One Out Gay Cop: Gay Moderates, Proposition 64, and Policing in Early AIDS-Crisis Los Angeles, 1969–1992

Abstract

I n l a t e 1992 t h e l o s a n g e l e s Gay and Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force (hereafter the Task Force) unveiled a victory more than fifteen years in the making: the publication of a gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) awareness training manual for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Its appearance coincided with the LAPD’s decision to recruit openly gay police officers and the emergence of Pride Behind the Badge, an association of previously closeted officers recently formed to staff LAPD recruitment events and trainings. As an apparent reversal of the LAPD’s long-standing hostility toward homosexuals, the manual signaled the LAPD’s growing willingness to protect white gay and lesbian privacy and property through policing.1 The manual, for instance, reminded officers that “self-identified,” or out, gays “have higher average household