The History of Queer Clout, Real and Imagined

The rise in gay political influence has propelled the field of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) history for more than three decades. This historical undertaking to understand the roots and reaches of gay clout has created two central modes of inquiry: one theoretical and the other archival. The theoretical analysis has manifested into queer theory, which has productively intersected with critical race theory and disability studies and even expanded, recently, into historical and theoretical considerations of magic and animism. Historical works rooted more in archives have produced research that traces specific organizations or individuals that revise the bulk of histories, which tend to be either sexually monolithic or devoid of sexuality. Both Timothy Stewart-Winter and Gregory Woods walk the archival path, offering vastly different, but equally innovative, histories of growing gay political clout and its effect on this vibrant and increasingly consequential field.

The first generation of archival-based monographs did the important work of staking a historical claim and disrupting a hetero-normative hegemonic historical narrative. By unearthing these histories, often creating new LGBTQ archives and methods in the process, early LGBTQ historian trailblazers went beyond simply claiming "we were here" to demonstrate for future scholars that LGBTQ history could be done. Most of these studies worked from the inside out, tracing LGBTQ individuals and organizations as they built communities and political strategies to interact with the larger society from which they differentiated. These works unearthed and drew upon LGBTQ archives and narratives to sketch the LGBTQ world in one facet or another. With over two decades worth of cumulative scholarship as foundation, historians of sexuality now approach their subjects from specific LGBTQ archives, an insider perspective, as much as from the archives and histories in which, at first glance, LGBTQ lives and history play only a seemingly small part.

If the first generation of scholarship centered the historical voices and actions of LGBTQ people as they operated in societies that were usually designed to work against them, the next generation often examines the larger social and political structures for examples of intersection with sexuality and LGBTQ identities and communities specifically. This latter approach does more to reveal the structural tools, machinations, and inter-workings of sexuality more broadly in societies through time, and it demonstrates the significance of sexuality (and LGBTQ sexualities) on virtually every facet of history and life. Recent examples of this new turn in LGBTQ history explore gay political influence intertwined with the State, communism in Central America, neighborhood policing, AIDS, and union activism. These framings have been very productive in extending the scope of LGBTQ history, as well as bringing greater diversity to it, both in terms of the identities of historical actors and in the presentation of gay political clout itself. Consequently, gay political weight appears more nuanced, multidimensional, complex, strategic, and conniving—in short, more reflective of reality. Both Woods and Stewart-Winter make significant additions to this generation of scholarship, but from different archives, time periods, geographic locations, and definitions of political clout.

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In Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics, Timothy Stewart-Winter contends that "the path of gays and lesbians to political power led through city hall" and that gay and lesbian Chicagoans gained access to city hall through pragmatic alliances with black activists and politicians (p. 1). He adroitly traces the shift "from the closet to the corridors of power" by uncovering the practical political relationship between black and queer activists and politicians over the last sixty years (p. 1). Blending community study with political history, Stewart-Winter unearths a political alliance that grew initially from the discriminatory policing endured by both black and gay communities in the 1950s and 1960s...