Holiday Issue: The Perils of Place
THE ATMOSPHERE was triumphalist in New York City as we celebrated Stonewall’s 50th anniversary last June, and rightly so. Who can deny that it’s a different world for LGBT…More
Browsing: November-December 2019
November-December 2019
Blog Posts
Oscar Wilde and the Limits of Camp 
… So, how does camp hold up against force? Resistance is resistance, I grant you. But sometimes, camp is the wrong choice; it is impossible. Or it is deadly. So, camp with care.
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Call Me by No Name
Baldwin, Sontag, and Vidal refused to come out, but their sexuality was an open secret. “Proto-visibility” means their homosexuality was visible before it could be acknowledged publicly.
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The Great Cover-Up
The casualness of nudity in all-male environments is documented in a wide range of sources right up to the postwar era.
MorePrison Sex: The Case for Tolerance
While the prevalence of rape may be exaggerated, the threatening and coercive nature of prison itself creates gray areas of consent.
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What’s ‘Un-African’ Is Homophobia
It is homophobia that was brought by the missionaries who came to Africa and curtailed most of our sexual practices, including heterosexual ones.
MoreNext Frontier: Employment Equality
The Supreme Court will hear three cases to settle whether Title VII safeguards LGBT people from workplace discrimination, with decisions likely next June.
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Lorca in Vermont: The Untold Story
WHEN Spanish poet Federico García Lorca and American student Philip Cummings first met and became lovers in Madrid in July 1928, they had no idea that their brief liaison would evolve into an intimate relationship that spanned two continents and almost three years. Despite their disparate backgrounds and ages (Lorca was thirty, Cummings 21), they had much in common: …
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Laurie Lynd’s Film Debunks ‘Patient Zero’
IT WAS IN 1987 that Randy Shilts’ epic book on the AIDS crisis and the political response to it, And the Band Played On, hit the stands, painstakingly presenting the moral, ethical, and criminal negligence of the Reagan Administration in its response to the emerging AIDS crisis. Despite its length and the rigor of Shilts’ research, the book contained one giant erroneous theory, a bit of misinformation that became conventional wisdom and ultimately stained much of Shilts’ legacy.
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Glen or Glenda Bent the Gender Rules in 1953
… Director Wood delivers a final message in this quasi-documentary through the inclusion of a medical consultant, a Dr. Nathan Bailey, in the final credits. There can be no doubt that the word of the medical-industrial complex is profoundly important part of the ethos of Glen or Glenda: the rationale for this inquiry—all in the interest of science!—and the source of its credibility.
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