Hitting below the Bible Belt: The Development of the Gay Rights Movement in Atlanta

ABSTRACT:

This study focuses on the gay and lesbian rights movement in America’s most conservative region, the South, and its major urban center, Atlanta. Gays and lesbians benefited from a changing political opportunity structure as they overcame severe pressures to develop their own neighborhoods, build a wide range of organizations, and become an important electoral bloc. The movement built upon the city’s civil rights legacy and benefited from the dissipation of it opponents, but it has not posed a major threat to what has been labeled Atlanta’s regime.