ALAN CHAMBERS, the President of Exodus International, a group claiming to change the sexual orientation of homosexuals, sunk in his chair and squirmed as the camera closed in on his crinkled face. There was a quick cutaway to the audience where his fidgety wife, Leslie, looked as if she wanted to run to the nearest fire exit. Sensing the kill, talk show host Montel Williams asked Chambers if his organization could “change” homosexuals into heterosexuals.

IN SUMMER 2005, Zachary Stark wrote in a web log about his parents’ forcing him to attend Refuge, an ex-gay outpatient program for adolescents aged thirteen to eighteen sponsored by an organization named Love In Action (LIA). While there, Zachary wrote: “[My parents] tell me that there is something psychologically wrong with me. … I’m a big screw-up to them, who isn’t on the path God wants me to be on. So I’m sitting here in tears” (Associated Press, June 23, 2005).

… I sought professional help in the person of psychiatrist “Dr. Alfonzo.” In turmoil, I asked this doctor how I could best come to terms with my homosexuality as well as with the psychological effects of the sexual abuse I had endured as a child. …

TEARS COURSED down my cheeks as I drove toward my destination. For the first time in my life I believed I had found someone who could help me with my same-sex attractions. …

… In more recent years, the psychotherapeutic memoir and confessional poetry have both been hallmarks of bestselling literature. When it comes to modern gay life, however, no other phenomenon has so completely defined a generation as AIDS. …

THE COMING OUT STORY is the foundational myth of modern gay life. The term itself dates from outbursts of liberation activity in the late 1960’s and the militant slogan Out of the Closets and Into the Streets.

IN 1922, “one of the most terrible plays ever presented in New York,” as the Evening Telegram (Dec. 20, 1922) called it, shocked Broadway with its portrayal of a family that lives off prostitution, a father’s failed attempts at Jewish respectability and, most importantly, a riveting lesbian love scene.

HE WAS NO ORDINARY JOE: during his short but meteoric career as the baddest queer of the postwar British stage, Joe Orton (1933–1967) was getting it both ways. A…More