Katie Batza chronicles the development of a national gay health network by highlighting the politically diverse origins of longstanding gay health institutions in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, placing them in a larger political context, and following them into the first five years of the AIDS crisis. In doing so, Before AIDS recasts the existing AIDS narrative and makes interventions into historical understandings of the 1970s, gay liberation, and the role of the state in gay institution building in the late 20th century.