While homosexuality has been documented in most cultures throughout history, the modern American gay male community began to form itself in the early 1900s. The word "gay," once widely used in the nineteenth century to describe any sort of debauched behavior, gained a new meaning when gay men in the 1920s and 1930s used it as a code word to identify each other. Though their communities were kept underground for decades, hidden from a larger society, which for the most part condemned homosexuality as immoral and perverted, gay men have exerted a tremendous influence on that society. Through arts, fashion, literature, entertainment, and politics, gay men, both visible and invisible, have been one of the major forces in shaping the twentieth century.

Around the 1920s, urban gays had begun to find ways to meet and socialize. Most gay meeting places were clandestine, but some were tolerated...