Grief: A Novel
STANDING IN LINE for Brokeback Mountain the afternoon it opened in Washington at a little theater near Dupont Circle, I saw two kinds of people: silent gay men of a…More
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Israel: Island of Tolerance in the Mideast
I AM STRUCK by those on the left whose hostility to Israel is so total that they ignore the fact that, by the values important to liberals, conditions inside Israel are greatly superior to those within any of its Arab neighbors. This does not mean that one needs to agree with Israel’s position on Israeli-Arab issues.
MoreLincoln, Sex, and the Scholars
IT IS A TRUISM that Abraham Lincoln was incompetent with women. Scholars emphasize that as a young man, his awkwardness and shyness and uncouth appearance so embarrassed him that he avoided their company. He botched the niceties of courtship, tripped over himself, was almost a laughingstock. Lincoln in his twenties attempted to court a woman named Mary Owens whose verdict is widely cited in Lincoln literature: he was “deficient in those little links which make up the chain of woman’s happiness.”
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Did Oscar Wilde Set Back Gay Rights?
The Wilde debacle-he served a torturous term in prison, then exiled himself to France, where he drank himself to death-so transformed the emerging discussion of homosexual rights that it’s difficult to tell what would have happened if he hadn’t pressed his hopeless prosecution. On the one hand, Wilde put the issue of gay rights on the agenda of every socially progressive industrial country. On the other hand, he ensured that homosexuality itself would be perceived by the public as something to be stamped out ruthlessly.
MoreL.A., 1/1/67: The Black Cat Riots
ON THE ELEVENTH NIGHT of February 1967, over 200 people from all walks of life-artists, teachers, factory workers, bankers, street cleaners, retired military men and women-filled the corner of Sunset and Sanborn in the heart of LA’s Silverlake district. Legal experts, clergymen, and local activists spoke on police brutality and homosexual rights while protestors waved signs demanding “No More Abuse of Our Rights and Dignity,” “Abolish Arbitrary Arrests,” and “Peace!” Across the street, nervous police clutched their batons while unmarked squad cars circled the protest like vultures.
MoreTom of Finland: Sexual Liberator?
For me, the relevant question is this: what is the real reason these figures, these masturbatory images, fascinate gay men so powerfully? And the fascination extends to gay men far beyond the demarcations of leather quarters, including even some who disdain more conventional pornography.
MoreWhat Made Stonewall Different?
Editor’s Note: “Stonewall” has become one of those iconic events in history, like the storming of the Bastille or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, whose significance has little to do with the “facts on the ground,” as today’s journalists might call them. And while no one disputes the role of Stonewall as the symbolic start of the gay liberation movement, the event we still celebrate every year in June, the facts themselves are very much in dispute. Who actually began the riot in the Stonewall Inn one hot summer night in 1969, a bevy of angry drag queens or a stable of frisky young men? And what sustained the rioting for several days thereafter, a spontaneous outpouring from the community or serious political organizing behind the scenes? The following essay tries to address these questions by presenting without fear or favor the facts as they are known. …
MoreWhat Was Same-Sex Marriage?
“AS HOMOSEXUALITY becomes more socially acceptable, we may even begin to find families based on homosexual ‘marriages’ with the partners adopting children.” So said Alvin Toffler in Future Shock, the 1970 publishing sensation that introduced Americans to “information overload” and assorted other innovations he predicted for the coming years.
MoreAnti-Gay Politics on the Web
This article was excerpted and adapted from one that first appeared in Sexuality Research & Social Policy: Journal of National Sexuality Resource Center, an on-line academic journal. Copyright ©…More
Laptops and Loneliness
IT’S HARD to pinpoint exactly the way in which the computer has changed gay life. The gay community as we knew it in the 1970’s and 80’s would have vanished anyway (though it’s hard to admit): AIDS, assimilation, generational shifts would have accomplished that. And, of course, the computer has been famously liberating: …
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