Money for AIDS, Not War

Although AIDS direct action is generally described as beginning with ACT UP, it first developed as activists drew tactics and ideas from Central American solidarity and the anti-nuclear movement. Anti-militarism catalyzed AIDS direct action in the Bay Area; its influences appeared in 1984, took on force in 1986, and by 1987 shaped national networks of AIDS activism. The groups Citizens for Medical Justice and the AIDS Action Pledge paved the way for the formation of ACT UP/San Francisco and Stop AIDS Now Or Else. AIDS direct action stood as the culmination of the gay and lesbian left even as it marked the start of a new queer politics. However, these radical genealogies were obscured with the deaths of many activists.

Talk About Loving in the War Years

Between 1984 and 1990, lesbian and gay activists in the Bay Area and in Nicaragua built transnational ties that reshaped the gay and lesbian left. Two solidarity brigades composed largely of lesbians of color, Somos Hermanas and the Victoria Mercado Brigade, traveled from San Francisco to Nicaragua and made Nicaraguan solidarity a vehicle for multiracial, transnational, and women of color feminism. Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan lesbian and gay movement sought recognition in the Sandinista Revolution. They resisted repression by Sandinista security forces but kept that repression unknown in the United States to ensure ongoing support from solidarity activists. By managing solidarity efforts, Nicaraguan activists pursued their own goals and won Sandinista support for AIDS prevention and lesbian and gay activism.

24th and Mission

Gay and lesbian radicals opposed both the domestic and the foreign policies of the New Right and became allies to Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution. Starting in 1978, activists began to organize uniquely lesbian and gay solidarity with Nicaragua and to use these efforts to address tensions between sexuality, socialism, and racial and ethnic identities. Lesbian and gay solidarity was anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, and sought multiracial community in the San Francisco Mission District. Activists built groups including the Gay Latino Alliance, Gay People for the Nicaraguan Revolution, and Lesbians and Gays Against Intervention. By 1983 lesbian and gay radicals had won a major presence in Central American solidarity and forged networks tied to women of color feminism and the San Francisco Women's Building.

Introduction

Narratives of the LGBT past have been constrained by exceptionalist narratives of Stonewall, the 1960s, and ACT UP. These narratives describe gay and lesbian radicalism as disappearing soon after 1969 and obscure the genealogies that fostered AIDS activism. The history of the gay and lesbian left counters these narratives, showing that across the 1970s and 1980s, radicals pursued an interconnected politics in which sexual liberation was the theory and radical solidarity the practice. Gay and lesbian leftists drew anti-imperialism from Black radicalism and the anti-war movement, engaged socialist and women of color feminisms, and redefined queer community by tying it to Central American solidarity. By the end of the Cold War these influences proved central to direct action against AIDS.

A More Powerful Weapon

Between 1969 and 1975, lesbian feminists developed a politics of collective defense, which linked self-protection and community building to armed resistance and the radical underground. Collective defense first emerged through alliances between the group Gay Women's Liberation and the Black Panther Party. It expanded through lesbian feminists' support for armed radical groups, their opposition to state repression, and their involvement in political and self-defense trials. The cases of the Symbionese Liberation Army, of white lesbian radical Susan Saxe, and of women of color Inez Garcia and Joan Little proved central to activists' politics. Yet as the experiences of the organization Gente showed, collective defense simultaneously mobilized anti-racism and constructed barriers between lesbians of color and white lesbian feminists.

Epilogue

By the early 1990s, the losses of AIDS and the end of the Cold War displaced the gay and lesbian left and brought military inclusion to the forefront of an increasingly neoliberal LGBT rights movement. Though queer radicals continued to organize and the field of queer studies grew, neither fully recognized the contributions of the gay and lesbian left. However, new continuities have become apparent in recent queer radicalism and scholarship, especially those modes that foreground queer of color critique and trans critique. The gay and lesbian left's transformative and transnational commitments are echoed today through queer work against prisons, involvement in Palestinian solidarity, queer immigrant organizing, and especially in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Beyond the Gay Ghetto

Between 1969 and 1973, gay liberationists began to define radical alliances as central to sexual liberation. Gay men drew on Black radicalism, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and other causes to analyze anti-gay oppression and to draw analogies between sexuality and race. They pursued solidarity with the Black Panther Party and defined gayness as a means to resist U.S. militarism. They also distinguished leftist gay liberation from a different politics termed gay nationalism, as by opposing a gay nationalist scheme to colonize California's Alpine County — a project gay leftists argued would replicate capitalism, imperialism, and anti-gay oppression. In contrast to such proposals, Bay Area gay radicals organized gay solidarity with a multiracial and socialist left.

Limp Wrists and Clenched Fists

By the mid 1970s radical gay men were building a gay left and forging alliances with lesbians. They sharpened their politics through socialist feminism and Chilean solidarity, confronted police brutality, and challenged racism in gay men's life. The organization Bay Area Gay Liberation built grassroots power while the Third World Gay Caucus networked gay and lesbian people of color. While gay and lesbian leftists pursued anti-imperialism over liberal reform, by the late 1970s they also joined strategic left-liberal coalitions against the New Right. Radicals played key roles in defeating the Briggs Initiative's attack on gay and lesbian teachers, and though unable to stop a death penalty measure, evidenced resistance to state violence in the White Night Riots.