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... Many times throughout these interviews Vidal claims that the novel is dead and then goes on to blame college English courses for killing literature for the reading public. ...

JOHN WATERS describes Shock Value as “just about my final position paper on the shock/underground period of my career.” Nevertheless, he says, reporters continue to quote from this book when they interview him ...

... THE RELIGIOUS-SOUNDING title of gay liberation scholar Will Roscoe’s important new book, Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love, might give anyone who has cast off Judeo-Christian monotheism the willies. But readers starved for better fare in gay discourse ... will find in Roscoe’s scholarly yet accessible book ...

Two books on Tennessee Williams

COWBOYS are queer-or at least they were in frontier tales of the 19th century. Such is the conclusion of Chris Packard’s new book on this topic. ...

“A FRYING-PAN of shameful loves sizzled loudly all around me,” writes a brilliant, sensitive man in his early forties, remembering the uncontrollable lusts of earlier years, “and theatrical shows seized hold of me.” The writer is not Martin Moran but St. Augustine ...

... Same-sex marriage, which a decade ago seemed like a logical-and harmless-extension of civil rights to a group of disfranchised citizens, has instead become one of the key rallying points in the Christian Right’s attempt to merge religion and politics. ...

“CREATIVE NON-POETRY” is how Richard McCann half-jokingly described his unassumingly moving new book, Mother of Sorrows, at a reading. In a fusion of poetic memoir and fictional prose, McCann gently skews the facts both to guard his own past and to acquire artistic liberties. ...

Reviews of In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot, and School of the Arts: Poems.

THIS BOOK had to happen at some point. Someone had to embrace Whitman as an environmentalist, and thus we have Killingsworth’s Walt Whitman and the Earth, demonstrating yet again that Whitman is larger than himself, extending beyond 19th-century America to embrace the ages. ...

“I don’t know if I will live to finish this. … I’ve watched too many sicken in a month and die by Christmas, so that a fatal sort of realism comforts me more than magic. All I know is this: The virus ticks in me.” WITH these challenging words, which would soon become famous, PaulMore

PLAYWRIGHT Craig Lucas, who has written his share of screenplays, makes his film directorial debut in The Dying Gaul, a contemporary tale reminiscent of those past films about tragic figures bought and sold in Hollywood. Adapted by Lucas from his play of the same title, Peter Sarsgaard plays Robert, an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter whose personalMore

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BY ALL ACCOUNTS gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youths comprise a disproportionate number of at-risk youths across the U.S. They are substantially more likely than are straight youths to experience homelessness, whether because they run away or because they’re forced to leave home by their families. They’re more likely to attempt suicide and more likelyMore

TO GROW UP gay or lesbian any time before the Internet came into wide use, in most of America, was to experience a profound isolation. There were few places where one could go to see the possibility of a normal life. Many of us wondered whether we were alone in feeling the anomaly of same-sexMore

... Derrick is not self-hating, homophobic, or confused about who he is. He just doesn’t think he’s gay. Derrick is not a lone exception. This I discovered through interviewing young women with physical or romantic attractions to women, talking to youths in gay/straight alliances, reading youth stories gathered by others, listening to young people atMore

WHERE ARE WE in the struggle for gay rights in the United States? Are we in the early stages of what will become a successful mass movement for equal civil rights and respect? Or have we reached the highest point of advance for the time being-where we have persuaded many fair-minded people to disdain homophobia,More

This article first appeared in Salon.com, at www.Salon.com. An on-line version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission.

... The most recent studies show that approximately ten million children in the U.S. have one or more lesbian, gay, or bisexual parent. The media present us alternately as either blissfully well-adjusted or angrily screwed up-or ignore us altogether. ...

... A popular public speaker and national media commentator, Boykin was invited to be the featured speaker at this year’s annual dinner meeting of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus. Soon thereafter, the following exchange was conducted in real time on the Internet.