In April 1993, as part of the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, hundreds of couples participated in "the Wedding," a symbolic commitment ceremony held in front of the Internal Revenue Service building. 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...

This text provides ideas and strategies for affirming diversity and overcoming heterosexism and homophobia in a wide variety of settings, such as education, politics, the media and the helping profession. Providing strategies for educators, counsellors, community activists and leaders and those in the gay and lesbian communities, it is organized into four sections: Foundational Issues - an overview of heterosexism and homophobia and a multicultural perspective on communication; Working within Communities - Ethnic Groups and Family Members; Working with Students; Working in Professional...

Even now, at the end of the twentieth century, many still have difficulty standing up and saying, "I am the parent of a gay child." Something to Tell You recounts the stories of families whose lives have been touched by the discovery that a child is lesbian or gay--how it affects and influences people's perceptions of their children and even changes the self-image of parents themselves.

Focusing on fifty average families--not people seen in clinics or therapy--the authors found a consistent pattern of change: first negative, then positive. Sometimes the news led parents and...

In Sappho Goes to Law School Ruthann Robson weaves together concepts taken from traditional legal theory, postmodernism, feminist theory, and queer theory, as well as her own personal experience in the courtroom and classroom, to take stock of the complexities of lesbian identity and the often detrimental ways in which legal scholarship approaches lesbianism.

In candid, in-depth interviews, gay men discuss their experiences in the age of AIDS, their attitudes toward sex, and their motives for engaging in behaviors that are widely considered to be dangerous health risks. Revealing that such factors as guilt for being HIV negative, alcohol and drug use, and low self-esteem are possible causes of continuing dangerous sexual behavior, Turner also recommends ways to promote safer sex while respecting the choices and judgments of gay men.

In reassessing traditional psychoanalysis, this text fromulates new theories for evaluating women's sexuality. The author argues that the dynamics of lesbian and bisexual relationships are part of women's development and desires rather than dysfunctions.

In many works by modern British women writers, two women form a strong bond only to have that relationship stymied, paralyzed or interrupted. A female character, fearing discovery of covert lesbian desires, lashes out at another woman, resulting in emotional or physical harm to herself or others. Patricia Smith defines this narrative as lesbian panic. What happens when a character or an author is unwilling to confront or reveal her own lesbianism or lesbian desire? For Smith, lesbian panic is often a fear of losing one's identity and value within the heterosexual paradigm.

With poems in English by over one hundred female poets -- American, English, Scottish, Canadian, South African, Indian, Irish, and Australian -- this is an extraordinary collection that pays homage to four centuries of women's desires, friendships, and expressions of love. The collection is testimony to the rich tradition of female verse and the timelessness of love and creativity.

The highly publicized obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) is generally recognized as the crystallizing moment in the construction of a visible modern English lesbian culture, marking a great divide between innocence and deviance, private and public, New Woman and Modern Lesbian. Yet despite unreserved agreement on the importance of this cultural moment, previous studies often reductively distort our reading of the formation of early twentieth-century lesbian identity, either by neglecting to examine in detail the developments leading up to the ban or by...

Love in all its cultural and personal complexity is the focus of this book. While scholars of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century homoerotic culture have tended to focus on sexual behavior and the much-maligned figure of the sodomite, George E. Haggerty argues that the concepts of love and emotional intimacy offer a more useful perspective for understanding male-male relations of the time.

Haggerty considers male "identities" of many kinds: heroic friends, as found in seventeenth-century French romance and Restoration tragedy, and personal friends, as in the erotic relationships of Gray,...