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Pride
A review of

Pride

The Story of the LGBTQ Equality Movement

Matthew ToddWeldon Owen • 2020

A History of the Gay Rights Struggle

by David Meyer

Matthew Todd blends words and pictures in this coffee-table artbook tracing the history of gay rights.

Matthew Todd, author of Straight Jacket and editor-at-large of Attitude magazine, details the accomplishments of the Gay Pride movement today, 50 years after the Stonewall riots. Todd conveys the movement’s achievements in a lush photographic retrospective of one of the world’s most successful social justice campaigns. He details greater social acceptance for LGBTQ people, their political influence and their right to marry in many countries, as he warns both gay and straight readers not to be complacent. Todd cautions that even as the LGBTQ+ community and its allies feel justifiable pride in their achievements, homophobic, right-wing parties are on the rise worldwide.

Todd carefully curated and annotated page after page of photographs for this book, which also includes personal commentary from photographer Nan Goldin; activist Reverend Troy Perry; Nigerian activist Bisi Alimi; pioneering Muslim drag queen Asifa Lahore; innovative gay rabbi Deborah Brin; transgender rights activist Paris Lees; Judy Shepard, mother of gay hate-crime victim Matthew Shepard; New Zealand’s Georgina Beyer, the world’s first openly transgender mayor; and many other significant figures in the LGBTQ rights struggle.