Jack Nichols: This review first appeared in gaytoday.badpuppy.com and is reprinted here with the permission of the editor.
When historian Donn Teal's monumental work, The Gay Militants, was first published a quarter century ago, the Stonewall Era was in full swing, though the revolution Teal chronicled hadn't yet gained noticeable mention in mainstream media. Few, except for readers of the fledging gay press, knew Teal's book existed.
Thane Hampten's rave review of The Gay Militants had appeared (GAY, May 24, 2024) and it was noted then that major activist-players of the times accepted Teal's accounts of their exploits without rancor. Teal was not only a pioneering journalist himself (he'd written pre-Stonewall critiques of negative gay stereotyping in emerging gay film, theatre, and literature in The New York Times) but he was a frontline participant in many of the exciting events he recorded. His contemporaries marvelled at his confident command of multitudinous sources, his fair and inspirational treatment of the many and varied activist personalities, as well as his amazing grasp of newly defined issues, including those affecting minorities within mainstream gay culture. Nor is Teal's history confined to America's East Coast. Time and again he roams the continent, the pages of his book celebrating historic West Coast and Mid-West accomplishments with equal enthusiasm.
A well-publicized book published in hardback (1993) and by a Johnny-Come-Very-Lately professor, attempted to recapture those tumultuous uprisings (1969-71) that led to later gay liberation victories. But this professor's tome, unfortunately, is clearly marked by his tendency to putter, compiled too late, strewn with inaccuracies, marred by a dubious agenda, malicious gossip, and, worst of all, by a shameless foray into crass revisionism. Yes, Martin Duberman's slant gives undue credit to New York's Gay Liberation Front, a group which, though it appeared first as an unstructured organization, fell rapidly apart due to formidable internal squabbling. The Gay Militants properly records how Manhattan's Gay Activists Alliance then inherited the East Coast energies vouchsafed by the Stonewall rebellion, uniting disparate segments of the city's gay and lesbian communities as never before, and channeling their activities with manifest effects.
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