Can the Left Be Counted On?
The Communist Party USA was for most of its history culturally conservative. Socialism has been far more welcoming.
MoreBrowsing: Politics: GLBT Rights
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The Biggest Scoundrels
“SURVEILLANCE STATE masculinity” is Christopher Elias’ term for the toxic brew of national security hyper-vigilance and a new concept of masculinity that “saddled men with endless anxiety” that emerged in the “Red Scare” decade, the 1950s. Elias’ Gossip Men is a deeply researched sociological examination of this uniquely American phenomenon as told through the intertwined lives of three men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and Roy Cohn.
MoreMajor UN Vote Recognizes Sexual Minorities
DURING the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the Third Committee adopted the resolution “Strengthening the role of the United Nations in the promotion of democratization and enhancing periodic and genuine elections,” which included an explicit reference to sexual orientation and gender identity. This is only the second UNGA resolution that explicitly mentions these two categories.
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B.T.W.
War Heroes Another episode in the annals of people rising up in defense of minority rights: the residents of a town in Oregon banded together to put up a…More
How ACT UP Did It
[Sarah] Schulman states at the outset that her primary purpose in writing Let the Record Show “is not nostalgia, but rather to help contemporary and future activists learn from the past to assist organizing in the present” and to show “that people from all walks of life, working together, can change the world.”
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Frank Kameny’s Insight: Sue the Bastards
The public restroom holds a particularly important place in the history that Cervini is recounting in The Deviant’s War. In August 1956, a young Frank Kameny—who had just delivered a paper at the American Astronomical Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco—entered a public restroom and was approached by another man.
MoreFace Surveillance Erases Nonbinary People
LAST MAY, San Francisco became the first city in the world to ban the use of face surveillance technology. Days later, Somerville, Massachusetts, became the first city on the East Coast to do the same. Now—thanks to a movement led by dozens of civil rights organizations nationwide …
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What’s ‘Un-African’ Is Homophobia
It is homophobia that was brought by the missionaries who came to Africa and curtailed most of our sexual practices, including heterosexual ones.
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