Despite the tremendous gains of the LGBT movement in recent years,
the history of gay life in this country remains poorly understood.
According to conventional wisdom, gay liberation started with the
Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969. The 1970s represented
a moment of triumph- both political and sexual- before the AIDS
crisis in the subsequent decade, which, in the view of many,
exposed the problems inherent in the so-called gay lifestyle".In
Stand by Me , the acclaimed historian Jim Downs rewrites the
history of gay life in the 1970s, arguing that the decade was about
much more than sex and marching in the streets. Drawing on a vast
trove of untapped records at LGBT community centres in Los Angeles,
New York, and Philadelphia, Downs tells moving, revelatory stories
of gay people who stood together- as friends, fellow believers, and
colleagues- to create a sense of community among people who felt
alienated from mainstream American life.As Downs shows, gay people
found one another in the Metropolitan Community Church, a
nationwide gay religious group in the pages of the Body Politic , a
newspaper that encouraged its readers to think of their sexuality
as a political identity at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, the
hub of gay literary life in New York City and at theatres putting
on Gay American History," a play that brought to the surface the
enduring problem of gay oppression.These and many other
achievements would be largely forgotten after the arrival in the
early 1980s of HIV/AIDS, which allowed critics to claim that sex
was the defining feature of gay liberation. This reductive
narrative set back the cause of gay rights and has shaped the
identities of gay people for decades.An essential act of historical
recovery, Stand by Me shines a bright light on a triumphant moment,
and will transform how we think about gay life in America from the
1970s into the present day.
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