In this evocative and engaging memoir, Thomas Wright recalls, with eloquence, frankness, and humor, a man coming to terms with his homosexuality and seeking his happiness in ignorant and repressive times. Throughout his life and in his travels, Wright gathered a distinguished circle of friends that included some of the most influential writers of the mid-20th century, among them Tennessee Williams, Paul Bowles, and Christopher Isherwood. Scion of an old Louisiana family, Wright left the South after college to live in the scintillating Manhattan of the late 1940s. Stimulated by the Columbia University of Trilling and Van Doren, he went on to develop lasting friendships with Allen and Caroline Tate, Tennessee Williams, and socialized with William Inge, Chester Kallman, Speed Lankin, Bill Goyen, Carson McCullers' family, and Harold Norse. Wright moved to southern California in the 1950s to become a writer. There he became intimate with Christopher Isherwood and Edward James (the purported son of Edward VII of England), enabling him to move in circles that included Igor Stravinsky, Gerald Heard, and Aldous Huxley. In the 1960s he began his travels, moving first to Mexico, then to Europe and on to Morocco, where he became a confidante of Paul Bowles. By the mid-1970s Wright began traveling again, moving throughout Latin America and finally settling in Guatemala where he now resides. Wright's honest treatment of his homosexuality and personal remembrances of the literary legends he befriended will inspire and fascinate readers.

The Gilded Age Roots of American Homophobia is an analysis of the negative response to the discovery of the homosexual in late 19th century America. This book investigates the responses of the emergent medical community to this problem, and concludes with a discussion of how the negative reception of the homosexual impacted the future social conception of gay men and women.

This book explores the intersections between class and sexuality in lesbians and gay men's experiences of parenting and the everyday pathways navigated therein, from initial routes into parenting, to location preferences, schooling choice and community supports.

Must a state in which gay marriage is not legal recognize such a marriage performed in another state? The Constitution does not require recognition in all cases, but it does forbid states from nullifying family relationships based in other states, or from making themselves havens for people who are trying to escape obligations to their spouses and children. In this book, Andrew Koppelman offers workable legal solutions to the problems that arise when gay couples cross state borders. Drawing on historical precedents in which states held radically different moral views about marriage (for example, between kin, very young individuals, and interracial couples), Koppelman shows which state laws should govern in specific situations as gay couples travel or move from place to place.
Americans are profoundly divided over same-sex marriage, and now that gay civil unions and marriages are legal in some states, the issue has become increasingly urgent. Koppelman offers a sensible approach that will appeal to the best instincts of both sides.

These cutting-edge international essays challenge dominant narratives of queer youth predicated on oppression and victimization. As school systems address the emergence of Gay-Straight Alliances and calls to provide equal educational access, researchers, educators and youth workers are paying increasing attention to sexuality, gender and schooling. Yet present discourses are limited to liberal understandings of tolerance, safety, and equity that are defined by a separation of "queer" and "normal." This text documents and offers radical interpretations of the creativity of queer youth in challenging existing practices. Interdisciplinary analyses offer multiple vantage points for reconceptualizing adolescent sexual subjectivities and institutional and cultural practices.

"Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium" explores popular contemporary texts featuring lesbian characters, including "The L Word," "Queer as Folk," "Dykes to Watch Out For, " and various pornographic videos. Beirne places these works in the context of political and cultural trends of the post-millennial period and compares them to cultural representations of lesbians from the past. Taking up such issues as mainstreaming, feminine lesbians, the male gaze, female masculinity, and sexual practice, this book puts forward provocative readings of texts that have been little explored and offers new insights into the depiction of lesbians in popular culture.

This text explores the relationship between social movements, sexual citizenship and change in Southern Europe. Providing a comparative analysis about LGBT issues in Italy, Spain and Portugal, it discusses how activism can generate legal, political and cultural impact in post-dictatorial, Catholic and EU-focused countries.

This is a combination of essays from several disciplines with incisive commentary by the editor. This volume provides a unique perspective on sexual variance as a dimension of the larger social history of the United States.

Every society has had to confront the issue of sexual expression or behavior, in practice, if not in theory. It is a basic management issue which must be addressed. Theorizing about sex is a relatively recent phenomenon in American history, dating from no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. In recent decades this interest has produced an enormous outpouring of literature of sexuality, dealing largely with what we do, how we do it, and how to do it better. Such inquiry has been, however, essentially the province of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. The historical perspective on sexuality has been less well treated. Some attention to this omission has occurred in recent years. Even so, minimal attention has been given to practices beyond the boundary of acceptable sexuality, namely sexual deviance or stigmatized sexual behavior.

The primary aim of this volume is to provide a compact and selective perspective on sexual deviance as one dimension of American societal history. It does so by examining attitudes and practices from the colonial era onward. The essays speak collectively to the history of American culture as well as to the history of variant practice. This is basic reading for all students of American social and sexual history, and gender specialized courses.

Find the facts, figures, and connections you need on the Internet This powerful reference tool is the most comprehensive, reliable guide to Internet resources for the LBGTQ community. More than just a guide to useful Web sites, it also evaluates LGBTQ mailing lists, message boards, search engines, and portals. The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research provides background information as well as useful URLs. It covers the history and objectives of major sites. The in-depth interviews with leaders of the queer Internet include discussions with Barry Harrison, Director of Queer Arts Resources, and Sister Mary Elizabeth, founder of AEGiS. The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research includes resources for a variety of academic disciplines, including: the humanities the social sciences law labor studies media studies transgender and intersex studies and more Edited by Alan L. Ellis, co-chair of the institute's board of directors, The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research is an indispensable tool for researchers, community leaders, and scholars.

This volume explores the construction of identities within a lesbian group, outlining interactive tactics used in the production of mutually-negotiated norms of authenticity. Using ethnography and discourse analysis, a range of group-specific personae are revealed to be continually reworked and reproduced within the women's interaction.

Queer Presences and Absences explores changes and continuations in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer lives, identities and spatial practices in the 21st century. Queer futures are situated across local, national and international spaces including the UK, USA, Italy, Brazil, Russia and the Czech Republic. Queer movements, marginalities and mainstreams are located in legislative changes, institutional locations and in everyday spaces: these are mediated through consumption, possession and entitlement, alongside dispossession, poverty and inequality. Rather than positing a queer arrival or a queer present 'everywhere', care is taken to consider the diversity of queer existence. Using a range of methods, including qualitative interviews, ethnographies, auto-biographical 'fictions' and archival research, authors connect pasts, places and policies with contemporary times, linking individual and social presences (and absences) affectively and materially.

"Unhistorical Shakespeare" argues that the way in which we study history has significant bearing on what desire we study, and how we study it. Menon argues that our embrace of difference as the template for relating past and present produces a hetero temporality in which chronology determines identity. In turn, such an understanding of history fixes sexual identity as the domain of the present and relegates nebulous desire to a thing of the past. In contrast to this temporal-sexual reification, "Unhistorical Shakespeare" outlines the idea of homohistory, which questions the fundamental historicist assumptions of teleology, facticity, citation, origins, and authenticity to lay bare their investments in compulsory hetero temporality.

Writer, artist, Manhattan gallery owner, and co-editor of the "Little Review," Jane Heap was one of the most dynamic figures of the international avant garde, creating a life that defined the "modernist experience" as a syncretic one. Deliberately seeking a low profile throughout her life, Heap has frustrated many scholars interested in her personal life and the extraordinarily vital period in which she lived. Through her correspondence, Heap here reveals her intimate self as well as her more public, creative relationships with some of the legends of modern art, literature, and spirituality. Focusing primarily on the voluminous letters written by Heap to Florence Reynolds, the correspondence included in this volume spans the years from 1908-1949, incorporating additional illuminating letters to Reynolds from other significant figures in Heap's life.

Heap's letters reveal the radical transformation of a dreamy, young Midwestern woman into a forceful, sophisticated arbiter of international modernism and provide rare insight into the struggle for lesbian identity and community during the inter-war period. They detail her eventual abandonment of art in the search for the transcendent in the seductive and esoteric mysticism of George Gurdjieff. Holly Baggett's accompanying essay further highlights the boldness of Jane Heap's aesthetics and life.

An invaluable resource examining LGBTQIA+ portrayals in contemporary American film. The depictions of LGBTQIA+ characters in film have always varied immensely. However, the negative depictions often seem to outweigh the positive, perhaps because of the hurt they inspire or perhaps because they regrettably outnumber the positive films. The Encyclopedia of LGBTQIA+ Portrayals in American Film explores works from the past fifty years in order to not only discuss how LGBTQIA+ characters are portrayed in American film, but also how these portrayals affect viewers. Contributors to this valuable reference include film and media scholars, gender studies scholars, journalists, LGBTQIA+ advocates, and more, representing countries from around the world. This rich array of perspectives provide careful and critical examinations of more than 100 films, ranging from the ethical and compassionate to the deliberately cruel and destructive. Featuring films such as American Beauty, Batman v Superman, Fight Club, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Little Miss Sunshine, and Venom, this extensive volume informs and educates scholars and general readers alike, guiding them to see injustice more clearly and inspiring future generations to create art that is both inclusive and thoughtful.

Using the 1977 campaign against the Dade County Florida gay rights ordinance as a focal point, this book provides an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement, the challenges it posed to the accepted American notions of sexuality, and how American society reacted in turn.

This book investigates what women enjoy about consuming, and in some cases producing, gay male erotic media-from slashfic, to pornographic texts, to visual pornography-and how this sits within their consumption of erotica and pornography more generally. In addition, it will examine how women's use of gay male erotic media fits in with their perceptions of gender and sexuality. By drawing on a piece of wide-scale mixed methods research that examines these motivations, an original and important volume is presented that serves to explore and contribute to this under-researched area.

As a gay youth, author Holland Cedric Peyton sought role models for long-term relationships, but found that contemporary society offered only heterosexual examples. As an adult, Peyton embarked on an ambitious research project to locate and interview long-time homosexual partners. In this book, he presents their stories, ideas, and advice regarding love and maintaining a positive, long-term relationship.

Peyton interviewed ten male couples who have been together for a minimum of thirty to more than forty years. In each section, you'll get to know the couples, how they met, and how they achieved longevity in their relationships. Perhaps most importantly, each couple provides insight by answering an extensive series of questions, covering topics from self-perception, family, love, religion, and friendships, to tolerance, celebrations, and children.

These couples' extraordinarily candid interviews are a terrific way to honor their personal relationships and help young gays learn how to live a long, married life with someone they love. Together, Peyton and these couples, who opened their hearts and their lives, take on a large, important task: to provide personal, tangible, relatable relationship role models for gay youth.

The voices in this book come from the stories of gay and lesbian partners who talk about their struggles over the years in building a life together. The stories reach beyond the obvious realities of sexual orientation to speak to the joys, sorrows, hopes, and fears of human beings who are committed to making their relationships work. Based on a life-span perspective, in-depth interviews of people whose relationships have lasted more than 15 years explored how partners adapted over the years. Each interview consisted of questions that focused upon dimensions of these relationships over time from the unique perspective of each partner. They were asked about conflict over the years, decision-making styles, ways of working out roles, the importance of social supports, and sexual and psychological intimacy. The research upon which the book is based has continuity with the authors' earlier work on lasting relationships among heterosexual couples, including Lasting Marriages: Men and Women Growing Together (Praeger, 1995). Compared to marriages, relatively little research has been done on the development of same sex relationships. This book will be of great interest to all researchers and students of gender differences, marriage and family therapy, human sexuality, and interpersonal relationships.

There is a big hole in the history of the LGBT movement in Britain. Each step towards equality for LGBT people, every positive move in public opinion, was the result of campaigning. But while individuals and lobby groups loudly promote their role in the victories, one major player has been written out of this history: the unions. This book fills the gap. From the first strike action organised by trade union members to save the job of a victimised gay colleague in the 1970s, through the mutual solidarity of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, to the Trades Union Congress taking the initiative to save London Pride in 2012, and much more, trade unions have contributed immensely to the successes achieved, all the while protecting jobs and securing equality for thousands of LGBT working people. Peter Purton was the TUC's first LGBT officer. His book, of interest to everyone interested in equality and trade union history, reveals how LGBT trade union members organised to win recognition, then support, and how trade unions supported the struggles of LGBT communities in Britain and across the world. This is an inspiring tale, and in the dangerous world of the twenty-first century, it is a warning call to the LGBT community and those supporting it, to wake up to new threats, to remember how past victories were achieved. The labour movement has much potential as an active participant in the unfinished fight for equality, but this book shows the need for mutual engagement to make change possible.

Although the LGBT movement has made rapid gains in the United States, LGBT people continue to face discrimination in faith communities. In this book, sociologist Jonathan S. Coley documents why and how student activists mobilize for greater inclusion at Christian colleges and universities. Drawing on interviews with student activists at a range of Christian institutions of higher learning, Coley shows that students, initially drawn to activism because of their own political, religious, or LGBT identities, are forming direct action groups that transform university policies, educational groups that open up campus dialogue, and solidarity groups that facilitate their members' personal growth. He also shows how these LGBT activists apply their skills and values after graduation in subsequent political campaigns, careers, and family lives, potentially serving as change agents in their faith communities for years to come. Coley's findings shed light on a new frontier of LGBT activism and challenge prevailing wisdom about the characteristics of activists, the purpose of activist groups, and ultimately the nature of activism itself. For more information about this project's research methodology and theoretical grounding, please visit http://jonathancoley.com/book