The Gay Mystique

This is the 1978 reprint cover. The Gay Mystique is a seminal book about being gay. It was written by Peter Fisher, an "avowed homosexual" in the parlance of the day, who was an activist in the early post-Stonewall Gay Liberation Movement. He was a member and officer in the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). GAA was a protest group that split off from the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) after the Stonewall riots with the goal of "writing the revolution into law." The group specialized in leading "zaps", or protests targeted at public figures, to expose homophbia in all areas of public life, the most famous probably being a zap of Harpers Magazine after they published a virulently homophobic article by Joseph Epstein in 1970 . Fisher also served as an unofficial historian for GAA.

This book was described as "one of the first books to look at the subject (of being gay) from the inside rather than from a heterosexual’s viewpoint." Fisher discusses, in detail, many different aspects of the "gay mystique" from how do you know you're not gay; are homosexuals sick; coming out; the current (for 1972) political aspects of being gay; where do gay people meet; and many other areas. The main thing I took away from the book when I read it first in 1973 (I'm re-reading it now in June of 2015) is the revolutionary idea that being gay is perfectly normal and OK. We were not (are not) sick and don't need to be cured. This is still the focus of the book (in my humble opinion) and it's not so revolutionary anymore. His partner/lover (the preferred term at the time), Marc Rubin was a special education teacher and together they wrote a novel entitled, “Special Teachers/ Special Boys” based on Rubin’s experiences teaching troubled youth.