Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation

by Jim Downs

Overview

From a prominent young historian, the untold story of the rich variety of gay life in America in the 1970s

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 centers 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 theaters 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465032709
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jim Downs, is a Mellon New Directions Fellow at Harvard University and an associate professor of history at Connecticut College. The author of the critically acclaimed Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, he has also written for Time, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times, among other publications. Downs lives in Cambridge, MA.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Largest Massacre of Gay People in American History
2. The Gay Religious Movement
3. Biography of a Bookstore
4. Gay American History
5. The Body Politic
6. “Prison Sounds”
7. Body Language
Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"Downs has an instinct for historically relevant stories and he tells them well.... In the chapter 'Prison Sounds,' Downs offers similarly invigorating detective work, digging up aspects of LGBT activism that have eluded most historians."—Boston Review

"Downs capably blends authority and warmth in this thoughtful reexamination of an era."—Boston Globe

"Intelligent and thought-provoking."—Kirkus Reviews

"The sheer act of Downs' acknowledging that not all gay men subscribed to the popular 'three Big Bs' of the time--'the Bars, Beaches, and Baths'--and found their identity validated and articulated through the communal practices of Christian worship and cultural hubs (like the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop) is a refreshing and invigorating experience. Stand By Me proves a deeply moving read, one that passionately and urgently argues for us to acknowledge some of the forgotten history of gay liberation."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Downs infuses great passion and intent in every paragraph, striving to the raise the level of discourse even as he's tossing outmoded ideas aside left and right. This is history as it should be told, as complex and as personal as possible."—Manhattan Book Review

"Stand by Me includes massacre and tragedy; its opening chapter is an emotional rehashing of the 1973 arson attack--the most lethal targeting of gay people in American history until the June 12 massacre at Orlando's Pulse club--took the lives of 32 men during a religious service.... The passages that grab you most...address the 'usable past,' which Downs defines as the facets of history that provide gay people with 'legitimacy, meaning, and, most of all, a genealogy to their plight.' And his passion is infectious."—Public Books

"Stand By Me is not duplicative of other accounts. It is to our movement an equivalent to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States."—Lambda Literary

"Stand By Me is a laudable, thoroughly researched corrective to the prevalent idea of gay people in the 1970s as uninvolved, unengaged sex-crazed hedonists."—A & U Magazine

"Downs makes a good case for us to remember that the zeal for liberation in the '70s was deeply and directly informed by feminist politics, and thus was only ever in part, primarily or even strongly, about sexual liberation.... [A] diverting book with considerable virtues."—Gay & Lesbian Review

"This book is informative, sometimes horrifying, interesting and, unlike your old high school history books, it's never dry."—Washington Blade

"A valuable addition to LGBT and social-change collections."—Booklist

"In sparking, often moving, prose, Jim Downs rewrites the history of the gay liberation movement in the 1970s. This is an important contribution not only to the history of that struggle but to our understanding of the afterlife of the upheavals of the 1960s."—Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial

"From the ashes of a horrific fire that engulfed a gay church in New Orleans in 1973, Jim Downs has rescued the history of gay men in the decade after the Stonewall uprising. As this beautiful, and at times haunting, book makes clear, gay men in this period forged intellectually vibrant, spiritually rich, and nourishing communities that not only sustained them through some harrowing and heartwarming times, but that also grew more powerful as the twentieth century became the twenty-first."—Heather Ann Thompson, University of Michigan

"Stand by Me brings the 1970s back to life, not as it is imagined to be, but as it actually was. In compelling prose, Jim Downs has recovered the stories of heroic individuals who risked much to come out, to build community, and to fight for social justice. Some of these episodes are tragic and some inspiring. All of them deserve to be remembered."—John D'Emilio, author of Intimate Matters

From the Publisher

02/01/2016
In popular imagination, the 1970s were a time of wanton hedonism and licentiousness among gay men. That narrative is only part of a picture that Downs (Sick from Freedom) wants to make complete by looking at the many ways in which the gay political movement progressed during the decade. What Downs demonstrates is how social institutions such as the Metropolitan Community Church and other religious organizations grew. It was also a foundational period for research into gay history and culture, the monument being the publication of Jonathan Ned Katz's Gay American History in 1976. Downs uses that work and the example of the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York to portray the intellectual growth of the community. He begins with the tragedy of the arsonist attack at the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans in 1973, documenting the hatred of the time, and concludes by saying, "one of my goals in this book has been to shift the focus of the discussion of gay culture from sex to religion, and from intimacy to community." VERDICT Downs's highly recommended and necessary corrective to the mythology of gay life in the 1970s will appeal to both academic and general readers.—David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia

Library Journal

2015-12-17
Downs (History/Connecticut Coll.; Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, 2012, etc.) aims to dispel the misconception that gay liberation in the 1970s was primarily focused on sexual freedom. In this slim though well-documented history, the author provides vivid accounts of noteworthy movements and issues that surfaced during this decade, each playing a vital role in advancing meaningful change within the gay community. He examines how the rise of gay churches and gay bookstores helped to foster a sense of community; how the establishment and expanding influence of gay newspapers (with particular attention devoted to the Toronto-based publication The Body Politic) heightened awareness; and how certain reforms alleviated the abuse and sexual mistreatment of gay prisoners. The author also explores how the emergence of the "macho clone" redefined gay male culture and identity, in many ways disrupting the progress. "The popularity of this image erased women and people of color from the gay community," writes the author. While Downs successfully asserts a grounded claim that gay life in the 1970s was by no means only about sex, it can be argued that for many it was also about sex, in profoundly more complex and defining ways than he allows here. "There is little question that sex shaped, informed, and mattered to gay people throughout this decade, but it was not defining, as the received narrative has it," he writes. In his earnest endeavor to sustain his argument, the author gives negligible attention to this facet of the history, leaving his overall conclusion unbalanced. The book would have also benefited from a more expansive perspective, relating how these various efforts specifically helped to shape progress leading up to the present. By applying such a narrow lens to just the '70s, the broader impact of this decade within the history of the movement feels underserved. An intelligent and thought-provoking though somewhat limited addition to the historical record of the gay liberation movement.

Kirkus Reviews