Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution
by Linda Hirshman
HarperCollins. 443 pages, $27.99
VICTORY is a compendium of the events on the path to where we are today in the fight for full GLBT equality in the United States. Thus author Linda Hirshman has a lot of ground to cover, pausing on a few topics in depth, notably the AIDS epidemic, the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy governing military service, and marriage equality.
In her introduction and throughout the book, Hirshman puts forward a thesis that the struggle for gay rights has been a fight for GLBT people to become full citizens in the liberal state. Beginning in the 17th century, she argues, the liberal state has made three fundamental promises to its citizens: security, liberty, and self-governance. “It’s a good deal. No wonder so many people want in.” She discusses the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and the “full faith and credit” clause, which instructs states to honor each others’ contracts, a mandate that’s clearly violated by the Defense of Marriage Act and state legislation against marriage equality.
While we wait for the Supreme Court to make decisions on any one of the marriage equality cases currently on the docket, we learn from Victory that the first gay case to make it to the Supreme Court was in1958 when ONE magazine (published by the Mattachine Society) won a landmark case in a Supreme Court ruling. The case of One, Inc. v. Oleson started in 1954 when the Postmaster of Los Angeles deemed the October issue to be obscene, blocking its distribution. The organization sued—and continued to press its case through a lower court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in ONE’s favor, citing the recent obscenity case Roth v. U.S. The exceedingly terse ruling read in its entirely: “The petition for writ of certiorari is granted and the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed.”
Hirshman does a fine job describing gay activists’ early involvement in the communist movement, Students for a Democratic Society and other anti-Vietnam War groups, and civil rights activism in general, influenced the way they approached gay resistance and strategy in several arenas: religious, criminal, psychiatric, and political. And these activists learned well from their immediate forebears: about how to mobilize direct action, when to use the courts, and so on. Her chapters on the founding of activist and social organizations, such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis in the 50’s and the Gay Activists’ Alliance in 1969, are detailed and gossipy. She goes on to trace the rise of the legal and political arms, such as Lambda Legal and the National Gay Task Force, detailing their early failures along with their successes.
Hirshman draws insightful contrasts between the wealthy factions in the gay community, often closeted gay men, who helped fund the early movement, and those who had so little to lose that they took to the streets. In addition to Frank Kameny, who died shortly before this book was published, Hirshman acknowledges Mary Bonauto, Cleve Jones, Harry Hay, Tim Gill, Larry Kramer, Troy Perry, and Richard Socarides, among others. There are some interesting omissions, such as Larry Kessler and the AIDS Action Committee in Boston and Robin Tyler in the fight for marriage in California. Two valuable features in this book are a timeline of gay progress in the U.S. and a list of the individuals that Hirshman quotes and cites throught the book, which becomes a who’s who of the modern gay movement.
When I started reading the book, I was pleased with the colloquial tone but soon realized that the writing was filled with jargon and obscure slang expressions (e.g.: “This last argument was hanging fire when GLAD filed Goodridge”). Such comments were jarring in a book that offers otherwise serious scholarship. Hirshman also uses two phrases that should probably have been edited out: “paddy wagon” and too many “chiefs … no Indians.”
When questioned why she called the book Victory, even though there are many issues yet to be won, Hirshman writes that she said “Why in the world not? This is an amazing story.” And it may well be, but when so many states still have laws on the books banning same-sex marriage, when many states still allow discrimination against GLBT people in housing and employment, and when transgendered people are still assaulted for being who they are, “victory” is an implied claim that seems premature to say the least. What’s more, there have been other books that attempted a comprehensive history of the GLBT movement, such as Eric Marcus’ Making Gay History: The Half Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights, which Hirshman graciously acknowledges. Victory will take its place on shelves next to that book and others, bringing to life the hard work and sacrifices made on the long road to GLBT equality in the U.S.
