The gay rights movement is pretty impressive, considering that GLBTers are only about 5% of the population. The stigma against being gay has gone down a lot in the last few decades, and now a majority of people support gay marriage.
So what are some books on how a social change happens where a minority group that is usually ridiculed, repressed & ignored manages to enter the mainstream and demand equality?
How do they fight for dignity, representation, autonomy in a meaningful way so that people who are used to ridiculing and ignoring them start to respect and listen to them instead? How do they form alliances with like minded groups (the GLBT movement seems to have found a lot of allies among progressives including labor, environmental activists, women’s rights groups, etc) so that they can work on each others goals? During the prop 8 election in California, the teachers union put 1 million into stopping the initiative as an example.
Is Alinsky’s rules for radicals the best book on the subject (its about the only one I can think of)? I am more looking for info on how the GLBT or civil rights movement tried to take a group who were (as I said) ignored, repressed and ridiculed and managed to organize them to fight for dignity, representation and autonomy. A mix of a how to manual combined with a biography of the best aspects of the civil rights and GLBT movements in achieving their goals.