"Gay men are just like everyone else." "Gay men are inherently different." Both statements contain truths. In the drive for equal rights and social acceptance, so many in the LGBT movement have emphasized gay people's commonalities with straights. But what if gay men's differences were distinct gifts? What if gay men-and you-played important and singular roles in the human family? From a perspective seldom considered in mainstream gay-or straight-culture, Raymond L. Rigoglioso, founder of Gay Men of Wisdom, takes a fresh and open-hearted look at the critical roles that gay men play in the world. Organized around 14 Distinct Gay Male Gifts, Gay Men and The New Way Forward shows how gay men have emerged from a history dominated by victimization to become teachers for humanity. It proposes that, when we understand how we contribute to the health and vitality of society, LGBT people can make an entirely new case for equality and begin an important new era in our movement. Written as an invitation to self-discovery, Gay Men and The New Way Forward includes a self-assessment to help the reader discover how he serves and heals humanity, reinvents manhood, and frees and enriches the human spirit.
A moving exploration of how gay men construct their identities, fight to be themselves, and live authentically It goes without saying that even today, it’s not easy to be gay in America. While young gay men often come out more readily, even those from the most progressive of backgrounds still struggle with the legacy of early-life stigma and a deficit of self-acceptance, which can fuel doubt, regret, and, at worst, self-loathing. And this is to say nothing of the ongoing trauma wrought by AIDS, which is all too often relegated to history. Drawing on his work as a clinical psychologist during and in the aftermath of the epidemic, Walt Odets reflects on what it means to survive and figure out a way to live in a new, uncompromising future, both for the men who endured the upheaval of those years and for the younger men who have come of age since then, at a time when an HIV epidemic is still ravaging the gay community, especially among the most marginalized. Through moving stories—of friends and patients, and his own—Odets considers how experiences early in life launch men on trajectories aimed at futures that are not authentically theirs. He writes to help reconstruct how we think about gay life by considering everything from the misleading idea of “the homosexual,” to the diversity and richness of gay relationships, to the historical role of stigma and shame and the significance of youth and of aging. Crawling out from under the trauma of destructive early-life experience and the two epidemics, and into a century of shifting social values, provides an opportunity to explore possibilities rather than live with limitations imposed by others. Though it is drawn from decades of private practice, activism, and life in the gay community, Odets’s work achieves remarkable universality. At its core, Out of the Shadows is driven by his belief that it is time that we act based on who we are and not who others are or who they would want us to be. We—particularly the young—must construct our own paths through life. Out of the Shadows is a necessary, impassioned argument for how and why we must all take hold of our futures.
"History" sounds really official. Like it's all fact. Like it's definitely what happened. But that's not necessarily true. History was crafted by the people who recorded it. And sometimes, those historians were biased against, didn't see, or couldn't even imagine anyone different from themselves. That means that history has often left out the stories of LGBTQIA+ people: men who loved men, women who loved women, people who loved without regard to gender, and people who lived outside gender boundaries. Historians have even censored the lives and loves of some of the world's most famous people, from William Shakespeare and Pharaoh Hatshepsut to Cary Grant and Eleanor Roosevelt. Join author Lee Wind for this fascinating journey through primary sources—poetry, memoir, news clippings, and images of ancient artwork—to explore the hidden (and often surprising) Queer lives and loves of two dozen historical figures.
Legal gay marriage is still a relatively new phenomenon. As gay men who are now able to get married, we find ourselves in a bit of a quandary: for many male couples, sex is a lot more important for us than it is for heterosexuals. Two married men often have a stronger desire for sex - wanting more of it and with a wider variety of partners - than married opposite-sex couples. How does this work within the structure of a monogamous marriage? Is an open relationship a better structure for gay marriage? Assuming that gay marriages will emulate heterosexual marriages is neither a valid nor a helpful assumption. But, as gay men, where does that leave us? There are currently no “rule books” for how a marriage between two men could or should work. While there are lots of books about how to plan your gay wedding, there are virtually none that address what to do after the honeymoon is over (literally and figuratively). This book fills that void. It offers married gay couples (and gay men considering marriage) an easy-to-follow, practical framework that they can use to help create, adjust and structure their marriages. Using helpful examples and first-hand quotes throughout, Openly-gay psychotherapist Michael Dale Kimmel offers a roadmap for gay men who want to be married but have questions and concerns about monogamy and monotony.
Even as substantial legal and social victories are being celebrated within the gay rights movement, much of working-class America still exists outside the current narratives of gay liberation. In Steel Closets, Anne Balay draws on oral history interviews with forty gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers, mostly living in northwestern Indiana, to give voice to this previously silent and invisible population. She presents powerful stories of the intersections of work, class, gender, and sexual identity in the dangerous industrial setting of the steel mill. The voices and stories captured by Balay--by turns alarming, heroic, funny, and devastating--challenge contemporary understandings of what it means to be queer and shed light on the incredible homophobia and violence faced by many: nearly all of Balay's narrators remain closeted at work, and many have experienced harassment, violence, or rape. Through the powerful voices of queer steelworkers themselves, Steel Closets provides rich insight into an understudied part of the LGBT population, contributing to a growing body of scholarship that aims to reveal and analyze a broader range of gay life in America.
A compelling and timely vision for gay reparations in the United States In the last two decades many nations have adopted "gay reparations," or policies intended to make amends for a history of discrimination, stigmatization, and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Far from being a homogenous or uniform phenomenon, gay reparations encompass a small constellation of approaches including a formal apology to the LGBT community for past wrongdoing, financial compensation for victims of anti-LGBT laws and actions, and the erection of monuments to the memory of those who suffered because of structural homophobia. The United States, however, has been reluctant to embrace gay reparations, making the country something of an outlier among Western democracies. Beyond making the case for gay reparations in the United States, this book explores a wide range of questions provoked by the rise of the gay reparations movement. Among these questions, three stand out for what they reveal about the puzzling and complex nature of this new front in the struggle for LGBT equality. Why, after centuries of attempts to marginalize, dehumanize, and even eradicate LGBT people, are governments coming around to confront this dark and painful historical legacy? How do we make sense of the diversity of gay reparations being implemented by governments around the world? And, finally, what would an American policy of gay reparations look like? Omar G. Encarnación draws upon the rich history of reparations to confront the legacies of genocide, slavery, and political repression and argue that gay reparations are a moral obligation intended to restore dignity to those whose human rights have been violated because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Reparations are also necessary to close painful chapters of anti-LGBT discrimination and violence and to remind future generations of past struggles for LGBT equality. To this end, he traces America's dark and painful LGBT history--from colonial-era laws criminalizing homosexual conduct, to a postwar ban on homosexuals working in the federal bureaucracy, to the government's support of the junk-science underpinning the practice of "gay conversion" therapy promoted by the Christian Right. The book also examines how other Western democracies notorious for their repression of homosexuals--specifically Spain, Britain, and Germany--have implemented gay reparations. These foreign experiences reveal potential pathways for gay reparations in the United States. More importantly, they show that while there is no universal approach to gay reparations it is never too late for countries to seek to right past wrongs.
A chronicle of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian and transgender rights draws on interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists and members of the LGBT community to document the cause's struggles since the 1950s.
Based on exclusive access to E. M. Forster's previously restricted diaries this scrupulously researched and sensitively written biography is the first to put the fact that he was homosexual back at the heart of his story.
