THERE IS literally no issue in the United States today in which the gulf between the two parties is wider than on the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to legal equality. This is a relatively new fact in American political life. …
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LET ME BEGIN with a simple provocation: queer folks-every last one of us-should vote to re-elect President Barack Hussein Obama in 2012. From an electoral standpoint, there’s really no choice for GLBT people this or any other November-that is, if you define “choice” as having more than one viable option. …
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THIS IS THE STORY of a lesbian FBI informant who worked undercover in the American Communist Party from 1942 to 1949, and who testified at the 1949 trial of the Party’s leadership in New York City’s Foley Square. Like all the Communist trials of the period (including that of the Rosenbergs) it was a conspiracy trial, which meant that no overt act was alleged. Under the 1940 Smith Act (officially the Alien Registration Act), the charge was “conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence.” …
MoreAnti-Americanism is perhaps an expected feature of French public education, at least according to a study conducted by Barbara Lefebvre and Eve Bonnivard in 2004, which suggested that French textbooks are anti-American to the point that French high school students might be led to wonder, “could it be that all evils in the world are caused either indirectly or directly by the actions of the United States?” (Lefebvre and Bonnivard, 2005). It is true that 2004 reflected a high point in anti-American sentiment in France, and it is reasonable to assume that things have calmed down since then. Yet …
MoreHEN SPAIN became the third country in the world to grant same-sex couples the freedom to marry in 2005, it came as a surprise to many watching from the United States. How could a traditional, Catholic country that had been under a fascist dictatorship for most of the 20th century suddenly be at the forefront of marriage equality for same-sex couples?
Spanish GLBT rights activists describe the change in dramatic terms: …
MoreEVEN IN THE FIRST DECADE of the now three-decade-long HIV/Aids plague, there was already talk about ‘the changing face’ of the epidemic. …
While it’s true that the proportion of minorities with HIV has risen over the years, the fact is that, since AIDS was first reported among a group of gay men in 1981, gay and bisexual men of all colors continue to account for by far the largest number of those infected with HIV, those at risk for infection, and those living with untreated HIV. Like it or not, HIV/Aids in America is still a profoundly “gay” disease. …
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IT HAS BEEN nearly fifty years since the publication of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences, but interest in both the book and in the way he wrote it remains so high …
MoreScholars are divided over whether it’s appropriate to use the term “lesbian” to refer to 18th-century relationships between two women, since the word was not used at the time. But despite the absence of the word, people were aware that such relationships and such women existed.
More… British readers will soon have a chance to read an extraordinary piece of autobiographical fiction by the undeniably long-forgotten author G. F. (George Frederick) Green. In the Making had such a negligible impact on its first publication in 1952, moreover, that in any true sense, its republication sixty years later allows us to discover, rather than rediscover, a major writing talent.
More[R]esearch on the determinants of sexual orientation-or even gay-associated biological traits such as finger length, fingerprint patterns, inner ear clicks, etc.-have attracted tremendous press. …
In Backdrop: The Politics and Personalities Behind Sexual Orientation Research, Gayle Pitman, a Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at Sacramento City College, [explores] how these researchers’ personal backgrounds have influenced their work.
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