Lee Brewster was active in the homophile and gay liberation movements, working with the Mattachine Society of New York as well as the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.

Brewster described his clientele in an interview in The Village Voice saying, "Half of my clients are respectable-looking businessmen," and that they were "very normal, but they know better than to present that side of themselves.

[2][3][5] Brewster advocated for people who wanted to engage in cross-dressing, notably at times when this was an unpopular position in the LGBT movement in the United States.

[3] Some members of the organizations disliked public cross-dressing, so he began holding the balls at the Diplomat Hotel on West 43rd Street.

[2] In the 1970s, Brewster financed a successful legal challenge to a New York City ordinance that allowed people to be removed from public places because they were homosexuals.

[2] At his first ball in February 1969, he announced plans to form what would become known as the Queens Liberation Front, with October 31, 1969, to be its formal founding date.

[3] In 1971, the Queens Liberation Front was teamed with the Street Tranvestite Action Revolutionaries, and the Gay Activists Alliance in support of Intro 475, to end discrimination based upon sexual orientation in New York City.

[7][8] Lesbian Feminist Liberation opposed the performance by drag queens at the 1973 LGBT Pride March in New York City.

Lesbian Feminist Liberation's Jean O'Leary then insisted on responding by denouncing drag as misogynist and criticizing the march for being too male-dominated.

The increasingly angry crowd only calmed when Bette Midler, who heard on the radio in her Greenwich Village apartment, arrived, took the microphone, and began singing "Friends".

The coverage of this event and a corresponding photograph of the panel can be found in Drag magazine Vol.2 No.7, near the end of the article on Male Prostitution.