Gay Rights And Moral Panic

Using the 1977 campaign against the Dade County Florida gay rights ordinance as a focal point, this book provides an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement, the challenges it posed to the accepted American notions of sexuality, and how American society reacted in turn.

This book offers an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement.The history that Fejes recounts remains relevant and important for a complete understanding of current and future political struggles and the evolution of gay rights in America. There is no book that is directly comparable to this one and there are also relatively few works on the gay rights communities and their struggles post-Stonewall and outside the major coastal enclaves of New York and California.

Using the Miami events as a case study, this book provides the first detailed account of a campaign that was a foreshadowing of the culture wars politics that would come to dominate American culture. In its interdisciplinary approach, this book will appeal to scholars in different fields.Using the 1977 campaign against the Dade County Florida gay rights ordinance as a focal point, this book provides an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement, the challenges it posed to the accepted American notions of sexuality, and how American society reacted in turn.

Review: The fight for gay civil rights did not begin in Greenwich Village nor end in the Castro. There have been many battlefields in this long struggle and Miami has played a central role in our ongoing fight for equality. Gay Rights and Moral Panic will take a central place on the list of indispensable works for anyone wishing to understand the past--and the present--of sexual minorities in America. --Larry Gross, Professor and Director, USC Annenberg School for Communication