SO, A NEW LOGO and a new cover design. The old heading, which spelled out our name in full, lasted for 25 years and served us well. But it was time for a change.

From the Editor

BY “MYTHOLOGIES” I mean something like what Roland Barthes had in mind in his book by that name: not myths in the sense of tall tales but something closer to metaphors or theories used to explain natural or social phenomena. Modern mythologies tend to be wrapped in a patina of science, or perhaps pseudo-science, as various accounts arise to explain, say, homosexuality or gender variance.

ON JUNE 15th, in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-to-3 vote that discrimination based upon sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal.

THIS WOULD normally be our quadrennial Election Issue, which in the past (starting in 1996) always led with an essay by former Congressman Barney Frank. Producing this issue was always a challenge, as it goes to press in late July, and a lot can happen in three-plus months even in an ordinary year.

THIS ISSUE’S THEME does not refer to the long-running Off-Broadway play The Fantasticks but instead to a collection of writers and artists who might better be described as “fantasists”: those…More

AS I WRITE, covid-19 is racing through the U.S. population, with the number of infected climbing exponentially. News about the pandemic is all-consuming, as is its impact on everyday life.

THIS ISSUE’S THEME refers to sexual orientations that are not generally covered in this magazine, whose style manual recommends the use of “LGBT,” but the phrase could also extend…More

BY INVOKING the word “camp,” I’m taking advantage of the word’s famous ambiguity, which allows me to cover a number of disparate artists under its umbrella. They’re “leaders” in the sense that they represent a kind of camp that flourished in the era before gay liberation, when homosexuality could only be discussed indirectly, if at all, through sly references that the cognoscenti alone might recognize.