Be Gay, Do Crime

Sometimes it pays to be gay and do crime.

As communities are boldly rising to challenge capitalism, white supremacy, and authoritarianism, Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion is your ultimate guide to LGBTQ+ resilience and rebellion. Packed with daily snapshots of radical queer history, this book celebrates the bold, the brave, and the beautifully defiant moments that have shaped the fight for justice.

Ever wonder why the Stonewall protests became an uprising or what the earliest acts of queer resistance looked like? How about the ways queer communities have organized against oppression across the globe? Be Gay, Do Crime dives into these stories and so many more—from fierce acts of resistance to joyful victories—bringing to life the rich, diverse history of LGBTQ+ liberation.

By situating readers within a larger pattern of struggle, these everyday acts counter the erasure of queer people from history and serve as a reminder that our struggles are part of a broader fight against systemic violence and dehumanization.

But, this isn’t just a history book; it’s a rallying cry. Flip to any page, soak up some inspiration, and join the legacy of resistance.

Zane McNeill is the editor of Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia (PM Press, 2022) and coeditor of Deviant Hollers Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future (University Press of Kentucky, 2024).

Riley Clare Valentine holds a PhD in political science from Louisiana State University. Their work focuses on care ethics critique of neoliberalism as well as analyses of political rhetoric.

Blu Buchanan is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at UNC Asheville. Their academic writing has appeared or is forthcoming in journals like GLQ: The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies and PUBLIC: A Journal of Imagining America, as well as edited volume chapters in Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis and Unsafe Words: Queer Perspectives on Consent in the #MeToo Era. They have also written extensively in the public sphere, particularly about movements to disarm campus police and confronting trans antagonism in the university.

Cindy Barukh Milstein, a diasporic queer Jewish anarchist, is the author of Paths Toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism and Anarchism and Its Aspirations, and the editor of anthologies such as Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism in Practice; Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief; Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy;and There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists.

Working Class History is an international collective of worker-activists who uncover our collective history of fighting for a better world and promote it to educate and inspire a new generation of activists.