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Gay migration to cities was a major feature of postwar urban life, one that consequentially shaped urban liberalism. By the late 1980s, in cities where politicians had only recently sought political advantage from raiding gay bars and carting their patrons off to jail, gays and lesbians had acquired sufficient power and influence for elected officials to pursue them aggressively as a potential voting bloc-not least by campaigning in those same bars. Their eventual victory over police harassment, secured by allying with other urban residents who were policed with similar vigor, especially African Americans, was the prerequisite for their later triumphs.
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The path of gays and lesbians to political power led through city hall and developed primarily in response to the constant threat of arrest under which they lived. This book traces that trajectory-from the closet to the corridors of power-and chronicles the rise of gay politics in the postwar United States. And yet, only fifty years ago, gays and lesbians were social and political pariahs, facing harassment wherever they gathered. In 2013, the chief justice of the United States suggested that the gay-rights ‘‘lobby’’ was so ‘‘politically powerful’’ that gay couples denied equal access to marriage should not be considered a disadvantaged class deserving protection from the courts. And so, gay bar raids went on longer here, gay people had to have more allies in order to win clout in City Hall than in other places." "Folks moved to Chicago from all over the Midwest, but it's not the kind of national mecca that New York and San Francisco are like. "Chicago is actually more representative than New York and San Francisco of the trajectory of gay politics," said Stewart-Winter.