Here's something to think about.
Virtually all the histories of disco have stated that disco was born out of the predominantly white New York gay scene.
Perhaps it's time that this perspective was challenged.
One could argue that the real driving force - in a cultural sense - which ultimately led to what came to be known the world over as "disco' was straight black teens ... those black kids in the the larger US urban cities like New York, Chicago, Philly, Detroit and LA .
The whole dancing in "discotheques" and "go go" craze that had hit the US in the mid 60s via Motown and the golden era of soul may have been fading fast by 1967 with psychedelia - at least as far as mainstream white US society was concerned - but the black kids in urban cities never stopped going to clubs (and school gymnasiums !) and dancing to their favourite soul and funk tunes and creating new dances all the time (the Tighten Up , Funky Chicken , Robot etc ).
Just read the chapter on dancing in Robert Pruter's brilliant book "Chicago Soul" to see exactly what was going on in a major city like Chicago in the late 60's in terms of how influential young straight black kids were in the development of music culture in the US at the time .
What the conventional histories of the disco scene never state - such as the books which Mark Res refers to in an earlier post - is that for every one of those legendary small gay haunts in New York with DJs like Francis Grasso which were considered to be the well spring for disco , there were a whole host of little black clubs with their own DJs , not only New York but the other major cities , and which played popular soul and RnB tunes of the day and catered to a primarily straight young black clientele, and that's not to mention the plethora of night clubs for older blacks , as well as the usual chitlin circuit for live soul acts ( the Howard Theatre , Apollo etc) ...
Furthermore, the TV show "Soul Train" went into national syndication in 1971, and was based in LA by the way, not New York , having started life as a local show for black teens in Chicago in 1969 . Have a look at some of those early episodes of Soul Train; the template for disco was already there by 1971 for all Americans to see every week , while the gay club scene in New York at that time was still in its infancy and still very underground.
What I'm getting at is that it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that the whole disco era may well have happened even if there had been no gay New York club scene / culture at all ... This is not to dismiss the influence that the New York gay scene actually did have on disco but to give a more balanced perspective on what really led to the cultural phenomenon of disco.