Martin Luther King, Jr., was not an advocate of homosexual rights, nor was he an enemy; however both sides of the debate have used his words in their arguments, including his widow, in support of gay rights, and his daughter, in rejection. This fascinating situation poses the problem that Michael G. Long seeks to address and resolve.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was not an advocate of homosexual rights, nor was he an enemy; however both sides of the debate have used his words in their arguments, including his widow, in support of gay rights, and his daughter, in rejection. This fascinating situation poses the problem that Michael G. Long seeks to address and resolve.

Finalist, Best LGBTQ Nonfiction Book, Lambda Literary Awards 2020 On October 14, 1998, five thousand people gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to mourn the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who had been murdered in Wyoming eight days earlier. Politicians and celebrities addressed the crowd and the televised national audience to share their grief with the country. Never before had a gay citizen's murder elicited such widespread outrage or concern from straight Americans. In Dying to Be Normal, Brett Krutzsch argues that gay activists memorialized people like Shepard as part of a political strategy to present gays as similar to the country's dominant class of white, straight Christians. Through an examination of publicly mourned gay deaths, Krutzsch counters the common perception that LGBT politics and religion have been oppositional and reveals how gay activists used religion to bolster the argument that gays are essentially the same as straights, and therefore deserving of equal rights. Krutzsch's analysis turns to the memorialization of Shepard, Harvey Milk, Tyler Clementi, Brandon Teena, and F. C. Martinez, to campaigns like the It Gets Better Project, and national tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting to illustrate how activists used prominent deaths to win acceptance, influence political debates over LGBT rights, and encourage assimilation. Throughout, Krutzsch shows how, in the fight for greater social inclusion, activists relied on Christian values and rhetoric to portray gays as upstanding Americans. As Krutzsch demonstrates, gay activists regularly reinforced a white Protestant vision of acceptable American citizenship that often excluded people of color, gender-variant individuals, non-Christians, and those who did not adhere to Protestant Christianity's sexual standards. The first book to detail how martyrdom has influenced national debates over LGBT rights, Dying to Be Normal establishes how religion has shaped gay assimilation in the United States and the mainstreaming of particular gays as "normal" Americans.

Bayard Rustin is one of the most important figures in the history of the American civil rights movement. Before Martin Luther King, before Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin was working to bring the cause to the forefront of America's consciousness. A teacher to King, an international apostle of peace, and the organizer of the famous 1963 March on Washington, he brought Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence to America and helped launch the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, Rustin has been largely erased by history, in part because he was an African American homosexual. Acclaimed historian John D'Emilio tells the full and remarkable story of Rustin's intertwined lives: his pioneering and public person and his oblique and stigmatized private self. It was in the tumultuous 1930s that Bayard Rustin came of age, getting his first lessons in politics through the Communist Party and the unrest of the Great Depression. A Quaker and a radical pacifist, he went to prison for refusing to serve in World War II, only to suffer a sexual scandal. His mentor, the great pacifist A. J. Muste, wrote to him, "You were capable of making the 'mistake' of thinking that you could be the leader in a revolution...at the same time that you were a weakling in an extreme degree and engaged in practices for which there was no justification." Freed from prison after the war, Rustin threw himself into the early campaigns of the civil rights and anti-nuclear movements until an arrest for sodomy nearly destroyed his career. Many close colleagues and friends abandoned him. For years after, Rustin assumed a less public role even though his influence was everywhere. Rustin mentored a young and inexperienced Martin Luther King in the use of nonviolence. He planned strategy for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference until Congressman Adam Clayton Powell threatened to spread a rumor that King and Rustin were lovers. Not until Rustin's crowning achievement as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington would he finally emerge from the shadows that homophobia cast over his career. Rustin remained until his death in 1987 committed to the causes of world peace, racial equality, and economic justice. Based on more than a decade of archival research and interviews with dozens of surviving friends and colleagues of Rustin's, Lost Prophet is a triumph. Rustin emerges as a hero of the black freedom struggle and a singularly important figure in the lost gay history of the mid-twentieth century. John D'Emilio's compelling narrative rescues a forgotten figure and brings alive a time of great hope and great tragedy in the not-so-distant past.

What role did America's newspaper advice columnists play in shaping and forming societal attitudes toward LGBTQ people throughout the 20th century? They served the dual function of offering advice and satisfying the curious. They also often provided the first mention of homosexuality outside of newspaper crime blotters. More than 100 million readers regularly read the columns. This book chronicles some of the most popular and widely circulated newspaper columns between the 1930s and 2000, including Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Helen Help Us!, Dr. Joyce Brothers, The Worry Clinic, Dear Meg, Ask Beth, and Savage Love. It examines the function of these columns regarding the place of LGBTQ people in America and what role they played in forming a public opinion. From these columns, we learn not only the framework of how straight Americans understood their homosexual brethren, but also how attitudes and feelings continued to evolve.

Carlos A. Ball argues that as progressives fight the First Amendment claims of religious conservatives and other LGBT opponents, they should take care not to forget the crucial role the First Amendment played in the early decades of the movement, and not to erode the safeguards of liberty that allowed LGBT rights to exist in the first place.

BAYARD RUSTIN POSTHUMOUSLY AWARDED THE 2013 PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the American civil rights movement and played a deeply influential role in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to mold him into an international symbol of nonviolence. Despite these achievements, Rustin often remained in the background. He was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Here we have Rustin in his own words in a collection of over 150 of his eloquent, impassioned letters; his correspondents include the major progressives of his day—including Eleanor Holmes Norton, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Ella Baker and, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. Bayard Rustin's ability to chart the path "from protest to politics" is both timely and deeply informative. Here, at last, is direct access to the strategic thinking and tactical planning that led to the successes of one of America's most transformative and historic social movements. "Rustin was a life-long agitator for justice. He changed America—and the world—for the better. This collection of his letters makes his life and his passions come vividly alive, and helps restore him to history, a century after this birth. I Must Resist makes for inspiring reading."—John D'Emilio, author of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin "A vital addition to the history of the civil rights movement by an exceptionally determined, vital and creative force who was invaluable to Martin Luther King, Jr., and A. Philip Randolph among many others."—Nat Hentoff "Bayard Rustin's courageously candid letters, most of which have never before been available to researchers, provide fascinating glimpses into the private life of one of history's most reticent public figures."—Clayborne Carson, Founding Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University "These letters—poetic, incisive, passionate, and above all political in the broadest meaning of the word—span almost four decades not only of Bayard Rustin's life but of the emotional and spiritual life of America. There is hardly a social justice movement during this time in which Rustin was not involved from pacifism to ending poverty to battles for sexual freedom. Michael Long's brilliant editing has created a compelling historical narrative and reading these letters is to be witness to the ever-evolving conscience that guides our country's endangered, but surviving, commitment to freedom."—Michael Bronksi, author of A Queer History of the United States "Bayard Rustin was a committed but very complicated person. This marvelously annotated collection of letters explain the spirit, and evolution of the thoughts and actions of an often overlooked key figure in the 20th century civil and human rights movement."—Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine Segal Professor of American Social Thought, University of Pennsylvania, and former Chair United States Commission on Civil Rights "All aspects of Rustin's experiences are captured in these letters, including his struggles with opponents dedicated to silencing him as an international symbol of nonviolent protests against racial injustice. This remarkable and deeply moving publication is a must-read."—William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

Martin Luther King, Jr., was not an advocate of homosexual rights, nor was he an enemy; however both sides of the debate have used his words in their arguments, including his widow, in support of gay rights, and his daughter, in rejection. This fascinating situation poses the problem that Michael G. Long seeks to address and resolve.

The number-two manin the civil rights movement, Abernathy poignantly recalls his life from his poverty-striken childhood, his cofounding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and march to freedom at the side of his close friend Martin Luther King to his current fight for dignity and human rights worldwide. Illustrated.

The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach, published in 1951, is considered one of the most influential works in the history of the gay rights movement and inspired compassion in others by highlighting the difficulties faced by homosexuals. The book is considered "one of the most influential works in the history of the gay rights movement" Donald Webster Cory was the pseudonym for Edward Sagarin, an American professor of sociology and criminology at the City University of New York, and a writer. Sagarin is often titled the "father of the homophile movement" for asserting that gay men and lesbians deserved civil rights as members of a large, unrecognised minority. In an era when discussing homosexuality openly was often taboo, Cory fearlessly bridges the gap between scholarship and personal insight. Drawing from his own encounters, interviews, and extensive research, he paints an intimate portrait of the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals, chronicling their struggles, triumphs, and the evolving societal attitudes that shape their existence. The publication of the book was considered a "radical step", as it was the first publication in the United States that discussed homosexual politics and sympathetically presented the plight of homosexuals. In the book Sagarin described how homosexuals were discriminated against in almost all aspects of their lives and called for a repeal of anti-homosexuality laws, as well as displacing many of the myths and stereotypes that existed at that time around homosexuality. Through thought-provoking anecdotes, poignant stories, and candid reflections, the book navigates the intricacies of coming out, relationships, discrimination, and the pursuit of self-discovery.