Quotes from Martin Duberman

There's even less acceptance of bisexuality than homosexuality. Binary thinking still holds strong sway with the general population, and the exclusive homosexual is more understandable to the average person than is an individual who wanders the Kinsey scale with apparent—and alarming—abandon.

When GLF talked about sexual liberation, the agenda often included two interlocking items rarely mentioned these days: freeing up same-sex attraction in confirmed heterosexuals and releasing heterosexual desire in those who considered themselves exclusively gay.

We take you at your word: you are like us; now that we've 'let you in,' we expect that in your gratitude you won't pull any surprises and start behaving like some subspecies that you've assured us you're not; if we now say it's OK to be gay, we don't expect you to pull the rug out from under us and start acting queer .

optimistic sense of the "goodness" of human nature is always the essential fuel for activism.

These days, especially within queer theory's hallowed halls, sexual "fluidity" has become something of a talisman for personal authenticity.

homonormativity"—namely, the gay white middle-class focus on consumption and domesticity. The liberationists' goal is radical transformation, not liberal tinkering.

Humanitarian concerns are always dismissed as impractical, at least initially. Humanitarian concerns, however, aren't high on the national gay movement's list of priorities; if they were, we'd hear a lot more from them than we do about the inequities that derive from race, class, and gender.

A host of other matters that affect the lives of many LGBTQ people—among them, health care, senior centers, immigration, poverty, homelessness, diet, and education—are currently given short shrift. Even those issues still being partially addressed, like hate crime legislation, are of uncertain relevance (and even potential harm) to much of the queer population.

A whole new genre really, that portrays the improved public perception of LGBTQ people in hyperbolic terms skirting dangerously close to parody.

A quote from the London Gay Liberation Front Manifesto: 'The ultimate success of all forms of oppression is our self-oppression. Self-oppression is achieved when the gay person has adopted and internalised straight people's definition of what is good and bad.

Some unknown but apparently significant number of both homosexual and heterosexual couples do seem to believe that sex is hottest with comparative strangers and love is the property of emotional trust and intimacy.

Gay men know a lot more about sexual responsiveness, and the erotic potential of their bodies, particularly of their nipples and assholes, than straight men.

Historically, blacks and Latinos were routinely "carded"—denied admission—to white gay clubs; today, segregated socializing is less pronounced but an expansively "welcoming" atmosphere remains uncommon, and for trans people all but nonexistent. Lesbian activists, comparably, have been subject through time to gay male chauvinism so pronounced that they've felt the need periodically to form separate organizations.

The main goal here is to make ourselves "familiar enough" to straight people to win their acceptance. But why should that be of paramount importance? Precisely why would we want to do ourselves over in their image? To become more like them would be to forget our own singular history and the special insights and perspectives that derive from it, giving us, as spies in the culture, a unique perspective for evaluating and critiquing aspects of mainstream culture.

The attitudinal changes we've seen in recent decades regarding racism, sexism, and homophobia are real, but can encourage simplistic optimism about additional progress.

She, too, wanted "the option of random sex with no emotional commitment" when in the mood for physical release, though she predicted that if women also had bathhouses, they would be "less competitive than the gay men's baths, more laughter would ring in the sauna, and you'd touch not only to fuck but just to touch.

A "successful" relationship is best defined not as one that sustains erotic intensity but rather one that helps to soften the brute fact that we're alone in this world—and will leave it.