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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. …

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Susan Ackerman, a respected biblical scholar who currently chairs the religious studies department at Dartmouth College, brings to her study of the David and Gilgamesh narratives two important qualities: a knowledge of ancient languages that allows her to explore the emotional coloring and sexual associations of key words, and a thorough grounding in contemporary gender theory, which allows her to negotiate the essentialist-constructionist debate concerning the evolution of gay identity.

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… Savage has been partnered for ten years with his boyfriend Terry, with whom he adopted their son D.J., who’s now six years old. Savage recounted that tale in his award-winning memoir The Kid. His new book, The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family, looks back over the evolution of his relationship and contemplates from various angles the topic that may be this decade’s most heated and divisive one. …

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LEV RAPHAEL was one of the first writers to contemplate the intersection of being openly gay and being openly Jewish, and has now published two new books on the topic. For those not familiar with his short story collection of 1990, Dancing on Tisha b’Av (whose title was a play on the concept of fasting on holy day), Secret Anniversaries of the Heart is a wonderful introduction to this writer’s world. About ten of the 25 stories are reprinted from Dancing on Tisha b’Av.

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… Let’s Shut Out the World, a collection of essays, stories, and other short works arranged more-or-less chronologically to come together as a kind of memoir and autobiography. Most of the pieces have appeared in other publications and in anthologies such as the popular His and Flesh and the Word series.

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IN LIPSHITZ SIX, or Two Angry Blondes, T Cooper writes the story of four generations of the Lipshitz family. In 1903, after an especially horrific pogrom, Hersh and Esther and their four children emigrate from Kishinev, Russia, to the United States.

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