Stand by Me

"Downs has an instinct for historically relevant stories and he tells them well.... In the chapter 'Prison Sounds,' Downs offers similarly invigorating detective work, digging up aspects of LGBT activism that have eluded most historians."

"Downs capably blends authority and warmth in this thoughtful reexamination of an era."

"Intelligent and thought-provoking."

"The sheer act of Downs' acknowledging that not all gay men subscribed to the popular 'three Big Bs' of the time--'the Bars, Beaches, and Baths'--and found their identity validated and articulated through the communal practices of Christian worship and cultural hubs (like the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop) is a refreshing and invigorating experience. Stand By Me proves a deeply moving read, one that passionately and urgently argues for us to acknowledge some of the forgotten history of gay liberation."

"Downs infuses great passion and intent in every paragraph, striving to the raise the level of discourse even as he's tossing outmoded ideas aside left and right. This is history as it should be told, as complex and as personal as possible."

"Stand by Me includes massacre and tragedy; its opening chapter is an emotional rehashing of the 1973 arson attack--the most lethal targeting of gay people in American history until the June 12 massacre at Orlando's Pulse club--took the lives of 32 men during a religious service.... The passages that grab you most...address the 'usable past,' which Downs defines as the facets of history that provide gay people with 'legitimacy, meaning, and, most of all, a genealogy to their plight.' And his passion is infectious."

"Stand By Me is not duplicative of other accounts. It is to our movement an equivalent to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States."

"Stand By Me is a laudable, thoroughly researched corrective to the prevalent idea of gay people in the 1970s as uninvolved, unengaged sex-crazed hedonists."

"Downs makes a good case for us to remember that the zeal for liberation in the '70s was deeply and directly informed by feminist politics, and thus was only ever in part, primarily or even strongly, about sexual liberation.... [A] diverting book with considerable virtues."

"This book is informative, sometimes horrifying, interesting and, unlike your old high school history books, it's never dry."

"A valuable addition to LGBT and social-change collections."

"In sparking, often moving, prose, Jim Downs rewrites the history of the gay liberation movement in the 1970s. This is an important contribution not only to the history of that struggle but to our understanding of the afterlife of the upheavals of the 1960s."

"From the ashes of a horrific fire that engulfed a gay church in New Orleans in 1973, Jim Downs has rescued the history of gay men in the decade after the Stonewall uprising. As this beautiful, and at times haunting, book makes clear, gay men in this period forged intellectually vibrant, spiritually rich, and nourishing communities that not only sustained them through some harrowing and heartwarming times, but that also grew more powerful as the twentieth century became the twenty-first."

"Stand by Me brings the 1970s back to life, not as it is imagined to be, but as it actually was. In compelling prose, Jim Downs has recovered the stories of heroic individuals who risked much to come out, to build community, and to fight for social justice. Some of these episodes are tragic and some inspiring. All of them deserve to be remembered."