Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights

By John D'Emilio

Book Overview

Creating Change tells the story behind some of the most bitterly contested and controversial public events and public policy battles in the past generation and possibly in American history. In the thirty years since the Stonewall Inn riots marked the beginning of the modern gay and lesbian movement, there has been a dramatic change in the texture of gay and lesbian life and in its relationship to American society. Despite an apparently deepening conservative hold upon national and state politics, this shift has been as extensive - over a comparable period of time - as that witnessed in race and gender relations. Creating Change traces the work and gauges the impact of the gay and lesbian movement since Stonewall. It explores a critically significant, though often ignored, area in which change has occurred - the world of public policy making, especially at the level of the federal government - and scrutinizes the who, how, why, and what of it. A work of scholarship and a work of passion, it recounts how a specific constituency - gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans - were able to make tremendous progress despite seemingly insurmountable barriers. Creating Change is the story of the way in which the American political and cultural landscape became what it is today and how social change is brought about.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312243758
• ISBN13: 9780312243753
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Inspiring words for trying times

As a progressive activist, I immensley enjoyed this anthology of movers and shakers in the GLBT movement. Introspective, energetic and visionary, they remind both allies and GLBT people although much has been accomplished, there is no shortage of public policy issues to focus their work on. AIDS, securuty clearances, lesbian feminism and dual identity conflicts of GLBT people of color are issues that will not go away until we deal with them substantively. While I was famillar with some names... I was introduced to several unsuing heroes and role models. My only regret is that the book tended to gloss over instaces where the movement was not doing as well as it could have been. I believe this would have made some of the anthology more coherent. There are gaps which take away from the individual policy papers. Even if I understood the National Gay Task Force eventually bevame the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to disadvow sexism, other readers might not be aware of the reason for the name change. More information on the Romer vs. Evans decision (which invalidated Colorado's virulently homophobic Amendment Two), a real victory at a time when the Supreme Court has no shortage of conservatives. The authors simply assume that people know the important bits and pieces that give the riveting stories meaning and importance. Given their backgrounds, this tendency is both troubling and unusual, little is accomplished by preaching to the choirStill, the format of this book means it can also be used as a college textbook on GLBT issues and theory. Thus it is important to consider the book's above mentioned flaws as a fair description rather than a deliberate pan. Flaws and all, this book is recomended for anybody who wants to know what the "newest" civil rights movement has and is doing to improve American society.