Investigating public records, journals, and books - Terence Kissack expands the scope of the history of LGBT politics in the United States. The anarchists examined—such as Emma Goldman, Benjamin Tucker, and Alexander Berkman—defended the right of individuals to pursue same-sex relations, often challenging the conservatism of fellow anarchists as well as police, clergy, and medical authorities—who condemned LGBT people. He examines the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, the life and work of Walt Whitman, Tucker's Liberty and Leonard Abbott's The Free Comrade, and the frank treatment of homosexual relations in Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.