Students of LGBT politics are aware of the decades-long tension in the movement over assimilationist political strategies versus a truly liberationist perspective that seeks to remake society. In this book, Zein Murib reimagines this tension and provides a unique look into the construction of a mainstream LGBT political identity through movement organizations and opinion leaders in the LGBTQ community. Murib largely focuses on the period from 1968 to 2001, concentrating on how LGBT activists constructed a unified political identity.

Their central thesis is that as LGBT movement actors and organizations advocated for an assimilationist “rightful citizenship claim” for LGBT people, they fostered an LGBT identity that was forced to define the ideal type of LGBT citizen—a “type” that tended to exclude portions of the LGBT community that did not fit an ideal that was white, middle class, adhering to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and monogamous. In short, Murib demonstrates the limiting and exclusionary strategy of pursuing rights claims by the LGBT movement. Indeed, Murib’s focus on rightful citizenship claims reinforces the very norms that the idea seeks to dismantle. By striving for inclusion within the existing framework of citizenship, the movement potentially reinforces the idea that LGBT people must conform to c