Journalist versus Advocate

Interestingly, the content of Conduct Unbecoming allowed Shilts to break at least partially free of the criticism that his writing lacked proper representation or consideration of lesbian women as part of the story. Given that his first two books were a biography of an openly gay politician and an exposé of the advent of a communicable disease pandemic mostly among gay men, the absence of women from his work was understandable or at least explainable. Shilts had well armed his critics, as many pointed to hysterical news stories by Shilts on the pages of the Chronicle and later as part