The World Turned, a new book of essays by University of Illinois at Chicago historian John D'Emilio, is an examination of gay history, politics and culture in the '90s, and charts the changes that the decade brought to the gay movement.
Published by Duke University Press, D'Emilio's book explores why the gay community has become, over the last decade, such a visible part of American life. The book covers such topics as the gay gene controversy and the debate over whether people are born homosexual, the influence of AIDS activist and writer Larry Kramer, and the scapegoating of gays by the Christian right.
"The generation of gay men and lesbians who came of age in the 1990s in the wake of AIDS were different," said D'Emilio, head of UIC's Gender and Women's Studies program and professor of history. "They had higher expectations. They assumed they should be able to marry, that their families and friends should accept them, and that they had the right to be gay or lesbian," he said.
In The World Turned, D'Emilio reflects upon the gathering of events that brought gay issues from the margins into the center of national debate.
"Suddenly, in the early 1990s, gay issues became national political concerns for the first time," D'Emilio said. "The gays-in-the-military debate in 1993 continued for months. The question of gay marriage has agitated legislators in almost every state. Even Congress felt the need to take up the marriage issue. The great irony is that defeats in these areas actually lead to change for the better for the gay community."
D'Emilio's previous books include Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970, (U. of Chicago Press, 1998). He was the first director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Public Policy Institute.