I'm a straight guy who wrote a book titled Gay Power. Confused? Well, so were my parents, all my friends, and my girlfriend. When I began writing it, I tried explaining to everyone that historians had neglected gay history and my book would be a significant contribution to the field of United States history in general. But even the most open-minded people were baffled. I could see them thinking, "why would a truly straight guy be interested in gay history?" I soon began misleading people by making vague claims about writing on "1960s radical movements." I totally lied about it to a woman I was dating, and only after I proved my "straightness" did I let my gay book "out of the closet."

Years of playing games to hide my work gave me a little taste of life in the closet. I also was forced to seriously grapple with the big question—why would a straight guy care about gay history? My answer became the central argument of my book: the gay rights movement liberated and transformed straights as well as gays.

This idea hit me in, of all places, Low Library. I was looking through the Columbia files on the Student Homophile League, the first gay student group in America, founded at Columbia in 1966. In the files, I discovered letters from alumni complaining to then-President Grayson Kirk about the new gay group. I expected the alums to be angry and judgmental but found they were mostly anxious. Dozens of Columbia-educated doctors, lawyers, and businessmen expressed a common fear that a gay student group would convert the rest of the student body to "homosexualism." One alum predicted that if the administration did not vigilantly suppress homosexuality, the entire campus would go gay. As I read these letters I wondered why these straights were so afraid of homosexuals? And why didn't I share their anxiety?

For decades comedians, politicians, and journalists reinforced negative gay stereotypes of the homosexual as either the silly fop or creepy pervert. But in the early 1970s, gay activists pushed the media to present positive images of gays. Almost every sitcom suddenly aired a "special episode" featuring a likeable gay character who revealed his homosexuality but, in the end, was embraced by the entire cast. Millions of Americans heard the message: "If the cast of Alice can accept a homosexual, so should you!"
On the political front, gay activists used disruptive demonstrations called "zaps" to force the country's most influential liberal politicians to advocate gay rights. Liberals in the 1960s, like Bobby Kennedy, never had to talk about gay rights; 1970s liberals like George McGovern had no choice. Liberalism was never recovered. And from that point forward the national debate over gay rights has played a big role in American politics.

Have you ever wondered why gay marriage is such a big issue? Well, that goes back to an unintended side effect of the gay rights movement. After the media presented a sympathetic view of homosexuals and liberal politicians embraced the cause of gay rights, conservative activists introduced a counter argument: any progress toward the public acceptance of gay rights is a threat to "the family." And a threat to the family was a threat to America. Conservative activists and televangelists built a well-funded "anti-gay rights movement" that fed into the Reagan revolution. Today's gay marriage debate is really an old debate about whether or not sexual equality threatens America. When you put the gay marriage debate in its historical context, the fact that it generated more media attention than economic issues during the last presidential election almost makes sense.

For better or for worse, the gay rights movement was an American Revolution that transformed our political and social landscape. And so my fellow straight Americans, if you want to understand the country you live in today ... read your gay history.