characters. Soonafter, Nichols along with Lige Clarke published a coed full-frontal pornographic series called “The Homosexual Citizen” in Screw* magazine; Nichols and Clarke took a page from hippie-esque mentalities to allow homosexual people to shine as full-fledged sexual creatures.

Eisenbach segues into the history of the June 1969 Stonewall Riots. Corruption had plagued The Stonewall Inn even prior to that fateful night of police brutality. When the media covered Stonewall, it resulted in the general public viewing queer people as scrappy and willing to stand up for themselves. On the other hand, older gay people worried about how imagery of the Stonewall rioters would affect the LGBT+ community as a whole.

In the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) were both created. Al Goldstein started the publication entitled GAY, which, among other things, provided Mick Jagger with a platform to appeal to a sexually-diverse audience. During another raid of gay bars in March 1970, Diego Viñales was impaled; the resulting marches led to a new breed of gay militancy that challenged stereotypes related to behavior and fashion.

Although the riots propelled The Christopher Street Liberation Parade to a queer international holiday, these liberation marches exacerbated the generational divide amongst queer people themselves.

Chapter Five — entitled “The New Homosexual,” Eisenbach contrasts Leitsch’s calls for moderation with the theatrical Jim Fouratt as their new foil. Leitsch worried that alienating straight allies would impede his ability to work within the system; for that reason, he rejected calls by gay radicals for partnerships between the gay liberation and black liberation movements.

Marty Robinson and Jim Owles rose in prominence, as activists, amidst the Mattachine network fading. The GLF found itself split over whether to focus primarily on gay rights versus joining with a broader coalition of leftists. After haggling over minutiae, the organization split into multiple affinity cells.

Eisenbach details the phenomenon of “zaps” (hit-and-run protests) popularized by Robinson, which drew attention to gay issues. The zaps fostered a sensation of gay power while forcing politicians to confront issues important to the community. Sadly, the GLF failed to broaden its outreach beyond queer media; it rarely utilized mainstream media to get out its message. Fouratt and the GLF criticized Kameny, Gittings, and Lahusen in much the same way those three had criticized Cory, Martin, and Lyon, one generation earlier.

Another aspect Eisenbach explores is the influence of women on queer activism. Rita Mae Brown quit the National Organization for Women after NOW turned its back on gay rights. As Brown joined GLF, lesbian leaders rose in prominence. They often used the term “Lavender Menace” in a reclamatory manner. But more fissures surfaced within the queer community when separatists hijacked the term “lesbian” beyond serving as a reference to homosexual women. There was also a subculture of “effeminists” — groups of gay men who became deferential to women, sometimes latching onto left-leaning supremacists.

Eventually, Robinson and Owles broke off from GLF due to the chaos and violence — including the lack of unity between the Queer and Black communities plus debate over whether the anti-gay stances of Fidel Castro were antithetical to queer liberation.

Chapter Six — entitled “The Made-for-TV Movement,” the author thrusts us into the progression of GLF refugees founding the GAA with a single focus on attaining rights for homosexual Americans. Queer activists now faced the false objection that race and biological sex should be prioritized over sexuality because queer people had the ability to “hide.” They challenged the perceived mutability of queer people, countering that anti-LGBT+ oppression operated very distinctly from oppression based on “immutable” factors such as biological sex or skin color; thus, repression was all the more difficult to defeat because so many observers were so quick to dismiss the notion that it existed in the first place.

Television personalities including Dick Cavett, Jack Paar, and David Susskind provided GAA members with forums to speak their minds, showcase talents, and debate critics. While these TV appearances exuded likability and relatability, some queer people criticized them as conforming to heteronormative imagery.

As the mainstream media recognized GAA’s militancy, dance parties for socialization became more frequent amongst queer folks — although there was still racial exclusion in these predominantly-White spaces, forcing Black lesbian activists to break off and form their own events. Robinson and Owles continued to use zaps as a way to pressure political candidates into supporting antidiscrimination measures — Carol Greitzer, John Lindsay, and George McGovern were among those brought over to their side.

Chapter Seven — entitled “The Inner Circle Affair,” Eisenbach centers Weinberg’s coinage of the term “homophobia” as a way to turn the tables on critics of homosexuality. This phonetic reference painted those right-wing agitators as the ones with mental disorders.

The “homophobe” label was applied to firefighter Mickey Maye, who was prosecuted for beating up gay activist Morty Manford in April of 1972. Manford’s assault was indicative of how police officers would routinely look the other way when queer people were targeted with violence. Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) arose in the wake of Maye’s criminality, and the Manford family appeared on *Donahue* to help humanize their son.

The publicized violence against Manford was another turning point that drove LGBT+ folks to formulate their own definition (and iteration) of “family.”

Chapter Eight — entitled “The Gay Lounge,” the author tells the story of how Manford spearheaded the first gay student lounge in the nation at Columbia University.

“Gay People at Columbia (GPC)” had formed in the late-1960s to give comfort to queer students at Columbia in terms of becoming secure in their identities. Manford wanted the lounge to be an additional source of refuge; he made the case that, even though sexuality and race manifest differently, queer students still deserved their own recognized spaces in the same way individual BIPOC groups (Black, Latine, Asian) had been granted them.

Eisenbach describes Manford as “a tough yet respectable homosexual [person] who countered the old stereotypes.” Columbia’s administration dismissed its student body’s support for the gay lounge, which university president William McGill feared would corrupt young men. Another dean, Carl Hovde, was sympathetic to gay students; but he tried to back up McGill by claiming that racial diversity served the public interest whereas sexual freedom was a private matter. In turn, gay students rebutted McGill and Hovde by pointing out how Columbia was favoring value-judgments against homosexuality.

There was also pushback from Columbia University’s Student Afro-American Society (SAS), which opposed homosexuality on the grounds that they viewed it as a threat to the black family. McGill assumed that the gay lounge issue would go away through “benign neglect.” By the Fall of 1971, the administration had quietly funded amenities for the gay lounge without formally recognizing the lounge itself.

It was finally a younger dean, Peter Pouncey, who convinced Columbia to recognize the gay lounge on neutral terms — the administration would deem the group as neither good nor bad. By 1972, the lounge was officially recognized.

Chapter Nine — entitled “It’s Official Now: We’re Not Sick,” Eisenbach tracks the history of how mental health authorities viewed homosexuality. As early as 1896, German psychologist Magnus Hirschfeld claimed antisodomy laws weren’t valid since homosexuality was a “defect.” Nearly four decades later, Sigmund Freud specified that homosexuality was a normal-but-incurable phase that would only become a problem if accompanied by deviant behavior. Freud didn’t view it as a mental illness in and of itself, since he reasoned it was possible for someone to be homosexual and high-functioning or well-adjusted.

In the late-1940s, Hungarian psychoanalyst Sandor Rado reached an opposite conclusion from Freud’s — heterosexuality was inherent within everybody, and homosexuality was curable through conversion therapy because it was a phobic response. The American Psychological Association (APA) formally listed homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1952. The following decade, Irving Bieber postulated that homosexuality was a result of flawed parenting. Charles Socarides concurred with Bieber…but Socarides went further by blaming feminism. Both of them wanted the public to view gay people as needing to be pitied rather than lambasted.

Alfred Kinsey conducted a 1948 study estimating that 37% of all men were either homosexual or bisexual. Evelyn Hooker did a 1957 study with flawed methodology that nevertheless initiated a belief that behaviors from gay and straight people could be interchangeable. Judd Marmor published Sexual Inversion in 1965, arguing that deviance didn’t equate with maladjustment when happiness was involved. Using these theories, Kameny led the charge against the sickness model.

Perhaps most compelling is Eisenbach’s sketch of John Fryer — a psychiatrist who was so fearful of being “outed” that he wore a Richard Nixon mask and had his voice digitally altered while testifying that homosexuality was normal. Cloaking his real-life identity, he branded himself as “Dr. Henry Anonymous.”

In 1971, the APA took a tentative step toward progress by removing homosexuality from the “abnormal psychology” category. Then, the APA reclassified “sexual orientation disturbance” (“homodysphilia”) as a special disorder based on lobbying from psychiatrist Robert Spitzer. This was in contrast to the humanistic case made by Ron Gold and Jean O’Leary. Although Gold took issue with Spitzer’s compromise, Kameny praised it as a step in the right direction.

Bruce Voeller challenged “blue-jean elitism” within the Queer community on behalf of gay people in the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) who wanted to opt out of the confrontational methods. At the very end of 1973, NGTF’s lobbying led to the APA finally removing homosexuality entirely from the diagnostic manual.

Post-1973 public attitudes against homosexuality slowly and gradually softened; even amidst the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, the APA kept homosexuality off of its diagnostic manual.

Chapter Ten — entitled “Miss Oklahoma vs. Macho Man,” the author delves into the power of celebrity in changing public perception of homosexuality. In 1975, former NFL running back Dave Kopay came out as gay; that same year, Al Pacino portrayed John Wojtowicz in the film *Dog Day Afternoon by depicting a gay male protagonist as “a gun-toting hero.” A September 1976 episode of the CBS sitcom [Alice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_(American_TV_series))* showed Philip McKeon’s straight teen character of Tommy Hyatt bonding with an older gay male role model. Soon, some queer public figures expressed fear that portrayals of gay characters had become so saccharine that they would be viewed as unrealistically exotic.

Other queer milestones included the surging popularity of The Village People, who ushered in gay acceptance with songs like “Macho Man” and “In the Navy.” In 1972, Bob Martin was honorably (rather than dishonorably) discharged from the Navy after challenging its ban on gay servicepeople. Air Force officer Lenny Matlovich became the first openly-gay man to appear on the cover of a national magazine with his “I Am a Homosexual” spread in Time. Manford founded the Lambda Club, which provided mental health and urgent care services to queer people in New York City; in due time, Lambda Legal Defense sprouted from it.

During the Carter Administration, GAA split into many different organizations. Politicians skirted around taking proactive stances on gay rights by supporting nondiscrimination policies. In 1976, Birch Bayh became the first presidential candidate to campaign in a gay bar. Before getting elected to the presidency, Jimmy Carter had called homosexuality a “sin” — but, once he became president, Carter supported nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation. And, in 1977, openly-gay candidate Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Eisenbach outlines many of the ways in which conservative groups organized a Moral Majority that started in the 1970s and would become more active in the 1980s. There were three basic categories of attitudes that heterosexual Americans had toward queer people: accepting, hostile, and tolerant. The Catholic Church exploited the latter two categories by trying to link homosexuality with pedophilia as an antithesis to “family values.”

Anita Bryant appealed to churchgoing Americans with her charisma and celebrity appeal. Although Bryant elicited a backlash from liberals and moderates, it couldn’t stop a Miami gay rights ordinance from getting defeated at the ballot box. On one side, there were conservatives buying into fears over the “gay lifestyle” being “anti-family.” However, a slew of commercial boycotts ultimately soured the public’s perception of Bryant.

As the 1980s commenced, President Ronald Reagan continued to calmly condemn homosexuality. The battle wore on.

Epilogue — entitled “The Conspiracy of Silence Redux,” Eisenbach traces back the earliest reporting of the AIDS epidemic to July of 1981. This coincided with Reagan’s cuts to the CDC and NIH. In response, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) was created.

He contrasts New York City and San Francisco as being night-and-day in how their approaches to handling AIDS outbreaks differed. Larry Kramer urged fellow gay men to reject promiscuity and unprotected sex. Randy Shilts of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a March 1983 article on the prevalence of AIDS amongst the gay male population of New York City, which set off a flood of media frenzy.

The likes of Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, and Pat Buchanan used AIDS as a pretense to fuel the Moral Majority. They helped the Republican Party win in a landslide in 1984 by focusing on “family values.” In response, The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) targeted Moral Majority rhetoric.

As the 80s closed out, Rock Hudson’s posthumous outing humanized homosexuality…especially as related to the pain of AIDS victims and survivors. ACT-UP was founded by Kramer and his allies. Once the queer community began to emphasize safe sex practices, the political issue of same-sex marriage moved into the spotlight as a necessity based on how many gay men had lost their lovers to AIDS.

Gay Power is layered with descriptions of rich history forming the backbone of how gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people found our voices. As a heterosexual supporter, Eisenbach should be commended for aiding our community in telling these important facets of our shared story.

If I have any criticism at all of Eisenbach’s compilation, it’s that I would have welcomed more accounts of LGBT+ political and cultural struggles throughout the 1990s and early-aughts. Since his book was published in 2006, talking about public figures such as RuPaul, Ellen DeGeneres, Matthew Shepard, and Mark Bingham would have felt more timely.

That being said: for any LGBT+ people out there who are passionate about queer youth “learning our history” — David Eisenbach’s Gay Power does a fantastic job of analyzing those first four decades of this American struggle for orientational sovereignty.

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