The 1970s marked a complete change in LGBT activism. Stonewall in 1969 had ignited the movement, causing gay and lesbian groups to form nationwide. People who no longer felt they could be closeted, or did not have that option, rallied around their queer identities and contested blatant legal and social discrimination.^[1]

"The experience of discovering an identity or reassessing a familiar one, shared by thousands of people all over America, quickly united strangers. Like people accustomed to blurred vision who suddenly see sharp images, the lesbians and gay men who came out in the 1970s found pieces of their lives forming a coherent pattern for the first time...Anyone who cannot remember a time when homosexuality was absolutely unmentionable may not fully understand the high spirits of the gay rights movement in its first decade....The euphoria of coming out and of joining a new movement was channeled into much hard work, organizing, fund raising, and consciousness raising of the 1970s." ^[2]
-Margaret Cruikshank, The Gay Liberation Front, 1993

Much of the focus of the movement was to support laws that gave legal protection to LGBTQ people against job and housing discrimination and protect against laws that sought to take these rights away. Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign, a pioneering anti-gay crusade from the Christian far-right, which was successful in repealing anti-discrimination laws in Florida; and the Briggs Initiative, an anti-gay law that would prohibit LGBTQ teachers in public schools that ultimately failed, were both key moments in legislation that sparked national anger and helped launch pro-LGBTQ campaigns to fight discriminatory propaganda.^[3]

Newsletters and Magazines covered “news from the front,'' reporting on topics within the lesbian and gay liberation movement such as anti-pornography campaigns from organizations such as Stand Together Opposing Pornography (S.T.O.P), boycott lists, and the frequent raids by police on gay and lesbian business, bars, and events.