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OSCAR WILDE characterized gay love as that “great affection ... such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy. ... It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo. ... It is in this centuryMore

The Plaster Fabric by Martyn Goff Valancourt Books. 200 pages, $16.99 The Youngest Director by Martyn Goff Valancourt Books. 218 pages, $15.99 A Room in Chelsea Square by Michael Nelson Valancourt Books. 164 pages, $15.99 The Leather Boys by Gillian Freeman Valancourt Books. 155 pages, $14.99 Denis Bracknel by Forrest Reid Valancourt Books. 226 pages,More

  RADCLYFFE HALL’S The Well of Loneliness is the canonical lesbian novel that many people think they know; in some sense, it has become a part of queer folk culture. As the tragic story of a female “invert,” in the language of the time, the novel itself has been dramatically persecuted. Attacked in several courtroomsMore

  RESEARCHER RANDALL SELL has uncovered a previously unknown 149-page manuscript defending homosexuality written in 1940. Allen Bernstein’s “Millions of Queers” is one of the earliest known defenses of homosexuality in English. In it, Bernstein offers a libertarian argument that homosexuals don’t hurt anyone, should not be criminalized and stigmatized, and should be left inMore

         In his plays, Williams depicts writers who know each other socially as squabbling rivals, trading banter: Hemingway and Fitzgerald bicker in his Clothes for a Summer Hotel; and in The Notebooks of Trigorin, Williams’ version of Chekhov’s Seagull, the short-story writers Treplev and Trigorin describe each other with withering dismissals. In Williams’ life, cattyMore

IT WAS A PROFILE that John Lahr published in The New Yorker that led him to this biography of Tennessee Williams—a profile of the Lady St. Just, an over-zealous friend of the playwright who, as his literary executor, was so prudish that she threw his Memoirs into the wastebasket. She felt they were too loucheMore

Blue, Too: More Writing by (for or about) Working-Class Queers Edited by Wendell Ricketts FourCats Press.  486 pages, $18.95   THE COMMERCIALIZATION and mainstreaming of gayness is very much on the mind of Wendell Ricketts, editor of Blue, Too, a compendium of what it means to be queer, working-class, and alive right here and now.More

In Under This Beautiful Dome: A Senator, A Journalist, and the Politics of Gay Love in America, Terry Mutchler writes about the confusion of early courtship and the thrill of the consummation, about stealing a kiss in the darker corners of the capitol building. 

THE BASIC STORY of Namibia’s Rainbow Project is the impact of efforts by Western activists in Namibia after President Nujoma’s attacks on “gays, lesbian and common criminals,” which unleashed a wave of political homophobia from the mid-1990s on.

READING Walter Frank’s Law and the Gay Rights Story the same week the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider several Circuit cases that upheld marriage equality has been a timely and satisfying coincidence.

Understanding Truman Capote by Thomas Fahy University of South Carolina Press 186 pages, $39.90   IN THE FINAL PAGES of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote’s most popular book, there are two derisive references to homosexuality. In one, Holly Golightly calls the policewoman who’s about to arrest her a “dreary, driveling old bull-dyke.” In the other,More

Male Sex Work and Society Edited by Victor Minichiello and John Scott Harrington Park Press. 512 pages, $50.   ANY BOOK about male prostitution is bound to call to mind the classic 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, in which Joe Buck, a dishwasher-cum-gigolo from Texas played by Jon Voight, moves to New York to offer his servicesMore

Certainty is a brisk and compelling read, a history lesson without pain. It is literate without being fussily literary and gives us a Newport, Rhode Island, that Edith Wharton would not have recognized.

Reviews of Male Beauty:  Postwar Masculinity in Theater, Film, and Physique Magazines, Water Music, and O, Africa!

  Pride Directed by Matthew Warchus Calamity Films   EARLY ON IN PRIDE, after the leader of a ragtag group of London gay activists has proposed that they raise money for the striking coal miners—the year is 1984—one member protests: “Yeah, like they’ve done so much for us.” In the end, persuaded by their charismaticMore

Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer HistoryCurated by Jonathan David KatzLeslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art   THIS AMBITIOUS EXHIBITION, Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer History, sets out to show how the Greek depiction of gods in their natural state, naked but for the tools and accessories of their trade, gave queerMore

The importance of documentary photography is ever present in Anthony Friedkin’s The Gay Essay, a portfolio of photographs from the late 1960s to the early ’70s that focuses on the gay liberation era in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

I’LL NEVER forget the first time I saw Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives. It was the fall of 1992, and the documentary was premiering at Image+Nation, Montreal’s queer film festival. Four years in the making, Forbidden Love featured interviews with a number of older lesbians from across Canada, each telling her ownMore

I  REMEMBER it vividly. On October 7, 1979, having walked from a poetry workshop in Harvard Square to Sanders Theater for a reading by Elizabeth Bishop—a benefit for the journal Ploughshares—I found a seat and craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the poet. Instead, the Plough-shares editor took the microphone and called forMore

“NO FAMILY is safe when I sashay,” sings Mike Hadreas, otherwise known as “Perfume Genius,” on “Queen,” the haunting first single on the new album Too Bright. The video for “Queen” is the deranged lovechild of Fellini and Waters, a bizarre escapade in which the 32-year-old Hadreas cruises an Elvis impersonator with a prosthetic legMore

  THREE DECADES AGO, Bill T. Jones jolted the New York dance scene. Bucking the prevailing stripped-down postmodernism, he and his partner Arnie Zane created sensational dances collaborating with composers, fashion designers, and visual artists. A new queer æsthetic emerged that was anything but minimalist.          When I worked at Walker Art Center in MinneapolisMore

Anal Chic  It would be hard to think of a more fashionable hunk of real estate than the Place Vendôme in Paris, that center of haute couture and five-star hotels that doesn’t just follow but legislates good taste. So when a monumental sculpture by U.S. artist Paul McCarthy arrived for the holidays, it was welcomedMore

How True-to-Life Was Lord Dismiss Us?   To the Editor: I enjoyed Raymond-Jean Frontain’s article on Michael Campbell’s Lord Dismiss Us [Sept.-Oct. 2014 ] so much that I bought a copy. I was delighted to receive an original copy. I enjoyed the book, although I do not think that it was necessarily the best boys’More

What follows is an excerpt from Bernstein’s manuscript, the start (pp. 1-4) of a chapter called “What” (followed by “When,” “Where,” “How,” “Why,” and “What To Do About It”). Two and a half to three million American adults are made criminals by outdated laws forbidding them from expressing their natural affection for someone of theirMore

AS IS our annual custom, we remember here some of the notable artists, writers, and activists of the GLBT community who died within the past twelve months. Included this year are three members of Warhol’s Factory scene and four clergymen, listed separately at the end.

JOAN RIVERS is gone. Even after a few months, it’s almost impossible to believe, and like many deaths of celebrities we hold especially dear, it’s hard to imagine our world without them in it. I was an especially lucky fan—and I was an epic fan—because, as a journalist, I got to meet and interview RiversMore