Why Romney’s Candidacy Collapsed
Pandering to the religious Right has reached diminishing returns.
MoreBrowsing: Essays
Blog Posts
The Sex Diaries of John Maynard Keynes
This essay is adapted from a piece that first appeared in MoreIntelligentLife.com (Jan. 28, 2008), an on-line edition of The Economist. Published with permission.
MoreThe Briggs Initiative Goes National
NOVEMBER 1978 MARKS the thirtieth anniversary of the defeat of Proposition Six, the infamous Briggs Initiative, in California, which would have barred lesbians and gay men from teaching in state public schools. The victory for gay rights advocates came after a string of stunning defeats in referendum battles to repeal local gay rights laws that started in Miami in June 1977 and continued into the spring of 1978, reaching to St. Paul, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas, and Eugene, Oregon.
MoreA Brief History of Domestic Partnerships
As we go to press California’s Supreme Court has lifted their ban on same-sex marriage noting this does not grant more legal rights than domestic partnerships. Last week Michigan’s Supreme Court ruled their anti-same-sex marriage amendment strips public employees of domestic partnership benefits. An anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendment is on California’s November ballot.
MoreHomosexual Revisited 35 Years Later
I WROTE Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation after six months of living in New York City over the winter of 1970-71, when I was lucky enough to become part of the emerging gay liberation movement, and to work for a time on the newspaper Come Out!
MoreBette at the Bathhouse
FULL DISCLOSURE: I came of age in the 90’s and always thought of Bette
Midler as that middle-of-the-road star of Beaches who sang the movie’s
treacly theme song, “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Sure, she had her brassy
broad routi, but this pseudo-outrageous, semi-tough-talkin’ persona
seemed tailor-made for Middle America. So imagine my surprise when, a
couple of years ago while writing a master’s thesis on Glitter Rock, I
found nestled in the discussions of Lou Reed and Alice Cooper a
reference to Bette Midler.
MoreThe Dancer and the Dance
IN APRIL 1962, Rudolf Nureyev was convicted under Soviet article N43 of treason against the state. Traitor number 50,888 was not present to defend himself against the charges, which had resulted from his dramatic defection to the West at Le Bourget airport, Paris, the year before.
MoreA Spirit of the 60’s
Martin Duberman writes in his book Stonewall that “the 1969 riots are now generally taken to mark the birth of the modern gay and lesbian political movement,” he is only reflecting how the coastal cultural establishment has come to monopolize the writing of gay history. That view of history needs to be broadened.
MoreLesbianism Transfigured
Following is the introduction to the forthcoming book, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster (Da Capo Press). Reprinted with permission.
MoreSebastian’s Nocturnal Dream Shows
THOSE OLD ENOUGH will recall the classic photograph of the blond young man sticking flowers into the rifle barrels of soldiers who were there to defend America against the hippies who had vowed to levitate the Pentagon in a massive demonstration in October 1967. The young man was George Harris III, who went through many transformations before his death from AIDS in 1982.
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