Although homosexual rights activists had been organizing for two decades, the sudden explosion of the Stonewall riots ushered in a new gay militancy that soon became known as gay liberation.

Sponsor Message.

A few weeks after Stonewall, gay and lesbian activists organized the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). Drawing on the principles and rhetoric of many other radical movements of the 1960s, GLF saw its mission as revolutionary and set its sights on a complete transformation of society. Not only did it hope to dismantle social institutions such as heterosexual marriage and the bourgeois family, but its leaders also forcefully opposed consumer culture, militarism, racism, and sexism.

Revolutionary Goals, Rapid Expansion, Quick Demise

GLF's statement of purpose clearly stated its revolutionary goals: "We are a revolutionary group of men and women formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot come about unless existing social institutions are abolished. We reject society's attempt to impose sexual roles and definitions of our nature."

GLF groups quickly spread to other cities in the United States and in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Members of these groups did not limit their activism to gay causes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s many radical homosexuals joined protests with other radical groups, including the Black Panthers, women's liberationists, and anti-war activists.

Lesbians in GLF brought principles of radical feminism to bear on its emerging philosophy. GLF activists argued that the heterosexual family as an institution necessitated the oppression of homosexuals and defined gayness as a form of political resistance. GLF activist Martha Shelley wrote, "We are women and men who, from the time of our earliest memories, have been in revolt against the sex-role structure and nuclear family structure."

The radical organization Students for a Democratic Society also helped to shape GLF. Allen Young, a former SDS activist, was a key figure in framing GLF's principles. "Gay is good for all of us," he asserted. "The artificial categories 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual' have been laid on us by a sexist society . . . . As gays, we demand an end to the gender programming which starts when we are born . . . . The family . . . is the primary means by which this restricted sexuality is created and enforced. . . . Our understanding of sexism is premised on the idea that in a free society everyone will be gay."

As an organization GLF was short-lived. It effectively ceased to exist in 1972. Fraught with internal division, GLF was unable to negotiate successfully the differences among its members. Many GLF activists remained committed to working on a broad spectrum of political issues, while others wanted to prioritize issues directly related to homosexuality.

The Legacy of GLF

In spite of its short life, GLF's insistence on anti-assimilation politics offered gay men and lesbians, especially younger ones, an alternative to the quiet persistence of the groups, such as the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, that had preceded it.

GLF also transformed the concept of coming out from a process that gay men and lesbians experienced privately and shared with only a small group of friends into a more strategic political tool. By encouraging gay men and lesbians to take pride in their homosexuality and to disclose it publicly, GLF helped craft an integral part of gay and lesbian politics that remains with us today. At the heart of the GLF philosophy was the idea that the personal is political.

For all its controversies and difficulties in creating a sustainable movement, GLF provided radical activists an important focal point for a few years. Even though many activists became disenchanted with the organization, their determination to carry forth the spirit of gay liberation through new groups such as the Gay Activists Alliance and the Radicalesbians proved invaluable in the continuing fight for glbtq rights.

GLF's legacy informed gay and lesbian activism throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s when groups such as ACT UP and Queer Nation formed to fight AIDS and . Many of the leaders of these two groups had been either active in or heavily influenced by the ideas first promoted by GLF.

A form of behavior modification that employs unpleasant and sometimes painful stimuli, aversion therapy was one of the more popular treatments for homosexuality and cross-dressing in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Gay Left refers to a cluster of positions on the political spectrum that has existed within the lesbian and gay rights movement at least since the Stonewall riots.

The U.S. gay rights movement has made significant progress toward achieving equality for glbtq Americans, and in the process has become more inclusive and diverse, but much remains to be done.

The homophile movement of the United States refers to organizations and political strategies employed by homosexuals from the end of World War II to 1970.

The glbtq history of Los Angeles, the U.S.'s second largest metropolis, is replete with cultural, social, and political firsts.

Off and on over two centuries, New York City has also reigned as the capital of homosexual, transgender, and queer life in America.

In a little more than thirty years, the number of glbtq student organizations has grown from a handful found at large universities to several thousand spread throughout the country to nearly all college campuses.

Twentieth-century efforts to reform British law and public opinions about homosexuality met with mixed results, but at the beginning of the twenty-first century the United Kingdom has emerged as a leader in recognizing the rights of its glbtq citizens.

With a constant influx of immigrants and a vigorous and adaptable economy, Vancouver is a progressive city with a large and active glbtq community.

Using bold images and confrontational tactics, ACT UP worked to promote awareness of AIDS and challenge the complacency of politicians and government officials in the early years of the epidemic.

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.

An important organization of the early post-Stonewall era, the Gay Activists Alliance, which flourished from 1969 to 1974, strove to give gay men and lesbians visibility in American politics.

Activist Harry Hay, an original member of both the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, is recognized as one of the principal founders of the gay liberation movement in the United States.

Photographer Peter Hujar created stark, stunning, affecting , and sometimes disturbing images in black and white.

Los Angeles activist Morris Kight, a determined and courageous--if sometimes eccentric--fighter for glbtq rights, worked for decades in the struggle for equality.

German-born philosopher Herbert Marcuse had an enormous influence on theories of sexual liberation, particularly in the early post-Stonewall gay movement and on the left.

One of the earliest American gay movement organizations, the Mattachine Society was dedicated to the cultural and political liberation of homosexuals; but in the face of McCarthyism, it adopted conservative policies of accommodationism.

The short-lived militant group Queer Nation, which emerged in 1990, made a lasting impact on sexual identity politics in the United States.

A short-lived but important group, the Radicalesbians was instrumental in bringing visibility to lesbians in the American feminist movement of the early 1970s.

A legendary veteran of the Stonewall Riots, Sylvia Rivera is notable for helping to spark the event that ushered in the modern-day Gay Rights Movement.

The confrontations between police and demonstrators at the Stonewall Inn in New York City the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 mark the beginning of the modern glbtq movement for equal rights.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, poet, painter, and activist Fran Winant helped define the role and sensibility of lesbians in the contexts of gay liberation and radical feminism.