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Gay & Lesbian Politics
Sexuality and the Emergence of a New Ethic
Mark Blasius
Temple University Press, 1994
"This important study is both an analysis of and a call to an involved politics. It opens the door to a far-reaching dialogue." --Martin Duberman, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, The City University of New York An active participant in and theorist of the gay and lesbian movement, Mark Blasius contends that being gay or lesbian is by definition political. By extension, the phenomenon of a movement founded on collective identity is a quintessential part of American politics. The continually rising public consciousness of the needs and interest of gays and lesbians provides Blasius with a vehicle for showing how a particular aspect of human life comes to assume political dimensions. Upon this premise, he analyzes the process of how power is exercised through sexuality and traces the historical conditions that have made possible a gay and lesbian politics Drawing on works of political philosophy, social science, including Foucault, and gay and lesbian studies, Blasius explores the invention of a gay and lesbian ethos, through which participation, even for apolitical gays and lesbians, goes beyond a shared culture and perspective. It is a way of life more encompassing than either sexual orientation or lifestyle alone. Though he acknowledges and reflects upon the divergent range of gay and lesbian experiences, Blasius provides a framework based on theories of power, sexuality, and ethics that elaborates the significance of the movement as a whole within contemporary society. "It is in the process of coming out...Blasius argues, that lesbians and gay men create themselves--as new subjects, as the producers of new truth, and as agents of social change. Blasius gives a coherent account that ties together all these processes--from coming out to the emergence of lesbian and gay studies-and goes on to show the 'ethical' contribution that lesbians and gay men make to contemporary American society." --Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review "An engaging book that intelligently explores a range of possibilities in human relations." --George Kateb, Department of Politics, Princeton University
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Gay Cuban Nation
Emilio Bejel
University of Chicago Press, 2001
With Gay Cuban Nation, Emilio Bejel looks at Cuba's markedly homoerotic culture through writings about homosexuality, placing them in the social and political contexts that led up to the Cuban Revolution. By reading against the grain of a wide variety of novels, short stories, autobiographies, newspaper articles, and films, Bejel maps out a fascinating argument about the way in which different attitudes toward power and nationalism struggle for an authoritative stance on homosexual issues. Through close readings of writers such as José Martí, Alfonso Hernández-Catá, Carlos Montenegro, José Lezama Lima, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, and Reinaldo Arenas, whose heartbreaking autobiography, Before Night Falls, has enjoyed renewed popularity, Gay Cuban Nation shows that the category of homosexuality is always lurking, ghostlike, in the shadows of nationalist discourse. The book stakes out Cuba's sexual battlefield, and will challenge the homophobia of both Castro's revolutionaries and Cuban exiles in the States.
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Gay Men at the Movies
Cinema, Memory and the History of a Gay Male Community
Scott McKinnon
Intellect Books, 2016
Cinema has long played a major role in the formation of community among marginalized groups, and this book details that process for gay men in Sydney, Australia from the 1950s to the present. Scott McKinnon builds the book from a variety of sources, including film reviews, media reports, personal memoirs, oral histories, and a striking range of films, all deployed to answer the question of understanding cinema-going as a moment of connection to community and identity—how the experience of seeing these films and being part of an audience helped to build a community among the gay men of Sydney in the period.
 
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Gay Priori
A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform
Libby Adler
Duke University Press, 2018
Libby Adler offers a comprehensive critique of the mainstream LGBT legal agenda in the United States, showing how LGBT equal rights discourse drives legal advocates toward a narrow array of reform objectives that do little to help the lives of the most marginalized members of the LGBT community.
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Gay Rights and the Mormon Church
Intended Actions, Unintended Consequences
Gregory A. Prince
University of Utah Press, 2019
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Gay Shame
Edited by David M. Halperin and Valerie Traub
University of Chicago Press, 2009
Ever since the 1969 Stonewall Riots, “gay pride” has been the rallying cry of the gay rights movement and the political force behind the emergence of the field of lesbian and gay studies. But has something been lost, forgotten, or buried beneath the drive to transform homosexuality from a perversion to a proud social identity? Have the political requirements of gay pride repressed discussion of the more uncomfortable or undignified aspects of homosexuality?

Gay Shame seeks to lift this unofficial ban on the investigation of homosexuality and shame by presenting critical work from the most vibrant frontier in contemporary queer studies. An esteemed list of contributors tackles a range of issues—questions of emotion, disreputable sexual histories, dissident gender identities, and embarrassing figures and moments in gay history—as they explore the possibility of reclaiming shame as a new, even productive, way to examine lesbian and gay culture.
 
Accompanied by a DVD collection of films, performances, and archival imagery, Gay Shame constitutes nothing less than a major redefinition and revitalization of the field.
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Gay TV and Straight America
Becker, Ron
Rutgers University Press, 2006

After decades of silence on the subject of homosexuality, television in the 1990s saw a striking increase in programming that incorporated and, in many cases, centered on gay material. In shows including Friends, Seinfeld, Party of Five, Homicide, Suddenly Susan, The Commish, Ellen, Will & Grace, and others, gay characters were introduced, references to homosexuality became commonplace, and issues of gay and lesbian relationships were explored, often in explicit detail.

In Gay TV and Straight America, Ron Becker draws on a wide range of political and cultural indicators to explain this sudden upsurge of gay material on prime-time network television. Bringing together analysis of relevant Supreme Court rulings, media coverage of gay rights battles, debates about multiculturalism, concerns over political correctness, and much more, Becker's assessment helps us understand how and why televised gayness was constructed by a specific culture of tastemakers during the decade.

On one hand the evidence points to network business strategies that embraced gay material as a valuable tool for targeting a quality audience of well-educated, upscale adults looking for something "edgy" to watch. But, Becker also argues that the increase of gay material in the public eye creates growing mainstream anxiety in reaction to the seemingly civil public conversation about equal rights.

In today's cultural climate where controversies rage over issues of gay marriage yet millions of viewers tune in weekly to programs like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, this book offers valuable insight to the complex condition of America's sexual politics.


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Gaylaw
Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet
William N. Eskridge Jr.
Harvard University Press, 1999
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal issues concerning gender and sexual nonconformity in the United States. Part One, which covers the years from the post-Civil War period to the 1980s, is a history of state efforts to discipline and punish the behavior of homosexuals and other people considered to be deviant. During this period such people could get by only at the cost of suppressing their most basic feelings and emotions. Part Two addresses contemporary issues. Although it is no longer illegal to be openly gay in America, homosexuals still suffer from state discrimination in the military and in other realms, and private discrimination and violence against gays is prevalent. William Eskridge presents a rigorously argued case for the "sexualization" of the First Amendment, showing why, for example, same-sex ceremonies and intimacy should be considered "expressive conduct" deserving the protection of the courts. The author draws on legal reasoning, sociological studies, and history to develop an effective response to the arguments made in defense of the military ban. The concluding part of the book locates the author's legal arguments within the larger currents of liberal theory and integrates them into a general stance toward freedom, gender equality, and religious pluralism.
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Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland
Anthony Bradley
University of Massachusetts Press, 1997
This collection of stimulating essays focuses on issues of gender and sexuality in Irish history, biography, language, literature, and drama. While the contributors employ a variety of methodological and critical perspectives, they share the conviction that the gendering of Ireland--not only of the nation, but of actual Irish men and women--is a construction of culture and ideology and not simply one of nature.
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Genealogy Of Queer Theory
William Turner
Temple University Press, 2000
Who are queers and what do they want? Could it be that we are all queers? Beginning with such questions, William B. Turner's lucid and engaging book traces the roots of queer theory to the growing awareness that few of us precisely fit standard categories for sexual and gender identity.

Turner shows how Michal Foucault's work contributed to feminists' investigations into the ways that power relates to identity. In the last decades of the twentieth century, feminists were the first to challenge the assumption that a claim to universal identity -- the white male citizen -- should serve as the foundation of political thought and action. Difference matters. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality interact, producing a wide array of identities that resist rigid definition and are mutable. By understanding the notion of transhistorical categories -- woman, man, homosexual, and so forth -- feminist and gay male scholars launched queer theoretical work as a new way to think about the politics of gender and sexuality.

A Geneology of Queer Theory probes the fierce debates among scholars and activists, weighing the charges that queer readings  of texts and identity politics do not constitute and might inhibit radical social change. Written by a historian, it considers the implications of queer theory for historical  inquiry and the distinction between philosophy and history. As such, the book will interest readers of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender studies, intellectual history, political theory, and the history of gender/sexuality.
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Getting Medieval
Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern
Carolyn Dinshaw
Duke University Press, 1999
In Getting Medieval Carolyn Dinshaw examines communities—dissident and orthodox—in late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth-century England to create a new sense of queer history. Reaching beyond both medieval and queer studies, Dinshaw demonstrates in this challenging work how intellectual inquiry into pre-modern societies can contribute invaluably to current issues in cultural studies. In the process, she makes important connections between past and present cultures that until now have not been realized.
In her pursuit of historical analyses that embrace the heterogeneity and indeterminacy of sex and sexuality, Dinshaw examines canonical Middle English texts such as the Canterbury Tales and The Book of Margery Kempe. She examines polemics around the religious dissidents known as the Lollards as well as accounts of prostitutes in London to address questions of how particular sexual practices and identifications were normalized while others were proscribed. By exploring contemporary (mis)appropriations of medieval tropes in texts ranging from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to recent Congressional debates on U.S. cultural production, Dinshaw demonstrates how such modern media can serve to reinforce constrictive heteronormative values and deny the multifarious nature of history. Finally, she works with and against the theories of Michel Foucault, Homi K. Bhabha, Roland Barthes, and John Boswell to show how deconstructionist impulses as well as historical perspectives can further an understanding of community in both pre- and postmodern societies.
This long-anticipated volume will be indispensible to medieval and queer scholars and will be welcomed by a larger cultural studies audience.
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Global Homophobia
States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression
Edited by Meredith L. Weiss and Michael J. Bosia
University of Illinois Press, 2013
While homophobia is commonly characterized as individual and personal prejudice, this collection of essays instead explores homophobia as a transnational political phenomenon. Editors Meredith L. Weiss and Michael J. Bosia theorize homophobia as a distinct configuration of repressive state-sponsored policies and practices with their own causes, explanations, and effects on how sexualities are understood and experienced in a variety of national contexts. The essays cover a broad range of geographic cases, including France, Ecuador, Iran, Lebanon, Poland, Singapore, and the United States.

Combining rich empirical analysis with theoretical synthesis, these studies examine how homophobia travels across complex and ambiguous transnational networks, how it achieves and exerts decisive power, and how it shapes the collective identities and strategies of those groups it targets. The first comparative volume to focus specifically on the global diffusion of homophobia and its implications for an emerging worldwide LGBT movement, Global Homophobia opens new avenues of debate and dialogue for scholars, students, and activists.

Contributors are Mark Blasius, Michael J. Bosia, David K. Johnson, Kapya J. Kaoma, Christine (Cricket) Keating, Katarzyna Korycki, Amy Lind, Abouzar Nasirzadeh, Conor O'Dwyer, Meredith L. Weiss, and Sami Zeidan.

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God, Sex, and Politics
Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies
Dawne Moon
University of Chicago Press, 2004
God, Sex, and Politics examines both sides of the church controversy over homosexuality to consider the ways in which people develop, in everyday thought and interaction, their beliefs about God and justice. Dawne Moon explores how members of Protestant congregations determine what is just and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, what is loving and what is sinful.

Through this compelling work we learn that the considerable turmoil surrounding homosexuality in churches has less to do with homosexuality than with the fear of weakening the church's spiritual, communal solidarity. We learn too how the church mirrors the secular world—the fear of division and politics leads members to avoid conflict in the congregations Moon examines. And so, the Protestants who are the subject of her study avoid debating the key issue of whether homosexuality is sinful because of its potentially polarizing effects. The religious culture Moon uncovers is ultimately critical of politics and of the intense moral and social discord that members believe it entails.

God, Sex, and Politics will be of enormous value to sociologists of religion and anyone interested in religious controversies over sexuality.
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Greek Homosexuality
K. J. Dover
Harvard University Press, 1989

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Greek Homosexuality
Updated and with a New Postscript
K. J. Dover
Harvard University Press, 1989
To what extent and in what ways was homosexuality approved by the ancient Greeks? An eminent classicist examines the evidence—vase paintings, archaic and classical poetry, the dialogues of Plato, speeches in the law courts, the comedies of Aristophanes—and reaches provocative conclusions. A discussion of female homosexuality is included.
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Guy Hocquenghem
Beyond Gay Identity
Bill Marshall
Duke University Press, 1997
Although Homosexual Desire, first published in French in 1972 and in English in 1978, has become a classic in gay male theory, no full-length study of its author, Guy Hocquenghem, has been available in English until now. From the rise of the international gay liberation movement of the late 1960s to Hocquenghem’s AIDS-related death in 1988, Bill Marshall discusses the arguments and impact of Hocquenghem’s theoretical and political work while situating this work in its biographical, historical, and intellectual contexts.
Marshall explores all aspects of Hocquenghem’s writing—journalistic, theoretical, and fictional—much of this work still untranslated. His consideration reaches beyond the aftermath of the events of May 1968 and points toward the ways in which Hocquenghem’s work might invigorate contemporary debates on a range of issues in Marxist and queer theory and in gay, lesbian, and cultural studies. These include the construction of homosexuality in social discourse, the status of "identity politics," and the role of the state and civil society in the determination of each. Demonstrating Hocquenghem’s importance within the framework of French leftist thought, Marshall links him to his contemporaries Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari. Tracing his connections to the intellectual traditions of Benjamin, Diderot, Fourier, Lucretius, and Gnosticism, he also illustrates Hocquenghem’s place within the European intellectual tradition.Guy Hocquenghem brings an important, challenging, and overly neglected French theorist back to the main stage.
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