The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement by Barry D. Adam (All Editions)

The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement by Barry D. Adam is a sociological history of gay and lesbian political organisation across two centuries and multiple countries. First published in 1987 by Twayne Publishers, the book traces the formation of movements in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and beyond, identifying the structural forces that generated both homophobia and resistance to it. Adam examines community-building networks from the early eighteenth century, law reform efforts in late nineteenth-century Germany, and the post-Stonewall surge of liberationist politics, while also addressing the tensions between lesbian and gay organising and the broader women’s movement. A revised edition published in 1995 expanded the analysis to cover AIDS activism, Queer Nation, new movement groups in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and developments in queer scholarship.

Genre: LGBT Studies/Social Sciences

Subjects: Gay liberation movement; Gay liberation movement – History; Homosexuality – History

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Comments

The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement holds a place in the canon of LGBT Studies as one of the first book-length attempts to map gay and lesbian political organising as a genuinely global phenomenon. When the original edition appeared in 1987, the field of queer history was still taking shape, and Adam’s comparative scope — reaching beyond the United States to trace movements in Europe, Canada, and Australia — was genuinely ambitious for its time.

The book is not without significant limitations. A review in the Canadian Journal of Political Science (1988) noted that Adam’s analysis of capitalism and homosexual oppression is underdeveloped and sometimes inconsistent, that his treatment of feminism is uneven, and that the comparative perspective is applied unevenly — Canada in particular receives thin coverage. The reviewer also observed that the book lacks the analytical rigour and prose quality of comparable works by Jeffrey Weeks and Dennis Altman, though it remains a useful descriptive introduction to the history of anti-homosexual oppression and lesbian and gay resistance.

The 1995 revised edition substantially updated the work to address AIDS and its impact on movement strategy, the emergence of Queer Nation, international expansion of LGBT organising, and new directions in queer historical scholarship, making it a considerably more current reference for its moment. For lesbian readers specifically, the book’s sustained attention to the tensions between lesbian and gay organising and the women’s movement gives it ongoing relevance as a document of that complicated political history.

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Publication History