White gay history written by a white gay man. 

It's not bad, in fact, it's very informative, but I'm also a white gay man so my perspective is limited. There's a lot to be learned from the pre-stonewall era of the gay liberation movement. This book mainly follows Frank Kameny, who some refer to as the grandfather of the gay rights movement, in his quest for equal protections and organizing to obtain that. 

Cervini paints a picture of 40s-60s that needs to be shown and understood. He provides a path to understanding the different approaches from gay men and lesbians. He shows the extent that respectability politics can get you. 

The book is thorough and mostly enjoyable. It's fascinating in these times to read how bad our government has been and how invasive we can be. It was strangely reassuring. Secret police? Firing from government positions for little reason? spying on organizations? Yeah... we did that. A lot of Americans like to look outside of the country for comparisons to the current climate when we really just have to look at our own history. 

The book does lack color, it lacks queer minority perspectives. Not that I blame the author completely. I just don't know how much overlap and intersectionality was available at the time. There are some black people who he does mention but it's not much. 

Overall, though, it's a really good history about a period of time where sexuality was shifting to identity instead of history.