Born in Sydney, Altman was a Fulbright scholar
who earned a master's degree in political science from Cornell
University. During the summer following the Stonewall uprising,
Altman came back to the United States where he met and worked with
leading gay activists. Returning to Australia he published Homosexual:
Oppression and Liberation in 1971, now viewed as the
definitive book on the subject of ideas that shaped the era of gay
liberation.
Altman warned that commercialization and
capitalism threatened the sexual revolution, a topic he explored
in both Coming
Out in the Seventies and The Homosexualization
of America, the Americanization of the Homosexual.
He also wrote an early account of the American response to AIDS
titled AIDS
in the Mind of America.
Altman currently resides in Melbourne, Australia
where he is one of the country's best-known gay activists. He has
also written the novel The Comfort of Men.
Related Resources:
Power
and Community : Organizational and Cultural Responses to AIDS 
