Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950–1994 Susan Kathleen Freeman Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950–1994. By Elizabeth A. Armstrong. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xix + 272. $60.00 (cloth); $22.50 (paper). In Forging Gay Identities, Elizabeth Armstrong narrates and conceptualizes the shift from homophile organizing to gay liberation to a gay identity-based movement during the second half of the twentieth century. Using primary and secondary sources, Armstrong addresses her work to sociologists interested in social movements and social change. Her analysis of San Francisco's gay movement serves to revise existing theories of organizational sociology, political process/resource mobilization theory, and new social movement theory. Although mostly derived from existing historical research and interpretations, the book offers an analytical perspective that is distinctive. From the vantage point of the turn of the twenty-first century, Armstrong demonstrates how the gay movement came to focus on identity and valorize individual expression. As displayed since the 1970s in the ubiquitous gay pride parades, the process of "coming out" has brought together a heterogeneous population to celebrate various identities and lifestyles, more recently including bisexual and transgender along with gay and lesbian. Whereas ideological, gender, race, and class differences have fragmented other recent social movements, the success story of organizers' unification of the gay movement around gay identity and visibility is the central focus of this book. Armstrong self-consciously departs from the sociological tradition of evaluating movement outcomes in terms of formal political gains and institutionalization; rather, she examines the informal realm of identity and culture while tracing the growth of the gay movement in San Francisco. [End Page 637] After laying out her theoretical premises in chapter 1, the author proceeds chronologically to demonstrate the often overlapping transitions from a homophile ("interest group") logic in the 1950s and 1960s to a short-lived revolutionary ("redistributive") logic in the late 1960s and early 1970s to a visibility ("identity") logic from the 1970s to the 1990s. She illustrates her model with original quantitative data compiled from resource guides and directories, using several charts and graphs to display her information on organizational growth and decline; on the whole, however, this is a qualitative study that draws from movement periodicals and scholarly research. Historians will not find much new empirical information, and even the differences in argument are often slight. John D'Emilio's research on the homophile movement and San Francisco gay liberation is much in evidence. Armstrong concurs with D'Emilio that the homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s solidified a concept of collective identity among homosexuals. (See John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 [Chicago, 1983].) Yet she conceptualizes the emergence of a gay identity as a definitive point in the creation of a gay/lesbian "field," her terminology for the process of "creating and expanding gay social and political space" (13). While sensitive to the political and cultural climate and change over time, Armstrong nevertheless reiterates throughout the book that the homophile movement adopted a "limited" interest group model (41). Although homophile groups did resemble interest groups in several respects, electoral and legal battles for homosexual rights were only part of the homophile agenda. Just as significant but largely neglected by the author were education (of professionals and other homosexuals) and ending social isolation. Political action—pursuing the right to congregate, publish newsletters, and secure telephone directory listings—was a means to an end, not the end in itself, and this Armstrong recognizes. Yet closer attention to a wider range of activities and evidence might have led the author to less reductive conclusions about homophile politics. Whereas homophiles "could not take that final step" (56) toward publicly announcing their sexual orientation, gay liberation activists did. New Left-influenced radicalism and notions of authenticity, Armstrong argues, contributed redistributive and identity-politics logic to the movement a full year before New York City's 1969 Stonewall Riots. Unlike gay movement scholars who treat the New Left as a context for the emergence of revolutionary ideas and militant action, Armstrong views the New Left as responsible for...