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Michael Ehrhardt talks with Edmund White, the author of two new books
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Cooked Down to Nothing  Padlock Icon
... Schanke (whose previous subjects include Mercedes de Acosta and Eva Le Gallienne) has used Cal's plays, journals, and letters, plus the interviews he conducted with Cal's friends, and put them together in unobtrusive, readable prose-and got it right. This book is not just about gay theatre and gay liberation, but also about gay childhoodMore
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Death Comes to a Ballet Impresario
BIOGRAPHER Judith Chazin-Bennahum, former ballet dancer and distinguished professor emerita of theatre and dance at the University of New Mexico, has taken on the task of recovering from obscurity the extraordinary life of René Blum (1878-1942). Youngest brother of Leon Blum, the first Jewish prime minister of France (1936-37), René devoted his life to theMore
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“CALLING SOMEONE ‘arty’ or ‘artistic’ has often been a euphemism for homosexuality, and political debates about homosexuality have often played out as arguments about images.” So begins Christopher Reed’s inquiry into why these relationships between art and homosexuality have persisted and flourished in the modern era.
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IF YOU'RE LIKE ME and are occasionally presented with lists of the most influential gays and lesbians in popular music, you may have found yourself wondering: what about Bob? Best known as the lead singer of Hüsker Dü in the 80's and Sugar in the 90's, Bob Mould is a founding but often forgotten fatherMore
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... Lomas dives deeply into interpretations of the Narcissus myth, examining the story's inherent identity politics and its importance in helping early sexologists and psychologists articulate their theories about the origins and nature of homosexuality. ...
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EARLY in Gore Vidal's novel The City and the Pillar is a scene that gay men who have read the book remember vividly. Two close friends, Bob and Jim, have gone camping. Bob graduated from high school the day before; Jim is a year behind him. As night falls, the two boys, both athletes, removeMore
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... Mixner's stories from Turkey Hollow will be of interest to those who wish to learn more about his illustrious political career. Harvey Milk, Bill Clinton, Paul Newman, and numerous other political figures and celebrities pepper Mixner's reminiscences. ...
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Paul’s Cases  Padlock Icon
... Author Wesley Gibson follows eight characters through great personal transitions, which are staged in the deep South in 1969. ...
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... Author Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at NYU, has studied families extensively for decades. This book is a wrap-up of her previous studies, and she uses it to debunk received wisdom about marriage and the family. ...
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To Accept Is Divine  Padlock Icon
THERE IS no inherent conflict between religious and gay identities and agendas, suggests gay-rights activist and writer Jay Michaelson in a new book titled God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Focusing largely on Christianity and Judaism, Michaelson argues that, far from being hostile to homosexuality, religious doctrines can be taken to justify theMore
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Short Reviews
Reviews of About Canada: Queer Rights by Peter Knelt, and Queer by Sunil Gupta.
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IF YOU'VE EVER SPENT an afternoon lost in a museum, taking in new and unfamiliar works, then at dinner mistaken your fork for sculpture or the sound of cab tires on wet pavement for angel song, you are well prepared for the enchantments of Darling Endangered.
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... In his fourth book, Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back (Vantage Point), [Michael] Musto rants about the celebrity culture to which he has harnessed his career, waxing philosophical on everyone from Grace Jones and Madonna to Sarah Silverman and Lindsay Lohan. ... I spoke with Michael Musto by phone from New YorkMore
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BTW  Padlock Icon
Takes on news of the day.
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TWO MAJOR BIOGRAPHIES about larger-than-life 20th-century political figures were published this year, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, by Joseph Lelyveld, and Malcolm X, by Manning Marable. The subjects of the books share a common destiny, although not contemporaneously, as victims of assassination, and both became global legends dedicated to the struggleMore
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ON AUGUST THIRD, 2011, Rudolf Brazda passed away at age 98 in a nursing home in the northeast of France. In December of 2008, the French gay magazine Têtu heralded Brazda, who survived three years at Buchenwald concentration camp, as “Le dernier ‘triangle rose.’”* After the passing of Pierre Seel, a survivor of the campMore
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THE POLITICS OF ILLINOIS from the 1830's to 1850's can provide a good case study of attitudes toward gays-partly because the region was then a part of the American West, where political discussion was almost unrestrained, and partly because participants included some of the most famous characters in American history. Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s famousMore
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... Saint Sebastian: From Martyr to Gay Starlet was on display last fall at Friday Cottage Art Space, a gallery in one of Columbia’s historic downtown homes. Scheduled to open as part of a week of events leading up to the South Carolina Pride Festival in early September, the show featured the work of García-LemosMore
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... ON BALANCE, the Heath presents quite an impressive array of homophobic practices: the closeting of several GLBT authors; the racist construction of queerness as a white phenomenon; the refusal to grant gay or queer identities, communities, and aesthetics the respect and attention afforded to other identities; and the failure to consider sexuality a necessaryMore
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THERE'S A SCENE at around twenty minutes into the movie Weekend when the protagonist, a British lifeguard named Russell, stands at the edge of a swimming pool, just below a sign reading 'Deep End' that foreshadows where he's headed. At that point in the film, Russell has gone to a gay bar and picked upMore
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U.S. Census Reveals Rise of Same-Sex Unions
THE WILLIAMS INSTITUTE, a prestigious GLBT think tank located at the UCLA School of Law, recently released a report with some fascinating statistics. ... Some of the major general findings of the study* (“United States Census Snapshot: 2010”) are summarized as follows ...
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IN KEEPING WITH our annual tradition, we remember some of the writers, artists, and activists who died during the past year.
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RATHER than attempt a roundup of the year's major events, the editors would like to highlight one event that stands out as a major milestone: the United Nations Human Rights Council’s adoption of a resolution last June 17 on violence and discrimination against GLBT people. ... What follows is the introductory statement for the resolutionMore
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FRANKLIN KAMENY was widely regarded as the major architect of the militant phase of the gay rights movement in the mid-1960’s …     I interviewed Kameny in Washington in the fall of 2003. At the time, I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation on the four GLBT marches on Washington (1979, 1987, 1993, andMore
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Readers’ Thoughts
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