John D’Emilio argues that historically, LGBT communities benefit in societies predicated on free labor—that is, a non-family-unit-based economy in which unmarried women and men are able to sustain economic independence.5 The boom economy of San Francisco in the second half of the nineteenth century is a prime example. A closely connected idea is historian George Chauncey’s argument that gay and lesbian communities found their earliest manifestations in poor and working-class cultures, because wealthier classes could maintain a greater degree of personal privacy.6 For LGBT people, the luxury of
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