In 2001, the mesmerizing film adaptation was released to equally glowing reviews. Brilliantly innovative and oddly endearing, Hedwig and the Angry Inch—inspired by Plato’s Symposium—is the story of “internationally ignored song stylist” Hedwig Schmidt, the victim of a gruesomely botched sex-change operation, as dazzlingly recounted by Hedwig (née Hansel) herself in the form of a lounge act, backed by the rock band The Angry Inch.

    And that includes the crucial zone below the belt, both fore and aft. There was nothing ambiguous about Tom of Finland's interest in his objects of desire: "lf I don't have an erection when I'm doing a drawing, I know it's no good", he himself said. The eroti-cism is naked, even aggressive. The poses inevitably consigned his work to the pornography shelves, and the walls of leather bars in the gay scene. So far there has been no account of the artistic virtuosity of his work.The present volume traces the life and career of this important artist. Born in southern Finland, Tom played the piano at local coffee shops to supplement his income as a graphic artist until his watercolors of male sexuality began to appear as covers on major American gay publications. His impact as an artist has since stretched far beyond the gay scene.

    Offscreen, he was openly gay. This bestselling biography captures the rich gay subculture of Hollywood before the Production Code--before studio intimidation led to the establishment of the Hollywood closet. Alone among his contemporaries, Billy Haines (1900-1973) refused to compromise and was ultimately booted out by Louis B. Mayer. Forced to give up acting, Haines went on to become a top interior designer to the stars and to clients such as Nancy Reagan. By his side through it all was his lover, Jimmie Shields; their fifty-year relationship led their best friend, Joan Crawford, to call them the "happiest married couple in Hollywood." Wisecracker is an astounding piece of newly discovered gay history, a chronicle of high Hollywood, and--at its heart--a great and enduring love story.

    Written with a powerful and personal voice, Schulman’s book is part gossipy narrative, part behind-the-scenes glimpse into the New York theater culture, and part polemic on how mainstream artists co-opt the work of “marginal” artists to give an air of diversity and authenticity to their own work. Rising above the details of her own case, Schulman boldly uses her suspicions of copyright infringement as an opportunity to initiate a larger conversation on how AIDS and gay experience are being represented in American art and commerce. Closely recounting her discovery of the ways in which Rent took materials from her own novel, Schulman takes us on her riveting and infuriating journey through the power structures of New York theater and media, a journey she pursued to seek legal restitution and make her voice heard. Then, to provide a cultural context for the emergence of Rent—which Schulman experienced first-hand as a weekly theater critic for the New York Press at the time of Rent’s premiere—she reveals in rich detail the off- and off-off-Broadway theater scene of the time. She argues that these often neglected works and performances provide more nuanced and accurate depictions of the lives of gay men, Latinos, blacks, lesbians and people with AIDS than popular works seen in full houses on Broadway stages. Schulman brings her discussion full circle with an incisive look at how gay and lesbian culture has become rapidly commodified, not only by mainstream theater productions such as Rent but also by its reduction into a mere demographic made palatable for niche marketing. Ultimately, Schulman argues, American art and culture has made acceptable a representation of “the homosexual” that undermines, if not completely erases, the actual experiences of people who continue to suffer from discrimination or disease. Stagestruck’s message is sure to incite discussion and raise the level of debate about cultural politics in America today.

    This collection provides an overdue review of material that at one time could only be bought under the counter, beginning with the anonymous erotica of the 19th century. It features the pioneer homoerotic nude photographs of Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, posing nude youths in classical postures at Taormina in Sicily. It includes illustrations from groundbreaking magazines such as Physique Pictorial, the leading organ of the mid-50s gay scene, and it covers the entire range from classic masters of male nude photography, such as Herbert List, George Platt Lynes or Robert Mapplethorpe, to the pin-up beefcake of the sex magazines.

    The most troubled of the men may be Bill, the therapist who is also Trish's husband, as he struggles with his desires for his son Billy's pubescent classmates. When the police begin to close in, everyone's lives -- and everyone's relationships -- are changed forever.

    A tough gay thriller set in the criminal under world of Glasgow, Scotland.

    

    Part autobiography, part history, part confession, this intertwined, powerful essay wonderfully describes the multiplicity of disciplines required to construct fiction. In "She Would Be the First Sentence of My Next Novel," a lyrical exploration of her own approach to writing novels, master writer Nicole Brossard offers to her readers the secrets and the struggles of writing in the feminine.

    Glaser persuasively argues that coming out--as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered--has biblical precedence and sacramental dimensions. Using personal and biblical illustrations, he discusses coming out as an act of vulnerability, much like a sacrificial offering of ancient times, that invokes God's presence and effects atonement, or reconciliation. In this engaging book he shows how coming out, like other sacraments, may serve as a means of grace--that is, an experience of God's unconditional love.

    His biographer, Philip Hoare, given unprecedented access to the private papers and correspondence of Coward family members, compatriots, and numerous lovers, has produced the definitive biography of one of the twentieth century's most celebrated and controversial figures

    Speaking to a balance between decorum and pain, he offers here a devotional poetry that argues for faith, even without the comforting gods or the organized structures of revealed truth. Neither sage nor saint nor prophet, the poet is the listener, the mourner, the one who has some access to the maddening quarters of human consciousness, the wry Sibyl. From the Devotions is deeply felt, highly intelligent, and unsentimental, and cements Phillips's reputation as a poet of enormous talent and depth."In his extraordinary new book of poems, From the Devotions, by far his best, Carl Phillips has done what few of his contemporaries have dared or managed with as much elegant authority. He has plotted here the romantic landscape of desire. Myths are unsheathed and glisten. History is held and pondered. Violence shimmers, desires are silhouetted against the light of love and death. His tone is at once erotic and mystical, hushed and compelling. This book is a blessing, a ravishing, a haunting. I urge you to read it — to succumb to it." — J.D. McClatchyCarl Phillips is the author of In the Blood, which won the Morse Poetry Prize, and Cortège , a Finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Lambda Literary Award. The recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets, Phillips is associate professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University, St. Louis, where he also directs the creative writing program.

    A provocative collection which mines the bond between the spiritual and carnal, the sacred and profane.

    Rather than dismissing such expression as mere convention, Rambuss takes it seriously as a form of erotic discourse, one that gives voice to desires that, outside the sphere of sacred rapture, would otherwise be deemed taboo. Through startling rereadings of works ranging from the devotional verse of the metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Traherne) to photographer Andres Serrano’s controversial “Piss Christ,” from Renaissance religious iconography to contemporary gay porn, Rambuss uncovers the highly charged erotic imagery that suffuses religious devotional art and literature. And he explores one of Christian culture’s most guarded (and literal) closets—the prayer closet itself, a privileged space where the vectors of same-sex desire can travel privately between the worshiper and his or her God.Elegantly written and theoretically astute, Closet Devotions illuminates the ways in which sacred Christian devotion is homoeroticized, a phenomenon that until now has gone unexplored in current scholarship on religion, the body, and its passions. This book will attract readers across a wide array of disciplines, including gay and lesbian studies, literary theory and criticism, Renaissance studies, and religion.

    A work of reference as well as the definitive history of a tradition, it traces writing by and about homosexual men from ancient Greece and Rome to the twentieth-century gay literary explosion.“Woods’ own artistry is evident throughout this elegant and startling book. . . . These finely honed gay readings of selected Western (and some Eastern) literary texts richly reward the careful attention they demand. . . . Though grounded in the particulars of gay male identity, this masterpiece of literary (and social) criticism calls across the divides of sex and sexual orientation.”—Kirkus Reviews (a starred review)“An encyclopedic mapping of the intersection between male homosexuality and belles lettres . . . [that is] good reading, in part because Woods has foregone strict chronology to link writers across eras and cultures.”—Louis Bayard, Washington Post Book World“Encyclopedic and critical, evenhanded and interpretive, Woods has produced a study that stands as a monument to the progress of gay literary criticism. No one to date has attempted such a grand world-wide history. . . . It cannot be recommended highly enough.”—Library Journal (a starred review)“A bold, intelligent and gorgeously encyclopedic study.”—Philip Gambone, Lambda Book Report“An exemplary piece of work.”—Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph

    Author David Roman examines the ways that gay men have used alternative, activist, and mainstream theatre and performance to intervene in the AIDS crisis. He considers solo performance, community-based projects, mixed-media events, activist demonstrations, and AIDS education theatre initiatives.

    A collection of Bogarde's writings from the last eight years, with pieces on fellow actors and directors, reminiscences of the French Riviera, a satirical piece on London dinner parties, reviews of books about the Holocaust and more.

    Her portrait of the chameleonlike artist is much more than an account of Bowles's life, however. It is also a meditation on biography that questions the biographer's role, the subject's credibility, and the very nature of "truth" in the telling of a life.Millicent Dillon first met Paul Bowles in Tangier in 1977, when she was writing a biography of his wife, the author Jane Bowles, who died in 1973. Dillon returned to Morocco in 1992 to work with Bowles on a book about his own life. In Bowles's book-lined apartment often crowded with visitors, Dillon observes the magnetism the aging artist exerts on anyone who comes into his circle. Bowles talks of his difficult childhood and of his grief over Jane's long illness, of exile, dreams, and madness. He is charming and evasive with Dillon, generous and devious. As the book unfolds, Dillon's own reflections and concerns surface alongside details of Bowles's daily life, his physical condition, his interactions with others. Her portrait of the artist is seen simultaneously with her construction of that portrait, and in a kind of literary legerdemain we are able to observe Dillon on the biographical canvas along with Bowles and his deceased wife.Author of the international bestseller The Sheltering Sky and numerous other works, as well as an acclaimed composer, Paul Bowles has had an immensely rich creative life. Millicent Dillon seems to have been destined to write this unconventional biography of the artist, and the result is wonderful, disturbing, and strangely compelling, like Paul Bowles himself.

    Set in North America and Japan, Exile and the Heart weaves beautiful stories of women on the diaspora negotiating love, identity and friendship.

    Over a period of one hundred years, we can see the changing styles in clothes, hair, and attitudes, but what remains constant is the expression of affection and love between these men. Some may be gay, others assuredly not, but whatever the relationship, these images celebrate Walt Whitman's "dear love of comrades."

    

    An intensive feminist qualitative study, the book offers guidelines for counselors and lesbian step families for creating healthy, functioning family structures and environments. It is the first book to concentrate exclusively on lesbian step families rather than on lesbian mothering in general.In Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love, you'll explore in detail the different kinds of step relationships that are developed and what factors may lead to the different types of step mothering in lesbian step families. The book helps you understand these relationships and parent roles through in-depth discussions of:how a step mother and legal mother who live together negotiate and organize parenting and homemaking tasks how members of lesbian step families define and create the step mother role strategies family members use to define and cope with oppression how sexism is transmitted within the family and how mothering may limit and/or contribute to female liberation the opinions and viewpoints of the children of these families The findings in Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love challenge traditional views of mothering and fathering as gender and biologically based activities; they indicate that lesbian step families model gender flexibility and that the mothers and step mothers share parenting--both traditional mothering and fathering--tasks. This allows the biological mother some freedom from motherhood as well as support in it. With insight such as this, you will be prepared to help a client, a loved one, or yourself develop and maintain healthy family relationships.

    "The Apprentice of Fever is a brilliantly corporeal first book...rooted in the day-to-day life of a man implicated in the AIDS epidemic, living on the edge, crossing, transforming and transgressing boundaries, always, always paying an extreme and active attention, which is the apotheosis of compassion, which is an act of love..." "Tayson's voice is unmistakable: direct, witty, passionate and desperate, in poems with the crucial acid to etch themselves into the reader's consciousness." --from the Introduction by Marilyn Hacker, Judge

    -- Grace Paley"Bea Gates is a discoverer. Her poems of the lost and the found are transparently true to the time we live in. They move us because she has endured until she found words steady enough to present them. Major contemporary themes -- eros, AIDS, child abuse, friendship, homelessness -- emerge free of cliche from the hush of her unflinching awareness. Her language is wonderfully lucid -- modest and dazzling, so that we see our crimes and privileges in her view, rising out of her anguished love-affair with the real world. Her landscapes are intensely alive, peopled by those who are suffering and stricken by hope. Her discoveries allow us to imagine what else there is, once we refuse the dual anesthesia of shock and despair". -- Marie Ponsot"Bea Gates writes of 'the power of loving clear, ' and in the tough and clear-eyed poems in this book, she bravely takes the reader to wherever that phrase needs to go. This is a poet who doesn't blink yet has the power to transform the awkward and dangerous facts of our lives into healing song". -- Cornelius EadyThe poems in Gates' collection, "shocking in their nakedness" and raw beauty, plunge immediately into a language of feeling. "Major contemporary themes -- eros, AIDS, child abuse, friendship, homelessness -- emerge free of cliche". Language and experience come together in her discover of difficult truths. She has "the power to transform the awkward and dangerous facts of our lives into healing song".

    Eschewing the settings normally associated with his art (outdoors or poolside, on the sand and in the surf), Bianchi has created his most intimate and erotic portrayal of gay men in these revealing 'studio' shots.

    The editor provides a contextual introduction to the volume offering valuable information about the ancestry of gay theatre and queer performance. The anthology reveals how 'sexual deviance' made its way into the drama of this time, and also how homosexual playwrights used comic or lyrical devices in order to celebrate a 'superior sensibility'.

    It talks about passion and devotion in a time when little was known and much was feared about AIDS, a time when powerful judgments were based on hardly more than vague hunches. Today, there are treatments, HIV tests, and a wide body of knowledge and experience concerning the epidemic. Senak charts these achievements step by step during his personal journey through the intersecting worlds of the dying and the living, and he creates a vivid tribute to the fallen.

    These surveys and personal stories describe the suffering inflicted upon gay children who knew from an early age that they were different.

    Part protest and part affirmation of devotion, the event was a reminder that marriage rights have become a major issue among lesbians and gay men, who cannot marry legally and can only claim domestic partner rights in a few locations in the United States. Yet despite official lack of recognition, same-sex wedding ceremonies have been increasing in frequency over the past decade.Ellen Lewin, who has consecrated her own lesbian relationship with a commitment ceremony, decided to explore the myriad ways in which lesbians and gay men create meaningful ceremonies for themselves. She offers the first comprehensive account of lesbian and gay weddings in modern America. A series of richly detailed profiles--the result of extensive interviews and participation in the planning and realization of many of these commitment rituals--is woven together to show how new traditions, and ultimately new families, are emerging within contemporary America.Just as the book is a moving portrait of same-sex couples today, it is also a significant political document on a new arena in the struggle for lesbian and gay rights. In a larger sense, Lewin's work is about the politics surrounding same-sex marriages and the ramifications for central dimensions of American culture such as kinship, community, morality, and love.Lewin explores the ceremonies themselves, which range from traditional church weddings to Wicca rituals in the countryside, with portraits of the planning, the joys, and the anxieties that led up to the weddings. She introduces Bob and Mark, a leather fetishist couple who sanctified their love by legally changing their last names and exchanging vows in tuxedos, leather bow ties, and knee-high police boots. In an equally absorbing profile, Lewin describes Khadija, from a working-class black family deeply suspicious of whites (and especially Jews) and Shulamith, raised in a Zionist household. She tells of how the two women struggled to reconcile their widely disparate upbringings and how they ultimately combined elements of African and Jewish traditions in their wedding. These, among many other stories, make Recognizing Ourselves a vivid tapestry of lesbian and gay life in post-Stonewall United States.

    In this edition, Dotson has updated entries to include email addresses for book publisher, magazines, newspapers and news letters. Also included are helpful articles from authors like Patricia Nell Warren and Scott O'Hara.

    This amendment was immediately challenged in the courts as a denial of equal protection of the laws under the United States Constitution. This litigation ultimately led to a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court invalidating the Colorado ballot initiative. Suzanne Goldberg, an attorney involved in the case from the beginning on behalf of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Lisa Keen, a journalist who covered the initiative campaign and litigation, tell the story of this case, providing an inside view of this complex and important litigation. Starting with the background of the initiative, the authors tell us about the debates over strategy, the court proceedings, and the impact of each stage of the litigation on the parties involved. The authors explore the meaning of legal protection for gay people and the arguments for and against the Colorado initiative. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of civil rights protections for gay people and the evolution of what it means to be gay in contemporary American society and politics. In addition, it is a rich story well told, and will be of interest to the general reader and scholars working on issues of civil rights, majority-minority relations, and the meaning of equal rights in a democratic society.Suzanne Goldberg is an attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Lisa Keen is Senior Editor at the Washington Blade newspaper.

    This distinct group, known as the Ñ Generation (as coined by Bill Teck), are the bilingual children of Cuban exiles nourished by two cultural currents—the fragmented traditions and transferred nostalgia of their parents' Caribbean homeland and the very real and present America where they grew up and live.

    Abandoned without warning by his self-involved mother and cruel, dictatorial grandmother, L.P. is sent off to spend a magical summer with Betty, his grandmother's maid, in black South Phoenix. A former jazz singer at war with inner demons of her own, Betty is the only adult in L.P.'s small universe with room in her heart for the troubled boy -- offering him a friendship born of shared pain. And in a remarkable season of fever dreams, betrayals, loss, and rude sexual awakenings, L.P. will learn much about the fragile masks grown-ups hide behind and the weapons they use to wound, setting him free for flight, like the unseen night birds singing in the dark.

    Updated with new stories and experiences, this edition acknowledges that while a brave child often takes time to come to terms with his sexuality before sharing his feelings, parents are often shocked and overwhelmed with little time to react. Together these letters reaffirm the healing power of support and allow those with first-hand knowledge to outline the steps toward understanding and the importance of helping their children share the truth.

    Interweaving ecstatic poetry and prose, Hopkins shows how sexual passion can open the door to spiritual growth.Hopkins argues that orgasm itself can bring lovers to a powerful level of consciousness. Beautifully written, the techniques show that pinching, scratching, union from the rear, switching roles, thrill cries, and oral sex all have an impact on erotic life. Hopkins concludes with four "ruminations" on the sex-friendly nature of Tibetan Buddhism.

    Charming Lucy chases birds, terrorizes a dog named Schmoofy, and will surely steal your heart with her delightful antics. Discover a new family who values the importance of time spent with one another and with their friends and knows that a saucer of milk can fix many things.

    The love that dare not speak its name is rhapsodized, dissected, analyzed, and skewered by a thoroughly eclectic lot: everyone from Mac West ("I don't mean to brag, but I think if I spent some time with a gay boy, he'd never go back to men") to Allen Ginsberg, from Jeff Stryker to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    The arrival of the Spanish soon disrupts their orgy of sensual pleasures and when Quetzal finds himself attracted to Juan, a young Spaniard, his loyalties are torn.

    The first book of its kind, it provides you with knowledge and practice content specific to the unique and changing needs of rural lesbians and gay men and gives you the know-how for constructing culturally competent service programs and intervention techniques.Immensely practical and insightful, Rural Gays and Lesbians offers social workers, counselors, teachers, academics, and those in the helping professions interventions across multiple system levels, from micro interventions to larger community development approaches. Its interventions are built upon assumptions of the values of the helping profession, the scientific basis for developing practice approaches, the diversity upon which communities develop, and the ethics of practice. Offering you tip after tip, strategy after strategy, this book helps you:understand how internalized homophobia becomes a tool for livingupdate your knowledge on the basic mental health issues faced by rural lesbians and gay menprotect the civil rights of sexual minoritiesuse strategies for empowering gay people and helping them become more socially engaged and successful in living and working in communities and organizationslocate computer resource listings and information for the evaluation of beginning rural programspenetrate the social and geographic isolation faced by sexual minorities in rural areasuse the radio and the Internet to promote messages of safety and healthidentify barriers to careWith its discussions on service adaptation for rural cultures, substance abuse, the need for role models for gays and lesbians in rural areas, and social isolation compounded by racism, poverty, and cultural and religious beliefs, Rural Gays and Lesbians shows you how service models effective with gays and lesbians in urban areas and active communities may not work with rural people. Its practice recommendations will help you support rural lesbians and gays as they cope with everyday activities and experiences, come to terms with their identity, and find a healthy and happy niche in the community.

    Whether it be Internet pornography or family history, Chin manages to dig deep and uncover not only the truths of everyday life, but also the absurdities that surround them.Mongrel is an exploration and distillation of the experiences and imagination of a gay Asian-American whose sensibilities were formed by the maelstrom of '80s American pop culture. A unique collection from a brash, funny new voice.

    Not another "Westerner-looks-at-Japan" story, this is a Japanese novel written in English by a writer of mixed parentage born and living in Tokyo, where still today homosexuality is seen as a dirty secret best hidden away. College student Fumio follows a tortuous route to discover his sexual identity. Introduced by his straight fellow-student Tatsuya to the "host clubs" where good money is to be made, he is torn between his unrequited passion for his schoolfriend and the comfortable life of a kept boy he is offered by a rich professor. When the professor proposes that Fumio marry his daughter, the web of deceit grows steadily more complex.

    This collection brings all of Casey’s powerful short stories and a fragment of an unfinished novel to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Exploring the human condition through poetically unique yet torturous views of the mind, Casey was a renegade artist whose work perceives reality as a smoke screen behind which Truth is hidden. He intended his fiction to disturb and subvert standard, plot-driven views of life.Born in the United States, Casey was raised in Cuba and spent most of his life there and in Europe. He chose Spanish as his primary artistic tongue. A member of the intelligentsia surrounding Castro in the early years of the revolution, he was eventually exiled—and in 1969 committed suicide in Rome at the age of forty-five. Although most of his luminous stories are set in Havana, his is not a touristy, picturesque landscape but an often strange and nightmarish theater of human passions, inhabited by figures—silhouettes, really—that live on the edge of normality. This volume, which showcases Casey’s mastery of the skill of indirect and gradual revelation, is the most complete to appear in any language and includes a biographical and critical introduction written by Ilan Stavans, the noted novelist and scholar of Hispanic culture. Readers interested in the art of fiction and in the complexities of the human psyche will find Casey’s work irresistible.

    A collection of lesbian love poems from classic and contemporary poets, including Sappho, Aphra Behn and Vita Sackville-West.

    George Hagerty examines the "unnatural" affections that abound in 18th century novels which offered romantic friends, effeminized male partners, maimed heroines, paternal obsession, and lesbian couples -- relations that defied cultural taboos of the time.

    A daring exploration of the underground culture and business of the male sex industry.

    Offering helpful advice and specific suggestions that will guide you through the coming-out process, this text also teaches family, friends, and colleagues how they can support and encourage you in this challenge.A roadmap through the confusing process of coming to terms with your sexuality both privately and publicly, Acts of Disclosure walks you step-by-step through the stages of coming out, the emotions involved, the potential pitfalls, and the kinds of receptions you may meet. It points out both healthy and self-destructive coping strategies and teaches you how to take responsibility for your sexuality. You will find its discussions straightforward, honest, and direct, as it broaches the following topics:coming out in American schoolsexpressing your sexual identity on the jobthe harmful effects of involuntary public exposurewhy some parents adjust better than others to the fact that they have a gay childthe damaging effects of social myths attached to homosexualitythe emotional and behavioral reactions wives have after discovering that their husbands are gayhow to anticipate a possible "outing" against oneself and the advantages of coming out to prevent such an actcompulsory social programming that may be deeply injurious to gay adolescentsdisclosing your sexual identity after the onset of AIDSGay males of all ages, parents, friends, children, therapists, psychologists, social workers, and educators who read Acts of Disclosure will realize their error in treating gay sexual identity as undesirable, shameful, or second-rate. As you turn the last page of this comprehensive and enlightening book, you will likely find yourself with an appreciation of gay male sexuality as well as with a better understanding of the complexities of human nature.

    The book investigates mayoral voting patterns in America's three largest cities-New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

    No one has approached the stars with her sass and class ever before! Her guide to astrology for gay men is lively, revealing-- and naughty!Sections include: in life, in bed, how to seduce him, doing him and dating him, how to last over the long haul, how to get rid of him, and the three faces of each sign.And a complete compatibility profile of each astrological combination.