January-February 2022
THOSE OF US with both homosexual and leftist tendencies have always been a little squeamish about examining the relationship between the two, flinching when we remember the Communist party line on homosexuality as bourgeois decadence. But in Love’s Next Meeting, Aaron Lecklider tackles this aspect of American history and untangles a complicated story through sometimes oblique but always illuminating analysis.
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BILLED as a “memoir” in the subtitle, Punch Me Up to the Gods has the artful structure of a novel. Author Brian Broome begins with the book’s framing narrative: A gay Black man recounts his bus ride through modern-day Pittsburgh.
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“SURVEILLANCE STATE masculinity” is Christopher Elias’ term for the toxic brew of national security hyper-vigilance and a new concept of masculinity that “saddled men with endless anxiety” that emerged in the “Red Scare” decade, the 1950s. Elias’ Gossip Men is a deeply researched sociological examination of this uniquely American phenomenon as told through the intertwined lives of three men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and Roy Cohn.
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Released in 1969, the year of the Stonewall Riots, and garnering considerable attention in the media and recognition from the major film award organizations, Midnight Cowboy was a remarkable achievement for its time.
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THE FIRST GATHERING to discuss The Homosexual Matrix, which was held on February 2, 1976, was a good deal less fraught than my confrontation with Arno Karlen, though hardly a love fest. Over a five-hour period, most of the hot-button topics relating to sexuality came up for discussion, sometimes in heated exchanges.
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A version of this article previously appeared in Physique Pictorial. The author is grateful to Tom DeSimone for his informative discussions of this early period of gay film history.
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The G&LR talks with the author of Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography Jeffrey Escoffier.
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FOLLOWING RAINBOWS The Fast Times and Fleeting Fames in Gay Bangkok’s Boy Soi by Mike Maloney Independently published 150 pages, $9.99 CHOOSING TO BE GAY One Man’s Improbable…More
MOST READERS of these pages will probably identify James Ivory as the director of those sumptuous film adaptations of E. M. Forster’s novels—Maurice, Howards End, A Room with a View. Some readers will also know that Ivory formed a decades-long personal and professional partnership with the Indian producer Ismail Merchant to make those films. Yet few readers may know about Ivory’s small-town-boy-makes-good story, or about how he has lived his life as an openly gay man for most of his ninety years, …
MoreIN KEEPING WITH our annual custom, we remember some people who left us during the past year—activists, writers, performers, educators, and artists who made a significant contribution to the LGBT community. They left this mortal coil at ages ranging from 28 to 94. All dates are in 2021 unless otherwise indicated.
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