This work stands alone as a study of gender- and race-based communities and the interaction of gender, race, class, and religion in an American city in the recent past. The study addresses social and cultural issues both peculiarly Southern and generally American, as it surveys Memphis, Tennessee, between World War II and 1990, when lesbians and gay men developed group identity and community institutions first as a defense in the closeted 1950s, then as part of the liberationist 1970s, and, in the 1980s, as a response to the spread of AIDS and the demands of other marginalized groups for recognition, inclusion, and power.Because the locale of the study is the American South, ramifications of racial animosities and the different black and white social and cultural constructs come into play, along with the effects of the fundamentalist religious mindset and differences in social class.