. . A must-read' Gay TimesWe talk about achieving 'LGBTQ+ equality', but around the world, LGBTQ+ people are still suffering discrimination and extreme violence. How do we solve this urgent problem, allowing queer people everywhere the opportunity to thrive?In We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices explore this question. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they present a powerful manifesto for how - together - we can start to create a better future.Edited by journalist and author Amelia Abraham, with writing from:Peppermint - Wolfgang Tillmans - Olly Alexander - Jonathan Anderson - Pabllo Vittar - Naoise Dolan - Amrou Al-Kadhi - Shura - Beth Ditto - Owen Jones - Riyadh Khalaf - Tom Rasmussen - Mykki Blanco - Phyll Opoku-Gyimah - Travis Alabanza - Yasmin Benoit - Mazharul Islam - Kate Bornstein - Adam Eli - Shon Faye - Fox Fisher - Hanne Gaby Odiele - Sasha Kazantseva - Andrew Gurza - Holland - Levi Hord - Juliet Jacques - Leticia Opio - madison moore - Matthew Riemer (@LGBT_History) - Vincent Desmond - Juno Roche - Bobbi Salvör Menuez - Carl Siciliano

     She learned how to be strong again and break the shackles her old life had hobbled her with. While Paya is out making waves in London, Lenore is assigned as the driver for the contractor, McGrath, who is renovating a building for the Flotilla, which will allow people who had fallen upon hard times to have a place to call their own. The problem? Lenore finds McGrath to be the most infuriating, cocky, and egotistical woman on the planet. They mix like oil and water and Lenore wants nothing more than to throw a match on the mixture and be done with the woman. She just can’t figure out what it is that boils her blood around McGrath, though apparently all of her smug and smiling friends have an inkling… The Flotilla series is a spinoff of the bestselling London Harmony series.

    It is the work of one of the most influential attorneys in America, who has dedicated his life to the protection of individuals' rights and our Constitution's commitment to equal justice under the law. Above all, it is a clear, straightforward book that brings into sharp focus the very human significance of the right to marry in America—not just for some couples, but for all. Why is the word marriage so important? Will marriage for same-sex couples hurt the "sanctity" of the institution? How can people of different faiths reconcile their beliefs with the idea of marriage for same-sex couples? How will allowing gay couples to marry affect children? In this quietly powerful volume, the most authoritative and fairly articulated book on the subject, Wolfson demonstrates why the right to marry is important—indeed necessary—for all couples and for America's promise of equality.

    Long before Stonewall and Gay Pride, there was such a thing as gay culture, and it was recognized throughout Europe and America. Graham Robb, brilliant biographer of Balzac, Hugo, and Rimbaud, examines how homosexuals were treated by society and finds a tale of surprising tolerance. He describes the lives of gay men and women: how they discovered their sexuality and accepted or disguised it; how they came out; how they made contact with like-minded people. He also includes a fascinating investigation of the encrypted homosexuality of such famous nineteenth-century sleuths as Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes himself (with glances forward in time to Batman and J. Edgar Hoover). Finally, Strangers addresses crucial questions of gay culture, including the riddle of its relationship to religion: Why were homosexuals created with feelings that the Creator supposedly condemns? This is a landmark work, full of tolerant wisdom, fresh research, and surprises.

    Lost in the midst of a heat wave, he continuously listens to a song that works itself in to the very core of his heartache. Floridian nights, unsent messages, spiraling infatuation, and terrible, terrible weather. A breath of frustration escapes George’s lips. “I don’t do that.”“You do. It’s okay,” Dream says. He feels pinpricks of warmth building in his chest. The words rise up faster than he can temper, laced with soft honey, “you’re so cute.”The call falls silent.They heard it. The affection in the tone of his voice, different than usual, no trace of humor. The way it came from the hearth below his heart, glowing with secrecy and shame—for George, and George only. They had to have heard it.--inspired by the song "heat waves" by glass animals

    Her friends are spiraling, one in particular with dire consequences. If that’s not enough, Tegan’s job is threatened by a conman and a cop trying to recruit Tegan into a leadership role at the university.Whoever said college was the best years of your life never had to come out in a state determined to strip basic human rights from the LGBTQ community.Girl Love Happens: Season Three contains all six episodes of the continuing lesbian romance series infused with 1990s’ nostalgia. If you like tumultuous love stories, simmering chemistry, and a quirky and troubled cast of characters, then you’ll love T.B. Markinson’s smart, sexy series.

    Gay / Lesbian Studies. Moving from mid-nineties Boston, to post-grunge Seattle, to Giuliani's New York, Sycamore's debut novel is about searching for home and not necessarily finding it. D. Travers Scott calls PULLING TAFFY "a sharp and sparkling picaresque of queens and k-holes, grandmothers and tricks, friends and freaks. If David Lynch and David Wojnarowicz created a rebuttal to Will and Grace, it could very well be this book. Sycamore's keen eye reveals the everygay as not merely absurd but grotesque. Like good drugs, Sycamore's writing leaves me craving more." Likewise Edmund White writes, "I admire the candor and the reticence in this beautiful, anguished, funny novel. I have seen the future, and it is PUILLING TAFFY."

    This modern dictionary provides an in-depth look at queer language, from terms influenced by celebrated lesbian poet Sappho and from New York's underground queer ball culture in the 1980s to today's celebration of RuPaul's Drag Race.The glossary of terms is supported by full-color illustrations and photography throughout, as well as real-life usage examples for those who don't quite know how to use kiki, polysexual, or transmasculine in a sentence. A series of educational lessons highlight key people and events that shaped queer language; readers will learn the linguistic importance of pronouns, gender identity, Stonewall, the Harlem Renaissance, and more.For every queen in your life--the men, women, gender non-conforming femmes, butches, daddies, and zaddies--The Queens' English is at once an education and a celebration of queer history, identity, and the limitless imagination of the LGBTQIA+ community.

    Set in downtown New York City, Whores of Lost Atlantis features Julian Young, a performer and playwright who tells the story of his acting troupe's hilarious struggle to assemble an Off-Broadway production of Julian's play, Whores of Lost Atlantis, in which Julian acts in drag. The novel's unforgettable cast of characters includes Joel, a perfect English gentleman from Indiana; Roxie, an actress/librarian with moxie; Buster, a voluptuous young alcoholic; Camille, the fiery wig designer Julian considers having an affair with; Perry, Julian's best friend, with a weakness for plastic surgery and peroxide; and Kiko, the wonderfully wicked performance artist who tries to sabotage Julian's career. Getting his play produced proves to be a picaresque adventure with plenty of surprises, leaving the reader feverishly turning pages to see if the show can go on.

    They don't even know about her ex-girlfriends or her fake IDs.But it's that fake ID that leads her to the hottest club in the city. While her friends tear up the dancefloor, however, Audrey meets the foil to her suppressed desires and curiosity.Dylan. The resident bad girl with an affinity for good girls like Audrey.What begins as a torrid fling soon transforms into something that opens Audrey's eyes to the life she's always wanted. The longer she's with Dylan, the more she realizes the sources of her suffocation. A toxic family. Airheaded friends. Caring for nothing but the trappings of wealth. "A bad girl is someone who refuses to accept the status quo." Dylan has dated her fair share of heiresses, but Audrey is the first one to make her believe in a chance at love.Yet it's not easy to give over to someone like Audrey. She represents everything Dylan has spent her whole life rejecting, for she knows all too well what it's like to be forced into the good girl role.And her past is constantly threatening to ruin everything she's built for herself since her darkest days. "Good girls don't go bad. They save themselves." The fatalistic love that haunts both Dylan and Audrey will last the summer. After that? Someone will have to give up the only life they've ever known.Easier said than done.Please note that this book contains examples of transphobia and growing up in an abusive cult.

    Trained in classical Greek and Latin, Phillips seems to excavate as he forms words into lines, breaking images into tiny parts of thought as he digs for meaning and accuracy. As part of this excavation, Pastoral explores what flesh, wanting, and belief are made of. A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Phillips has produced four collections of accomplished verse in the past few years. In each book, the influence of classical syntax and rhythm can be heard. And with each book, Phillips refines his poetic voice, combining the prayerlike and the erotic, and often elegantly swooping from a whisper to a scream in the space of a few stanzas.This time, the poems fall along a wide range of tones, from italicized commands like "Let me" and "Now" in the poem "Lay Me Down" to a hesitant question, or a deepening well of self-doubt. Phillips is always original, and he's always remembering, even when a poem is firmly written in present tense. He is hyperaware not only of the ancient poets, but also of history, especially the great destructions.In the ominously titled "The Kill," he remembers a familiar daily scene. The speaker analyzes his own love for another in clinical detail that suddenly veers into longing. The way these lines break adds to the sense of tragic fragment, of an ache:      The last time I gave my body up,      to you, I was minded       briefly what it is made of,       what yours is, that      I'd forgotten, the flesh      which always       I hold in plenty no       little sorrow for because -- oh, do      but think on its predicament,      and weep.In just four stanzas, Phillips moves from an image of both love and surrender to a consideration of temporality -- the bald fact that his lover is mortal. This thought of "its predicament" makes him weep, even though death is not a stated issue here.In "The Kill," the last poem in the volume, the speaker anticipates the need to remember. The second poem in the book referred to Pompeii, and the shadow of Pompeii is still resonant as the speaker describes his lover's body, still current and alive despite the title's warning.He remembers a body he has felt before, and probably will feel again -- judging by the present tense of "what yours is." And yet, the speaker here feels the need to freeze that body in time, to memorialize it. The next stanza explains this strong urge to hold on:      We cleave most entirely      to what most we fear      losing. We fear loss      because we understand       the fact of it, its largeness, its      utter indifference to whether      we do, or don't,       ignore it. The "largeness" of loss is what these poems are loath to accept, even as they seek to understand. Each poem tries to break loss down into questions, confessions, prayers, or simple expressions of doubt. While the poems fight against death and inevitable loss, they also seem to seek moral guidance to help with these losses.Nowhere is the search for answers and guidance more apparent than at the endings of these poems, which are frequently questions. Phillips is fond of abrupt, mysterious dashes as conclusions. In his quest for a moral compass, he also quotes from "Lamentations" and draws on familiar Biblical stories. The wanderings of Cain, for example, seem to appear in the backgrounds of poems where man seeks. What's more, the epigraph is from George Herbert, the great poet of faith and the war between faith and flesh. The sense of struggle between opposing ideas is something Phillips incorporates and modernizes into a contemporary parable of carnal love and constant questioning of that love. There's a frequent seesawing in the book, a back-and-forth on the big questions that permeates even the simplest narrative. For example, in "Favor," the second section of a five-part poem called "And Fitful Memories of Pan," Phillips sees a man in the distance:      Even from a distance, I can tell:       a man, clearly.       Gods cast no shadow. The struggle between man and God, between flesh and faith, is hinted at in the first stanza. Man, for Phillips, is an instrument of struggle, a tortured wanderer. The poem continues:      Also, that he tires,       stops to rest, looks like      sleeping, or could use some.       How long he has been,       coming, how long it takes, just      to cross it, the lush      measure that -- all summer -- has      been these well-groomed,       well-fed grounds, the lake      unswum and gleaming, the light      catching, losing      the useless extravagancePhillips basically forms the scene of a man walking into a discussion of man's temporality, the fact that man tires. While what God makes -- "the lake unswum and gleaming" -- needs to make no effort to be beautiful, man exhausts himself just surviving. By the last two stanzas, the speaker concludes that the body must make bets with itself:      Always, the body      wagering --      up, through itself --       Give. What he wants, he shall have.In Phillips's work, man -- though mortal -- still has great power. Man can demand, man can inspire love, and man can pray. In the struggle between man and God, in that constant "wagering," man sometimes wins.&3151;Aviya Kushner

    I pretended to be asleep.”Time 40:39

    The bestselling author of And the Band Played On follows with a book of even greater power and sweep as he investigates the situation of gays in the military over the past three decades, revealing for the first time that some of the most celebrated soldiers in American history were homosexual (including the Father of the United States Army).

    Sterling just happens to be very good at it.Vainglorious vampire Sterling is forced to trade his big city hedonism for a trip to a sleepy mountain town, where mangled dead bodies have been discovered. Soon he’s entangled with snooty vampire nobles, territorial werewolves, and a society of law-enforcing sorcerers.The locals aren’t so bad, like the luscious young lady at the fruit shop, or the hunky electrician whose smile sends out sparks. But they’re distractions from the hunt for the mountain murderer. And then there’s the eerie enigma: why are all these corpses missing their faces?