<p> This thesis seeks to expand understandings of resistance, particularly in the context of everyday actions and social institutions. It achieves this by tracing the development of a gay community that became increasingly visible in Lafayette, Louisiana, from the late 1960s through the late 1980s. By crafting their own social mores and spaces, religious institutions, Mardi Gras associations, AIDS service organization, and political association, gay men resisted and contested efforts to marginalize or denigrate their identities and desires. Relying on oral histories and periodicals distributed within gay bars, this work highlights the importance of primarily non-political institutions in affirming gay identity, same-sex desire, and gender nonconformity. It finds agency within a group that has a largely undocumented history in Louisiana, outside of New Orleans. Previous scholarship on gay communities has focused too broadly on entire states or too exclusively on major metropolitan areas. This thesis, then, also brings to light the experiences of gay men in a small southern city, tracking the development of various means of resistance within that community.</p>

<p> Since its establishment as a mining camp, Denver was an integral part of life for many westerners, including homosexuals. Although Denver's early gay culture has received little scholarly attention, its history is unique and revealing, as its experience does not necessarily reflect those of other larger urban communities. This study examines how upper and middle-class white gay men navigated the boundaries of sexual morality to help define homosexual personhood for the public and form the basis of Denver's gay community between 1940 and 1975. Within the context of national discourse regarding "homosexuality," breadwinner liberalism, and the sexual revolution, the emergence and cohesion of Denver's gay community occurred during a transformation from homophile activism to the gay liberation movement. Subsequently, the history of gay Denver demonstrates the importance of politicization and sexuality in the construction and organization of gay scenes and the politics of moral respectability. Well before the materialization of a national "gay rights" movement and the gay liberation movement in the American twentieth century, Denver functioned as an example of how white gay men attempted to unify and create the basis of an early gay political movement.</p>

<p> This article will discuss the ways in which modern identity politics have encouraged us to label the sexuality of American authors of the past and the effects of those labels. Specifically discussing Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, I will discuss the history of nineteenth-century American sexuality, the assumptions placed upon Dickinson and Whitman with regard to their sexual identities, the political and social implications, and modern media consumption and presentation of those identities.</p>