States of Desire Revisted

Saturday was the 35th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.  The New York gay community’s pushback against a New York City Police Vice Squad raid of the Greenwich Village pub is widely seen as the pivotal moment that pushed the Gay Liberation Movement into the national consciousness.  Over the course of the 1970’s, ithe U.S. saw the rise of a movement that initially sought to radically transform sexual and gender roles.  Over time, the emphasis changed from revolution to reform, with the emergence of a broader-based gay rights movement stressing equal rights, coming out.  In the 1970’s and early 1980’s writer Edmund White traveled the country, from New York to San Francisco, to Washington DC to Houston to Memphis meeting participants of the nascent gay movement.  His book of his journey, entitled “States of Desire: Travels in Gay America” was originally released in 1980.  Now, Edmund White looks back from the vantage of thirty four years later with “States of Desire Revisited,” available from University of Wisconsin Press.  Edmund White joins us now by phone.