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From Harvey Milk to Prop 8, in this week’s issue Alex Ross traces the history of the gay-rights movement, interlacing the movement’s milestones with his own memories and experiences as a gay man in America. Ross writes, “I am forty-four years old, and I have lived through a startling transformation in the status of gay men and women in the United States… Around the time I was born, homosexual acts were illegal in every state but Illinois. Lesbians and gays were barred from serving in the federal government. There were no openly gay politicians. A few closeted homosexuals occupied positions of power, but they tended to make things more miserable for their kind.” But, he writes, “Today, gay people of a certain age may feel as though they had stepped out of a lavender time machine…. Gay rights have made such rapid progress that there is an urge to look back and assess what has happened.”
