Gay Politics, Urban Politics: Identity and Economics in the Urban Setting

Bailey, a political scientist who until his untimely death in 2001 was one of the foremost authorities on gay politics and voting patterns in large cities, blends data with detailed studies of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Birmingham, Alabama, to illustrate the role gays and lesbians play as distinctive members of urban political communities, where they have traditionally been part of liberal coalitions. Bailey argues that the ends of urban-based gay political involvement have had more to do with the definition and assertion of identity than with influencing the levers of economic policy-making. At a time when "identity politics" as a mode of analysis has fallen out of fashion in academic gay studies, Bailey compiles an impressive array of evidence that identity politics, at least in the urban setting, actually is becoming more important as municipal politicians seek to build coalitions and consensus.