From individual experiences of prejudice to international political debate around equal rights, social attitudes towards sexuality and transgender equalities are evolving. This timely text traces shifts at personal, national and international levels to fully assess the landscape of policy and theory today. Bringing together critical perspectives and original research, Sexuality, Equality and Diversity clearly outlines contested terms and key debates in the field. It explains how equality policy is developed and put into practice, examining what has been achieved by legislation so far and highlighting the challenges to overcome. Exploring the multiple identities and different agendas of various LGBT communities, this thought-provoking book draws on a range of rich examples to shed new light on sexual citizenship today. This is an invaluable guide through the complex terrain of equality and diversity, and is invaluable reading for students of sociology, social policy, gender studies and politics.

Queer criminological work is at the forefront of critical academic criminology, responding to the exclusion of queer communities from criminology, and the injustices that they experience through the criminal justice system. This volume draws together both theoretical and empirical contributions that develop the growing scholarship being produced at the intersection of 'queer' and 'criminology'. Reflecting the diversity of research that is undertaken at this intersection, the contributions to this volume offer a deeper theoretical and conceptual development of this field alongside empirical research that illustrates the continued relevance and urgency of such scholarship. The contributions consider what it means to be queering criminology in the current political, social, and criminological climate, and chart directions along which this field might develop in order to ensure that greater social and criminal justice for LGBTIQ communities is achieved.

The study of LGBT aging is in its infancy. In the absence of federal data on this often hidden population, community groups and organizations from across the country have taken it upon themselves to understand and assess the needs of this first cohort to reach later life in a time of LGBT public consciousness. Eight papers are included in this compilation: three from the east coast (Boston, New York, and Washington, DC), four from the Midwest (Chicago, Bowling Green and surrounding areas, St. Louis, and the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul), and one from the west coast (Palm Springs area). Together, these reports provide a community-based and regionally nuanced image of the strengths of, and the challenges faced by, older LGBT persons-local snapshots that together form a partial tapestry of LGBT aging in the U.S. They also serve as a source of lessons learned in the field-efforts that may be seen to parallel those undertaken by LGBT communities, then forming, during the 1980s and 1990s to address the growing health crisis of HIV/AIDS, a time when formal responses were slow and treatments still being developed. As such, the voice of the communities represented herein-the voices of these older adults-is clear, strong and apparent. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality.

This study is based upon original research carried out with lesbian, gay and queer parents and explores how genealogy, kinship, family, everyday life, gender, race, state welfare and intimacy are theorized and lived out, drawing upon interactionist, feminist, discursive and queer sociologies.

The book brings together for the first time John Addington Symonds' key writings on homosexuality, and the entire correspondence between Symonds and Havelock Ellis on the project of Sexual Inversion. The source edition contains a critical introduction to the sources.

Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture explores popular representations of queer nostalgia in films, animation and music videos as means of empowerment, re-evaluating and recreating lost gay youth, coming to terms with one's sexual otherness and homoerotic desires, celebrating queer counterculture, and creatively challenging homophobia, chauvinism, ageism and racism. In particular, Queer Nostalgia engages in a critical discussion of nostalgia-in-motion, the significance of 'femininostlagia' (gay men's effeminate nostalgia), the intricate relationship between queer nostalgia, martyrdom and emergent queer mythology, the contribution of nostalgia to 'autoqueerography' (queer autobiography inspired by women's dissident autobiography or 'autogynography'), and the interrelationship between ethnic and queer nostalgias.

Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters is a provocative account of the importance of women and cross-gender identification in gay male culture. It offers a range of cultural readings from Tennessee William's classic A Streetcar Named Desire and Forster's 'gay' novel Maurice through Pulp Fiction , queer lifestyle magazines, Roseanne , slash fan fiction and Jarman's Edward II to Almodovar's camp classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown . Theoretically sophisticated, yet passionate, accessible and opinionated, Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters takes issue with many of the sacred cows of contemporary gay politics, and offers a number of new concepts in lesbian and gay theory.

Tensions in the struggle for sexual minority rights in Europe, newly available in paperback, is the first queer and poststructuralist reading of political rights concepts in the specific European transnational context. In the last thirty years Europe has seen the rise of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movements fighting nationally and transnationally for participation rights in society. In addition academic theorists have increasingly paid attention to the epistemological and ontological roles gender and sexuality play in modern politics. However, in the political process of arguing for rights the centrality of those roles is mostly hidden from view in official institutional and movement discourses. This book investigates the conceptual themes of lesbian, gay and transgender rights and lobby politics in Europe and their open and hidden relations to binary and hierarchical orders of dominance. It contributes to an understanding of the conditions upon which politics of inclusion, participation, social justice and equality rest and why struggles for sexual minority rights have been so difficult and slow. It illuminates how the paradigms of political discourse constitute, consolidate and contest the meaning and cultural significance of gender and sexuality on modern, democratic, capitalist European societies. -- .

Scholars have given increasing amounts of attention to the place of homosexuality in different periods of English cultural and literary history. This book is a broad survey of representations of homosexuality in the English theatre from the Renaissance to the late 19th century. It draws on scholarship from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, history, psychology, literature, and drama. The first chapter provides a background for the book by discussing the nature of same-sex behavior in the ancient and medieval worlds. The chapters that follow discuss such topics as sodomy and transvestite theatre in the Renaisssance; female transvestism on the English stage during the 17th century; bisexuality in 18th-century drama; the rise of English homophobia and the proliferation of lesbian relationships in England between 1745 and 1790; the homophobic context of English theatre during the Romantic Movement (1790-1835); and the rebirth of interest in Greek thought and its associations with same-sex poetry, drama, and pornography in the Victorian era (1840-1900). Scholars have given increasing amounts of attention to the place of homosexuality in English literature and culture. Dramatic works are a reflection of cultural issues, and thus they sometimes treat homosexual subject matter. But because plays are enacted, they also represent homosexual concerns through staging conventions, such as the use of young boys to play female roles during the Renaissance. While some scholars have examined homosexuality in particular plays, this volume is a broad survey of the representation of same-sex relationships on the English stage from the Renaissance to the close of the 19th century. It draws on scholarship from a wide range of fields, including sociology, history, psychology, literature, and drama to provide a sweeping, multidisciplinary account of homosexuality and English Drama. Modern drama has its roots largely in the Renaissance, and Renaissance drama, in turn, drew heavily from classical culture and medieval dramatic traditions. Thus the first chapter of the book provides a background discussion of same-sex behavior in the ancient and medieval worlds. The chapters that follow discuss such topics as sodomy and transvestite theatre in the Renaissance; female transvestism on the English stage during the 17th century; bisexuality in 18th-century drama; the rise of English homophobia and the proliferation of lesbian relationships in England between 1745 and 1790; the homophobic context of English theatre during the Romantic Movement (1790-1835); and the rebirth of interest in Greek thought and its associations with same-sex poetry, drama, and pornography in the Victorian era (1840-1900). The playwrights discussed include major figures such as Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Shelley, and Wilde, along with less frequently read authors such as John Marston, Thomas Dekker, and Barnabe Barnes.

'A fascinating and thoughtful exploration of faith in the modern world. If you're wondering why it matters and how to make sense of it, read on.' Clare Balding Is it possible to believe in God and be gay? How does it feel to be excluded from a religious community because of your sexuality? Why do some people still believe being LGBT is a sin? The Book of Queer Prophets contains modern-day epistles from some of our most important thinkers, writers and activists: Jeanette Winterson tackles religious dogma, Amrou Al-Kadhi writes about trying to make it as a Muslim drag queen in London, John Bell writes about his decision to come out later in life, Tamsin Omond remembers getting married in the middle of a protest and Kate Bottley explains her journey to becoming an LGBT ally. Essays from: Jeanette Winterson, Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, Amrou Al-Kadhi, Padraig O Tuama, Garrard Conley, Juno Dawson, Rev. Winnie Varghese, Keith Jarrett, Jay Hulme, Lucy Knight, Tamsin Omond, Erin Clark, Michael Segalov, Jarel Robinson-Brown, John L. Bell, Mpho Tutu van Furth, Karl Rutlidge, Garry Rutter, Rev Rachel Mann, Jack Guiness, Dustin Lance Black, Ric Stott. Afterword: Kate Bottley

The definitive biography of Frank O'Hara, one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, the magnetic literary figure at the center of New York's cultural life during the 1950s and 1960s.

City Poet captures the excitement and promise of mid-twentieth-century New York in the years when it became the epicenter of the art world, and illuminates the poet and artist at its heart. Brad Gooch traces Frank O'Hara's life from his parochial Catholic childhood to World War II, through his years at Harvard and New York. He brilliantly portrays O'Hara in in his element, surrounded by a circle of writers and artists who would transform America's cultural landscape: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, and John Ashbery.

Gooch brings into focus the artistry and influence of a life "of guts and wit and style and passion" (Luc Sante) that was tragically abbreviated in 1966 when O'Hara, just forty and at the height of his creativity, was hit and killed by a jeep on the beach at Fire Island--a death that marked the end of an exceptional career and a remarkable era.

City Poet is illustrated with 55 black and white photographs.

First published in 1992, Sexual Sameness examines the differing textual strategies male and female writers have developed to celebrate homosexuality. Examining such writers as E.M. Forster, James Baldwin, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Audre Lourde, this wide-ranging book demonstrates how literature has been one of the few cultural spaces in which sexual outsiders have been able to explore forbidden desires. From the humiliating trials of Oscar Wilde to the appalling stigmatisation of people living with AIDS, Sexual Sameness reveals the persistent homophobia that has until recently almost completely inhibited our understanding of lesbian and gay writing. In opening up homosexual literature to informed and objective methods of reading, Sexual Sameness will be of interest to a large lesbian and gay readership, as well as to students of gender studies, literary studies and the social sciences.

This volume investigates the state of same-sex relations in later medieval England, drawing on a remarkably rich array of primary sources from the period that include legal documents, artworks, theological treatises, and poetry. Tom Linkinen uses those sources to build a framework of medieval condemnations of same-sex intimacy and desire and then shows how same-sex sexuality reflected - and was inflected by - gender hierarchies, approaches to crime, and the conspicuous silence on the matter in the legal systems of the period.

Were David and Jonathan 'gay' lovers? This very modern question lies behind the recent explosion of studies of the David and Jonathan narrative. Interpreters differ in their assessment of whether 1 and 2 Samuel offer a positive portrayal of a homosexual relationship. Beneath the conflict of interpretations lies an ambiguous biblical text which has drawn generations of readers - from the redactors of the Hebrew text and the early translators to modern biblical scholars - to the task of resolving its possible meanings. What has not yet been fully explored is the place of David and Jonathan in the evolution of modern, Western understandings of same-sex relationships, in particular how the story of their relationship was read alongside classical narratives, such as those of Achilles and Patroclus, or Orestes and Pylades. The Love of David and Jonathan explores this context in detail to argue that the story of David and Jonathan was part of the process by which the modern idea of homosexuality itself emerged.

These innovative essays take a comparative approach to queer studies while simultaneously queering the field of comparative literature, strengthening the interdisciplinarity of both. By focusing not only on comparative praxis, but also on interrogating our assumptions and categories of analysis, "Comparatively Queer" powerfully transforms the paradigms of comparison.

Is bisexuality coming out in America? Bisexual characters are surfacing on popular television shows and in film. Newsweek proclaims that a new sexual identity is emerging. But amidst this burgeoning acknowledgment of bisexuality, is there an understanding of what it means to be bisexual in a monosexual culture?

RePresenting Bisexualities seeks to answer these questions, integrating a recognition of bisexual desire with new theories of gender and sexuality. Despite the breakthroughs in gender studies and queer studies of recent years, bisexuality has remained largely unexamined. Problematic sexual images are usually attributed either to homosexual or heterosexual desire while bisexual readings remain unexplored. The essays found in RePresenting Bisexualities discuss fluid sexualities through a variety of readings from the fence, covering texts from Emily Dickinson to Nine Inch Nails. Each author contributes to the collection a unique view of sexual fluidity and transgressive desire. Taken together, these essays provide the most comprehensive bisexual theory reader to date.

Are the Kids All Right? by B.J. Epstein is the first survey of English-language children's literature that features lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise queer characters. It explores how LGBTQ characters are portrayed and what this says about contemporary society and it covers picture books, middle-grade books, and young adult fiction. Epstein explores why sex, sexuality and gender non-conformity is something that many writers and publishers of children's and young adult lit appear to shy away from. She passionately demonstrates that the information children get from literature matters, and that so called 'difficult' topics can be communicated in entertaining and informative ways. Are the Kids All Right? uses ideas from queer theory and other research to interrogate the ways LGBTQ characters are portrayed in books for children and young people, and to analyse what messages readers of such books might receive. This book brings together literary studies, sociology, queer studies, and other academic fields in an accessible manner, where the research supports the detailed analyses of over fifty books for children and young adults. In Are the Kids All Right?, Epstein looks at a range of topics, such as the lack of diversity in many of these works, how same-sex marriage is portrayed, the relative absence of bisexual and transgender characters, the way that many of these books are marketed and intended as "issue books," and more. Are the Kids All Right? is a practical and informative book that will inspire writers and publishers to produce better LGBTQ literature for young readers. About the author: B.J. Epstein is the author of over 150 articles, book reviews, personal essays, and short stories. She is lecturer in Literature and Public Engagement at the University of East Anglia, and she is also a translator from the Scandinavian languages to English.