IN JUNE 1997, the Centre Pompidou hosted the first conference on queer theory in France. When the presentations were done and the discussion was opened to the floor, I was surprised by the hostile tone of many of the questions and reactions from the audience. …
MoreON MAY 7, 2004, in Krakow, skinheads from a far right parliamentary party, the League of Polish Families, attacked a peaceful demonstration of gays, lesbians, and their supporters with slurs and stones and caustic acid. On November 20, in Poznan, skinheads of the League fired teargas at the feminist and anti-homophobic March of Equality. Assaults on women and minorities have risen since Poland joined the European Union on May 1, 2004. Poland’s joining the EU was seen by the League of Polish Families as a national humiliation, and support for the League has been growing in the intervening year. …
MoreGay scholar and poet David Bergman called him the gayest poet of World War II, and National Endowment for the Arts chief Dana Gioia called him the best Catholic poet of the latter half of the 20th Century. This is Dunstan Thompson, who has always been one of my favorite poets. But, today, who has ever heard of him? …
MoreLAURA J. MERRELL’S response to my review of Beyond Shame, by Patrick Moore, in the January-February 2005 issue of this journal was in several ways so strangely unmeasured a rejoinder-half the length of my entire review-that I felt that it deserved attention and response. …
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All these temporary critics have masters degrees with the exception of Merrill, whose reading was nevertheless extensive enough to make his essays on Cavafy, Dante, Ponge, and Bishop more than exercises in pure appreciation.
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… At any rate, psychologist Tripp did most vigorously barge into the realm of history. What the historians didn’t fully grasp, I think, is that Tripp was barging in with the sex-research perspective front and center. They must have known to some degree, because, after all, Tripp had published Matrix and had worked for Kinsey. …
MoreThe following is the Preface from the recently published book by C. A. Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (Free Press, 2005).
MoreIN THE LATE 1930’s, Alfred Kinsey had what he thought was a rather simple idea: given that no one had the slightest idea what people really did and did not do sexually, and given-as he discovered from a questionnaire he distributed to his students-that a lack of simple information about sex was causing massive confusion and heartache, why not do a survey that would provide some hard information about people’s sexual practices? Why not discuss the unmentionable and replace ignorance and myths about sex with information and education?
MoreNEARLY 5,000 same-sex couples have been issued licenses to marry in Massachusetts since May 17, 2004, a development that has unleashed waves of political backlash as leaders have tried to undermine the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Goodridge. But …
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