Browsing: March-April 2007
March-April 2007
Blog Posts
A 50’s Affair-Supposed
JUST AT A MOMENT when the study of gay history and literature is flourishing, social critics have declared the death of the GLBT subculture due to the rapid assimilation of gay people, especially those born after Stonewall. The last major gay civil rights battle, marriage, should be won within a generation. Does this mean that the hidden gay worlds some of us inhabited well into the 1970’s are now nothing more than artifacts to be studied? Or do stories from those years resonate with a human significance beyond time and place and circumstance? These questions are raised by Brett Josef Grubisic’s ambitious first novel, The Age of Cities.
MoreEU Countries Divided on Same-Sex Marriage
PUBLIC OPINION on same-sex marrage and adoption show enormous variation from one European country to the next, according to a large-scale survey that covered all 25 current members of the European Union (EU), two countries in the process of joining, and two candidate countries. For all of the countries surveyed, under half of the sample populations favored same-sex marriage and a third approved of gay adoptions, but this finding may be misleading in light of this high level of variance.
MoreHow ‘santorum’ Helped Defeat Rick Santorum
The following is excerpted from a piece that became something of an instant Internet classic following its publication after the off-year election on November 7, which saw the defeat of two-term Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The notoriously homophobic senator took the national spotlight when he denounced same-sex marriage in such a way that he soon acquired the nickname “Man-on-Dog Santorum.” Author-blogger Dan Savage comments here on a contest he ran to find the best definition of “santorum” as a common noun. [Ed.]
MoreShort Reviews
Short reviews of Cast Out & The New Gay Teenager, and the movie: Fighting Tommy Reilly.
MoreLetters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
MoreThe Devil Stopped Me from Doing It
EVER SINCE the early days of Hollywood, actors and writers who abandoned “the Theatre” for the movies were thought to have sold their artistic souls to the celluloid devil. Douglas Carter Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed is the latest iteration of this paradigm.
MoreThe History Teacher
WHEN AMERICAN Film-makers include gay characters in their films, they tend to focus on them as problematic-the problems of coming out; the heady, tragic problems of finding a boyfriend; family problems; and on and on. For films that incorporate well-rounded gay characters but aren’t about the supposed problems posed by gayness, it’s usually necessary to look to the U.K. or the Continent. Nicholas Hytner’s The History Boys, the film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s Olivier- and Tony-Award winning play, is the latest of these…
MoreBeach Blanket Buddies
IF THIS BOOK is any evidence, Jeffery Dennis one of those people who can pepper conversations with references to Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Foucault with equal ease. In Queering Teen Culture, Dennis traces the representation of male same-sex desire from the anxiety-ladened post-World War II family sitcoms all the way to the open (though not always satisfying) depiction of homosexuality in the teen comedies and dramas of today. Along the way, he also examines the spectacle of teen sexuality in the on-screen portrayal of juvenile delinquents, beach blanket buddies, androgynous teen idols, and what he refers to as “the rigidly homophobic Brat Pack.”
MoreSex as Disaster: An Expose
ADDING to his already impressive roster of works on human sexuality, renowned author, sex educator, and therapist Marty Klein has surpassed all previous efforts with this incisive exploration of the sexual battleground that our country has become. Following the title of the electronic news-letter he publishes, he offers “Sexual Intelligence” as an antidote to the widespread ignorance about sex that prevails in the United States.
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