“LINCOLN’S SOUL MATE and the love of his life was a man named Joshua Speed,” John Stauffer writes in his dual biography of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Stauffer refers to carnal love, not to one of those asexual “romantic friendships” in vogue with certain scholars. He chairs the History of American Civilization Department at Harvard; Stauffer’s perspective can’t be easily dismissed as fringe. But that did not deter Sean Wilentz.
MoreCONSERVATIVE FORCES in the U.S. have succeeded in shifting the debate about same-sex unions from a question of equal protection under the law to one about protecting the meaning of the word “marriage.” The phrase “defense of marriage” emerged as a touchstone in the conflict after passage of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which limited marriage to heterosexual couples in matters under federal jurisdiction. Since then-spurred by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2003-many states have moved to ban same-sex marriage by enacting laws or amending their constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
MoreWHEN Lisa Diamond’s book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire (Harvard University Press, 2008) was published last year, it was poised to become a fresh, new psychological study about women’s sexuality today. But Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, didn’t expect it to become a controversial catalyst for mainstream discussions about same-sex desire on a national scale.
MoreTHE DAY AFTER the first night of rioting at the Stonewall Inn in late June, 1969, the police barricades were taken away from the city streets. But the intensity of the previous night’s disturbance-where about 500 had gathered in protest outside the Inn, some shoving or throwing bottles, others lighting small fires-was still palpable. Ellen Shumsky walked through the streets of her neighborhood where trash cans that had been set ablaze emitted still-smoldering ashes. The aftershock of rebellion, rage, and frustration that burst forth onto Sheridan Square was recognizable to her.
MoreWHAT HAPPENS when a seventeen-year-old gay boy from Missouri, high on Proust, arrives at Harvard, in 1941, on a quest for love, sex, and greatness? One man’s answer is revealed in rich, exasperating, and touching detail in The Journal of Claude Fredericks.
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Bigger than Life reads like a work of journalism about the rise and development of a hugely successful industry that feeds the fantasies of gay men, whose growth spurts and mutations over time have aligned with social and technological forces.
More… the ever adventurous Field put his fears aside and embarked on a trip that produced Kabuli Days: Travels in Old Afghanistan, one of the most interesting travel diaries I’ve read.
MoreAllah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City by Rudolf Pell Gaudio Wiley-Blackwell. 256 pages, $29.95 IN 2002, a film company based in the northern Nigerian…More
THIS INSIGHTFUL BOOK is an illuminating study of London in the early to mid-19th century. Charles Upchurch, assistant professor of history at Florida State University, examines the court documents and newspaper accounts of criminal cases of men accused of homosexual acts.
MoreJUDY SHEPARD was used to middle-of-the-night calls because her son Matt either couldn’t figure out the time zone difference or didn’t care. He lived in Wyoming, she lived in Saudi Arabia, and his early evening was her 2 AM. In the new book The Meaning of Matthew, she tells of the one call she’ll never forget.
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