Early Days in the Fight for Gay Rights

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

LIFE chronicles the early days of the gay rights movement in America

In late 1971, two years after the Stonewall riots in New York sparked the modern gay rights movement in America, and twelve months before LIFE ceased publishing as a weekly, the magazine featured an article on “gay liberation” that, encountered more than 40 years later, feels sensational, measured and somehow endearingly, deeply square all at the same time. Continue ...

Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images