Over the past several decades, almost a fifth of countries across the world have legalized same-sex marriage, and less than a third now have laws explicitly criminalizing homosexuality. This is undeniably a sign both that there has been real progress in the struggle against homophobia and that large bastions of bigotry remain unchallenged across much of the globe.

In the 1970s and ’80s, struggles for gay liberation often took radical forms, aligning themselves with the antiwar and socialist movements. This connection between gay politics and political radicalism has almost completely broken down today. In an interview with Jacobin, Roger Lancaster, anthropologist and author of the new book The Struggle to Be Gay — in Mexico, for Example (University of California, 2024), argues that one of the foundational problems with the way that gay life is discussed in the academy and activist circles is its inattention to class.

In The Struggle to Be Gay — in Mexico, for Example, Lancaster provides a sociology of working-class gay life, focusing on dark-skinned and indigenous Mexicans. What he finds is that American discussions of gay life often ignore how class determines the spaces that people can afford to have access to. This has prevented many on the Left from seeing how economic insecurity excludes many working-class people from participating in gay life.