All across the country, people are celebrating L.G.B.T.Q. Pride this month. For decades, The New Yorker has chronicled the remarkable challenges and changes that have defined the battle for gay rights. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about the progress of this extraordinary movement.
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In “The Perfect Wife,” Ariel Levy profiles Edith Windsor, who fell in love with her partner and won a landmark Supreme Court case for same-sex marriage. In “Larry Kramer, Public Nuisance,” Michael Specter examines the life of the playwright and activist and considers how his barbed, audacious advocacy helped transform the national conversation around AIDS. In “Love on the March,” from 2012, Alex Ross reflects on the momentous efforts to advance gay rights in America. In “Netherland,” Rachel Aviv reports on the lives of homeless L.G.B.T.Q. young people in New York. Finally, in “Coming Out, and Rising Up, in the Fifty Years After Stonewall,” Masha Gessen contemplates the sweeping changes that have occurred since the history-making uprising, in 1969. Taken together, these pieces reflect the struggle, the accomplishments, and the many opportunities that still lie ahead.
—David Remnick
