Current Issue

Review of The Ground Under My Feet

About My Life and the Kept Woman is divided into two parts. The first, which runs from his sister’s wedding in 1945 through Rechy’s discharge from the Army in the late 1950’s, contains the most personal writing he has ever published. … The second half of the book is quite different. 

THIS BOOK is a curiosity, that’s for sure. Sprightly, witty, distinctly unlabored, at times willfully unacademic, Reading Boyishly plots its course as: “Ancient boys, aged children, adolescent gentlemen: I dish them up as boyish cuisine… My book is puerile, a depreciative term meaning merely boyish.”

Born a red diaper baby (the child of Communists) on a chicken farm in New Jersey, Ian began playing the piano at three, wrote her first song at twelve, and was performing at hootenannies in New York’s Greenwich Village one year later. At fourteen, this wunderkind walked into pop producer Shadow Morton’s office, and theMore

THE MEMOIR has become such a crowded genre these days that one has the right to ask if each addition to its growing shelf warrants the lost trees. Jennifer Finney Boylan’s book, I’m happy to report, passes this test.

IF YOU LIKED the film Juno and its wise-cracking teen heroine, you’ll enjoy Ann Ahern, the teen protagonist in Stephanie Grant’s new novel. Map of Ireland is a story about a lesbian teen from South Boston and the things she learns about prejudice and love in 1974, the first year of the city’s school busingMore

IN HER NEW BOOK Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach reveals that the road to the birds and the bees wasn’t just paved with racy feathers and erotically-dripped honey. Over the years, many erroneous beliefs about erogenous zones have been held, including ...

Reviews of On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film; Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever; Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited; and The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems, 1969 – 2007.

THE TWO oldest children of Thomas Mann, both born in the earliest years of the 20th century, were possessed of enormous intellect, charm, and charisma. They were openly gay in the case of Klaus, bisexual in the case of Erika; and they were decades ahead of their time.

NINETY-SEVEN THOUSAND, five hundred seventy-seven gay men-that’s how many “men who have sex with men” were newly diagnosed with HIV in the U.S. from 2001 to 2006. ... More than 100,000 gay and bisexual men. The AIDS crisis never ended. In fact, it’s getting worse again.

Directors Guido Santi and Tina Mascara’s documentary, Chris & Don: A Love Story, traces the events in the couple’s life through interviews with filmmakers, scholars and Bachardy himself, offering the viewer a quick and thorough look at a love that has not died. This interview with Don Bachardy was conducted in person, in Los Angeles,More

JANE LYNCH studied acting at Cornell University and then went on to act in comedy theatre, TV, and film. Her role in The Fugitive introduced her to a wider audience, which led to appearances in major movies and TV sitcoms. However, Jane has remained committed to independent films and to playing lesbian roles whenever possible.

Henry and William were enrolled at Harvard while Bob and Wilkie were sent off to fight in the Civil War.

Commentary on current events

Letters to the Editor

FROM THE STANDPOINT of GLBT rights, it now seems likely—although by no means certain—that 2008 will be the year in which the political system caught up to the country. I do not always subscribe to the view that the public is ahead of the politicians in terms of enlightenment, but on the question of protectingMore

IT HAPPENED on a typical day in sun-drenched Southern California in the early 1950’s. Two men met on the “queer” side of Will Rogers Beach in Santa Monica....

ONE OF THE GREATEST ARTISTS of the 20th century, Robert Rauschenberg, died on May 12, 2008, at the age of 82. Protean and prolific, Rauschenberg was arguably the most significant artist-inventor in the history of American art

... we in the GLBT community, as with American voters in general, are as energized as we’ve been in recent memory. It remains to be seen whether Barack Obama will become the truly enlightened leader he seems to be. But ... I am confident that he will become a more perfect candidate insofar as gayMore

[Sarah] Reece, the state field director of Equality for All, the organization coordinating the California campaign to defend the newly won right for same-sex couples to marry, is hardly a household name. Yet the success of her behind-the-scenes efforts, and those of others working with her, to organize at the grassroots level could be theMore

On June 5, at its annual dinner, the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus presented its Founding Father Award to historian Martin Duberman, who was introduced by his former student Tim McCarthy, now a history lecturer at Harvard. What follows is a transcript of this introduction and Martin Duberman’s remarks, which he offered without notes.

THE MODERN American civil rights movement began at the 1948 Philadelphia Democratic convention when a hitherto unknown Minneapolis mayor, Hubert Humphrey, rose to defend the platform committee’s minority report on civil rights.

... At the Festival’s closing ceremony, drag performers kicked high and theatrical accomplishments were celebrated. The audience erupted when Tom Kirdahy promised: “Terrence and I will be here next year, when George Bush is gone from the White House!” ...