Vice Patrol - 9780226769783

The University of Chicago Press

Vice PatrolCops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life before Stonewall\nAuthor(s): Anna Lvovsky\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: The University of Chicago Press, United States\nImprint: University of Chicago Press\nISBN-13: 9780226769783, 978-0226769783\nSynopsis\nIn the mid-twentieth century, gay life flourished in American cities even as the state repression of queer communities reached its peak. Liquor investigators infiltrated and shut down gay-friendly bars. Plainclothes decoys enticed men in parks and clubs. Vice officers surveilled public bathrooms through peepholes and two-way mirrors.\n In Vice Patrol, Anna Lvovsky chronicles this painful story, tracing the tactics used to criminalize, profile, and suppress gay life from the 1930s through the 1960s, and the surprising controversies those tactics often inspired in court. Lvovsky shows that the vice squads campaigns stood at the center of live debates about not only the laws treatment of queer people, but also the limits.