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The following piece, which appeared in our Fall 1999 issue, reviewed a book by Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet, a new edition of which has just been published by Little, Brown Book Group. This review of Waters’ debut novel seems prescient in light of this writers’ subsequent critical and popular success as a lesbian novelist.More

... One reads Love, Christopher Street to see how other people, like and unlike yourself, encountered and endured and learned from New York, and that’s why this extremely varied anthology is always interesting, even when tangential, and why it’s often moving. ...

... Charles Molesworth’s book is an important addition to the scholarship on Countee Cullen. The publication of the latter’s collected letters, which are being edited by Thomas Wirth, will shed more light on Cullen’s personal and public lives.

... Stewart's book is novelistic, artfully non-chronological, and it captures its subject matter vividly. Indeed, in his foreword he pointedly assures the reader: 'Everything written here really happened.' One soon learns why this assurance is necessary. ...

THERE ARE FANS, and then there are fanatics. ... each with its own set of divas and devotional practices. Less well known are the many gay men who are devotees of gospel music. These so-called gospel sissies are no less committed to their music and no less central to its existence, but their relationship toMore

... In One Person is certainly as intelligent as Irving’s earlier work, and thematically as serious. ...

THE WRITINGS of Abdellah Taïa, who positions himself as the 'first openly gay autobiographical writer''; published in Morocco, clearly transgress the religious customs of his native country. An Arab Melancholia forms part of this larger project as it traces several unrequited love affairs spanning three countries on two continents. ...

PART POLEMIC, part personal narrative, and part pleading, Elton John’s Love is the Cure: On Life, Loss and the End of AIDS harks back to Randy Shilts’ landmark book And the Band Played On (1987) ...

THIS FIRST NOVEL by Julian E. Farris captures the anti-homosexual hysteria of the 1950's and early 60's. The activities of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC), whose mandate was to find “subversives,” including “homosexuals,” form the backdrop for this dramatic story about persecution. ...

READING THIS BOOK, which compares the methods and results used by the evangelical Christian weight loss program First Place with those of ex-gay ministries such as Exodus International, I kept thinking about Tina Fey’s adaptation of the book Queen Bees and Wannabes (2002) into the screenplay for Mean Girls. ...

A SECRET DIARY-seduction, romance, lesbian love, sexual passages written in code-are all packaged in this one volume that chronicles the life of a most extraordinary 19th-century English gentlewoman, Anne Lister ...

RIGHT from the opening pages, No Time to Lose immerses readers in excitement of the sort one might find in a Hemingway or Burroughs novel. But the excitement lies not in a fictional tale but in the discovery of deadly viruses in Africa at a time of human catastrophes and scientific breakthroughs. ...

Reviews of the books Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare, Red Nails, Black Skates, The Letter Q, Banned in Boston, Montreal’s Gay Village, Margins of Tolerance:  Stories, and the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Takes on news of the day

Readers' opinions

... Andrew Holleran has been a regular writer for this magazine since this piece in the first issue, and his contribution to its survival and success are immeasurable. His novels include Dancer from the Dance, The Beauty of Men, and Grief.

Editor’s Note: One of this magazine’s stated missions is to preserve our history, especially the early history of the gay and lesbian movement. In this respect, the following piece has a double significance: first, because here Harry Hay is recounting the early years of the “homophile” movement and how the Mattachine Society got started; andMore

... Del Martin (1921-2008) and Phyllis Lyon (b. 1924) were the first same-sex couple to be married in the state of California, the second time officially, on June 16 (Bloomsday), 2008, during the brief window of marriage equality there before the passage of Proposition 8.

Editor’s Note: A controversy that was raging in the 90’s came to be called the “lesbian sex wars,” and this piece is an entry into that debate. Two (non-gay) female writers, Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, had separately staked out a position that pornography was inherently exploitative of and even violent toward women, and theyMore

Editor’s Note: Following is an edited transcript of a speech that Edmund White delivered at the OutWrite conference in Boston on February 23, 1996. For most of the years through the 1990’s, OutWrite was an annual, weekend-long event held in Boston, usually in the dead of winter. This was a great stroke of luck forMore

... This article, which appeared in the Fall 1997 issue, reminds us that once there was a time when not everyone in the GLBT movement was on board with the idea that same-sex marriage should be at the top of our agenda. Ettelbrick opposed this objective on feminist grounds, and it’s interesting to note that herMore

... When this piece was published in the Summer 1998 issue of the HGLR, Kamani was teaching at Mills College in Oakland, California, and had recently published a book of short stores called Junglee Girl. She currently does development work in the Dominican Republic.

... This piece is from the Spring 1998 issue of the HGLR. Browning would go on to have a distinguished career as a journalist in the Paris bureau of National Public Radio.

Editor’s Note: The term “homosexual” was a medical diagnosis before it was a sexual orientation, first defined as an anatomical abnormality and then, starting in the early 20th century, as a psychological disorder subject to treatment and cure. This designation held until the pyschiatric establishment finally abandoned it in the 1970’s. Much has been written aboutMore

... This piece can be seen as a special case of what Evans saw as the central tendency of Western philosophy since the Greeks, the elevation of formal logic to the stature of Truth and the identification of this method with the masculine, thereby establishing an “objective” basis for male dominance and homophobia. What’s more,More

NEW YORK's GLBT film series, NewFest 2012, was a milestone this year. The East Coast organizers have partnered with Los Angeles Outfest, and programming was held at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater in cooperation with the Film Society of Lincoln Center. ...

Editor's Note: This graphic item appeared in the Summer 1999 issue. Due to a printer's error, it was printed as a line drawing, so gray scales were entirely lost. Here is Eric Orner's work as it was meant to appear.

... I learned much from Gore Vidal, not least that if one craves fame, one can never be certain that one is famous enough. I spent considerable time with him when my book, Gore Vidal’s America, was published in November 2005, and there was something very sad about his constant need to reassure himself ofMore

THIS interview was conducted at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montræal in April 2011. It is thus a very late interview with the late author, whose wit at 85 seems undiminished by time.