And that's the problem. The difficulty of locating sources that document same-sex love and sexuality is legendary The problem of tracing the movement, then, springs from the fact that historians and academicians had difficulty searching for data, information, and other documents that can prove the existence and practice of same-sex sexual orientation from the 18th to 19th centuries. More than just the problem of locating documents that could prove the existence of homosexuality in these early years, Rupp also experienced problems proving the gender differences between male and female homosexuality, since one of the objectives she tried establishing is that homosexuality "in the case of women" tend "to reveal emotional attachments to other women...we often do not know whether the behavior says anything about love or desire."

After Rupp has posed the scholarly question of the origins and historicity of same-sex sexual orientation movement, "Improper Bostonians" chronicles the lives of famous personalities -- both men and women -- who have had "private lives," that is, lives of homosexuals. Detailing the lives of famous American personalities (who are also homosexuals) has helped historians, academicians, and generally, the popular audience, in understanding the nature of homosexuality in the movement's early development. Notably, among the most...

The dominance of artists in the collection demonstrated how homosexual lives were documented "figuratively" through the literary works of these artists, as historians were faced with problems of unearthing historical documents (i.e., correspondences and photos explicitly showing their sexual preference for a partner).
Lastly, the collection of narratives/essays in "Come Out Fighting" details the thoughts of artists, historians, and even scientists as the movement strengthened and fully evolved in the 20th century. Examples of these developments include Alfred Kinsey's discussion of the biological roots of homosexuality, illustrated through the homosexual play, explicitly shows that homosexuality is a natural phenomenon not entirely unique among mammals, but in other animals as well. Carl Wittman's "A Gay Manifesto" assumes the radical stance assumed by Marx's "Communist Manifesto," putting homosexuality not only on a historical light, but on a political perspective as well -- that is, as a political issue that should concern modern society, a reality in modern society that must be tolerated, if not fully accepted.