When the Political Became the Personal, Gay Rights Triumphed: New at Reason

The Path to Gay Rights “The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out,” declared Barney Frank, who in 1987 was the first member of Congress to exit the closet voluntarily. “Not to write a letter to your congressman, but to come out.”

How did public support for the legality of same-sex relations double from the 1980s to today? How did support for both gay marriage and gay adoption grow by more than 20 percent in just two decades? Jeremiah Garretson tackles these questions in The Path to Gay Rights, a scholarly analysis of the LGBT movement’s success. The book’s narrative is hopeful—it’s a story of how countless personal interactions and individual changes of heart, not elite opinion or legal mandates, drove one of the most remarkable attitudinal shifts in modern history, writes Tyler Koteskey.

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