In recognizing this maturation of the movements, Craig Rimmerman evaluates their successes in operating within the current political structure and questions whether the newer emphasis on being a political movement is a good idea, given the goals of the lesbian and gay movements. While acknowledging gains in political rights, or at least some victories, for gay men and lesbians over the past four decades, he also presents evidence of the continuing second-class citizen status of lesbians and gay men in the United States. He compares and evaluates the gains and present status of gay men and lesbians as a function of the liberationist and assimilationist philosophies and strategies employed over the history of the movements. The central question regarding their strategies and goals is: What are the limits of liberal democracy?

Rimmerman evaluates the movements as fundamentally social, but with aspirations of being political. The broad summary history is framed by attention to the internal, resourcemobilization and external, political-process frameworks for examining social movements. Three chapters specifically offer brief guided histories of the interaction of the lesbian and gay movements with electoral politics and interest groups (Chapter 2), with the judicial system and legal rights (Chapter 3), and as outsiders engaging in unconventional politics to influence political and nonpolitical institutions (Chapter 4). There is also a chapter on the interaction of the lesbian and gay movements with the Christian Right, an examination of the actions and responses of each to the other over the past three-plus decades.

This structure allows the book to be comprehensive in its examination of diverse strategies employed by widely different groups within the decentralized lesbian and gay movements. None of the examinations is in depth; this is not necessary, as there are already several excellent books that give in-depth treatment to the different political arenas and groups. The strength of this broad-based approach is that it brings together evidence of actions by disparate groups and events in order to demonstrate that the movements have progressed, yet still face struggles and limits within the current political system. Rimmerman concludes that identity politics itself is too narrow a framework to effect change; groups within the movements that strive and settle for access to political power, the so-called seat at the table, instead of seeking positive policy outcomes are not using their resources wisely. To achieve positive policy outcomes more consistently, he argues for the effectiveness of building coalitions to engage in what he calls “radical democratic politics” (p. 156). Coalitions, he argues, would transform the cultural and political underpinnings of the current system, which maintain inequalities based on identity, whether that identity is based on sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, social and economic status, gender, or another culturally assigned status.

This book is a contemporary of Shane Phelan's (2001) Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and the Dilemmas of Citizenship; it is a focused companion to Mark Blasius's (2001) anthology Sexual Identity, Queer Politics. It is useful to political scientists because it employs known, common frameworks for the evaluation of social movements and gives unflinching, unsentimental criticism of the movements in analytical form. Nonetheless, the book refuses to “de-gay” its subject by treating it as an uncontextualized object. In this vein, the book would benefit from an extended discussion of the types of coalition building that need to be pursued by the lesbian and gay movements in order to effect the type of cultural, social, and political change that would achieve the movements’ goal of equal rights. The last chapter contains several suggestions for common goals with other groups and discusses some of the barriers to building coalitions around these goals. The chapter also includes a short case study of the grassroots coalition, Basic Rights Oregon, to illustrate the argument. While grassroots organizations are idiosyncratic, they are the necessary link between the prescription and the desired change. An extended discussion of how all of the groups involved in the mentioned issues, for example, the environment, would benefit from coalitions would link this discussion to other more theoretical discussions of culturally enforced inequalities.

This book assigns itself a tough challenge— reflecting on the ongoing lesbian and gay movements, their successes, and their remaining challenges. It does an admirable job of creating a compelling argument for why there will always be limits to success for the movements within the present political framework; while failure per se is not guaranteed, progress will be painfully slow and may never be fully realized. Thus, Rimmerman's call for a broader, more radical agenda for change in order to achieve full equality is a logical conclusion. It is to be hoped that this author and others will continue to envision strategies for achieving this more perfect union.