Page "LGBT social movements" Paragraph 50

Some historians consider that a new era of the gay rights movement began in the 1980s with the emergence of AIDS, which decimated the leadership and shifted the focus for many.

This era saw a resurgence of militancy with direct action groups like AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power ( ACT UP ) ( formed in 1987 ), and its offshoots Queer Nation ( 1990 ) and the Lesbian Avengers ( 1992 ).

Some younger activists, seeing " gay and lesbian " as increasingly normative and politically conservative, began using queer as a defiant statement of all sexual minorities and gender variant people — just as the earlier liberationists had done with gay.

Less confrontational terms that attempt to reunite the interests of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transpeople also became prominent, including various acronyms like LGBT, LGBTQ, and LGBTI, where the Q and I stand for Queer or Questioning and Intersex respectively.