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.

THE ATMOSPHERE was triumphalist in New York City as we celebrated Stonewall’s 50th anniversary last June, and rightly so. Who can deny that it’s a different world for LGBT…More

Intro to issue.

THE THEME COLOR for this issue is gold, as befits the Age of Enlightenment, which is, after all, our civilization’s Golden Age, our answer to 5th-century Athens.

This issue completes the tenth volume of this journal, a minor miracle in itself, no doubt, but also a milestone of sorts in the GLBT rights movement. For it…More

The case of Lawrence v. Texas has been settled, and with it dies a legal monster that started life in 1533, in England, at the hand of King Henry…More