Gidlow perhaps expresses her insistence upon an independent life best in this stanza of her poem, "For the Goddess Too Well Known":

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I have brought her, laughing,
To my quietly dreaming garden
For what will be done there
I ask no man pardon.

Alan Watts, cultural interpreter of Eastern philosophy and Gidlow's good friend and colleague in the Society for Comparative Philosophy, once said that she was mysterious. She answered him in her book, Makings for Meditation (1973), by replying,

You say I am mysterious
Let me explain myself
In a land of oranges
I am faithful to apples.

In 1975, Gidlow published Ask No Man Pardon: The Philosophical Significance of Being Lesbian. In this work, she defends the naturalness of lesbianism, arguing that lesbians are born with different needs and desires.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Gidlow was recognized as one of the foremothers of the lesbian feminist movement, and her poetry was praised by Kenneth Rexroth and others.

After suffering a series of strokes, Gidlow died on June 8, 1986. Her papers are now part of the archives of the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California.

Buddhism is unusual among world religions in that it generally expresses neutrality on the issue of homosexuality.

McCarthyism, which attempted in the late 1940s and early 1950s to expunge Communists and fellow travelers from American public life, made homosexuals the chief scapegoats of the Cold War.

In the last two decades, Montreal has become friendly to and supportive of its glbtq citizens and visitors.

Since the 1960s, the general trend in lesbian poetry has been collective and political rather than purely aesthetic.

San Francisco has enjoyed a reputation as a "gay mecca" since World War II.

Today's glbtq spirituality movements must be seen as part of a long history in which gender-special people were considered sacred to their tribe or family because of their obvious spiritual gifts.

The first national lesbian political and social organization in the United States, the Daughters of Bilitis was a significant part of the pre-Stonewall lesbian and gay rights movement.