September-October 2010
IN 1974, amid the spirit of the civil rights revolution, the goals of the gay and lesbian liberation movement seemed boundless. U.S. Representatives Ed Koch and Bella Abzug of New York filed the Equality Act of 1974, which sought full civil rights protections for “gay men, lesbians, unmarried persons and women.” The bill called for what the black community had achieved a decade earlier with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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UNLESS YOU SPENT the spring and summer in a monastery, you will have heard the news that country singer Chely Wright broke new ground in that historically conservative world by coming out as a lesbian.
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The Bad Life, a best-selling memoir by Frédéric Mitterrand, the openly gay minister of culture in the government of Nicholas Sarkozy (and nephew of a past president of France, François Mitterrand), …
MoreBEAR IDENTITY is inked into my flesh now. I turned fifty in August 2009 and, rather than marking my minor midlife crisis with an affair (too complicated) or a fancy car (too expensive), I opted for a tattoo sleeve, which took months to complete. Among the many symbols of sufficient import to me to wear permanently on my skin is a bear paw, a big one covering the inside of my upper left arm. This visual identification with the gay bear subculture seems timely, for 2010 appears to be my Annus Ursi, Year of the Bear.
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