Out of Print: Gay Periodicals and the Construction of Gay Community, 1969-1980

As the Gay Liberation movement spread across the cities of the United States during the 1970s, one institution bolstered it more than any other: the gay press. This thesis examines the role of the gay press in constructing an imagined community of gay men during the 1970s, uncovering the methods in which it fashioned a gay world that both encompassed and reached beyond the temporal and geographic boundaries of the United States. Throughout its three chapters, it argues that writers in gay periodicals built gay community and the Gay Liberation movement in numerous ways, such as reporting on gay history (Chapter One), uncovering foreign gay communities and culture (Chapter Two), and by solidifying the concerns and aspirations of the movement through public discussions of its multifarious struggles (Chapter Three). Furthermore, It aims to show how the gay press’ reportage not only built a gay world by mapping the universality of homosexuality across time and space, but also how it fostered harmful divisions within the gay community just as it was pulling it together. By looking at how racist and imperialist thought was utilized in the construction of a global gay community, the thesis highlights a dual relationship where gay periodicals brought men from around the world together into a singular gay community, while at the same time stratifying this community through the language of race and empire. It accomplishes this task by utilizing nearly a dozen periodicals catered to gay men from the era, including Gay Liberation periodicals such as Gay Liberator and Gay Sunshine, gay entertainment and tourism magazines like QQ and Ciao!, and local gay newspapers such as Boston’s Gay Community News, examining repeated coverage on gay history, foreign gay communities, and gay politics throughout this diverse selection of publications. In turn, this thesis provides insight into how print cultures can construct social movements and imagined communities through a variety of mechanisms, while also spotlighting how they represent and even foster malignant divisions within the worlds they are building. Moreso, it also aims to demonstrate the challenges faced by the American Gay Liberation movement and other movements for sexual liberation throughout the twentieth century in addressing the intersectional struggles shared by many LGTBQ+ individuals. By uncovering these “pitfalls of sexual liberation,” as described by historian Laurie Marhoefer, a better understanding of the American Gay Liberation movement and the manners in which it conceived and constructed gay community, a community largely made for white gay men, can be obtained.