FROM THE CLOSET TO THE COURTS: The Lesbian Experience

A useful if overpriced handbook for the lesbian activist and the concerned citizen interested in changing our discriminatory laws against homosexuals. Written by a veteran of the homophile movement (Simpson's a former president of the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian organization that antedates Gay Lib), this is an insider's book, which recounts with dispassion the battles lesbians have fought not only with the courts, legislators, and the media but with the feminist movement, which for many years either disavowed or ignored them. As one might expect the author has little patience with the closet lesbian (who, she believes, exaggerates parental reprisals) and none at all with the pillars of church and psychiatry who have helped oppress America's least visible minority (six percent of the population). Perhaps the most significant new information is Simpson's revelation that police infiltration was used in the gay movement. The book is written with little rhetoric and no stridency and should be appreciated by the lilac underground.