Come Out Fighting: A Century of Essential Writing on Gay and Lesbian Liberation (Nation Books)

The title and subtitle of Come Out Fighting: A Century of Essential Writing on Gay and Lesbian Liberation may appear misleading, for the collection features essays not only by gay rights leaders (Adrienne Rich, Harvey Milk, etc.) but by fellow travelers (Justice Harry Blackmun), ambivalents (Freud, Havelock Ellis) and downright adversaries (William F. Buckley Jr.). In short, these are the works that, for better or for worse, galvanized the liberation movement. Collected by The Advocate correspondent Chris Bull, some selections are predictable, but many, like Michael Bronski's ("The Liberation of Pleasure") or David Wojnarowicz's, are not this is probably the only time Milk, Blackmun, Buckley and Audre Lorde will appear together in one anthology.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Many observing the contemporary sociopolitical landscape might be inclined to wonder what became of gay liberation. In fact, articles in the gay press with titles such as "Is gay liberation dead?" are often answered affirmatively. An attentive reading of this compilation reveals that the issues of 100 years ago are still here today. Bull, Washington correspondent for the Advocate a national gay and lesbian news magazine has selected and carefully annotated many classics, beginning with Walt Whitman and Sigmund Freud and continuing to major contemporary figures. Clearly, different editors with different purposes might have made other selections. Nonetheless, this is a worthwhile addition to any collection with even tangential interest in gay topics. It would also make a useful textbook supplement for university courses. David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

One can correctly assume from the presence of Susan Sontag, Huey Newton, Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Michael Bronski in its pages that this is a leftist anthology. But then gay liberation, as opposed to the gay rights movement, is self-consciously leftist. Therefore, Bruce Bawer, Andrew Sullivan, and other moderate and independent gay commentators are conspicuously absent here. Still, the sublimely independent Gore Vidal is a two-time contributor and introduces the book, endearing himself to leftists by reviling monotheism ("profoundly totalitarian") and the Greatest Generation ("manipulated pawns"), of which he is a World War II-veteran member (presumably unmanipulable). That said, it must be added that the book lives up to its billing: these are the touchstone writings of gay liberation, from Havelock Ellis on sexual inversion and Kinsey and colleagues on homosexual play to Carl Wittman's "Gay Manifesto" and Merle Miller's "On Being Different" to Harvey Milk's "Hope Speech" to the majority opinion in Romer v. Evans by Supreme Court justice Kennedy (almost the only nonleftie contributor). The bible of gay lib! Ray Olson
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