Controversial journalist and activist Michelangelo Signorile assess that if is the hidden identities--the "closeted" lives--of homosexuals that prevent their acceptance in American society. In "A Queer Manifesto," he issues a call-to-arms that refuses to let the closet, and the suffering it causes, endure.

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST A transgender reporter's "powerful, profoundly moving" narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states (New York Times Book Review), offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America. Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's a GLAAD Award-winning journalist happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts. In Real Queer America, Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: "Something gay every day." Making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary LGBT people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana, and many more. Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, Real Queer America is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of hope and inspiration in these divided times.

Winner of the Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction The first comprehensive history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender America, from pre-1492 to the present "Readable, radical, and smart—a must read."—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home Intellectually dynamic and endlessly provocative, this is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a narrative that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary documents, literature, and cultural histories, scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the present, a testament to how the LGBTQ+ experience has profoundly shaped American culture and history. American history abounds with unknown or ignored examples of queer life, from the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies to the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War and resistance to homophobic social purity movements. Bronski highlights such groundbreaking moments of queer history as: • In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. •Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early 1800s, changed her name to "Publick Universal Friend," refused to use pronouns, fought for gender equality, and led her own congregation in upstate New York. • In the mid-19th century, internationally famous Shakespearean actor Charlotte Cushman led an openly lesbian life, including a well-publicized “female marriage.” • in the late 1920s, Augustus Granville Dill was fired by W. E. B. Du Bois from the NAACP’s magazine the Crisis after being arrested for a homosexual encounter. Informative and empowering, this engrossing and revelatory treatise emphasizes that there is no American history without queer history.

Winner of the 2009 Ruth Benedict Prize for Outstanding Monograph from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Sexualities Section Winner of the 2010 Congress Inaugural Qualitative Inquiry Book Award Honorable Mention An unprecedented contemporary account of the online and offline lives of rural LGBT youth From Wal-Mart drag parties to renegade Homemaker’s Clubs, Out in the Country offers an unprecedented contemporary account of the lives of today’s rural queer youth. Mary L. Gray maps out the experiences of young people living in small towns across rural Kentucky and along its desolate Appalachian borders, providing a fascinating and often surprising look at the contours of gay life beyond the big city. Gray illustrates that, against a backdrop of an increasingly impoverished and privatized rural America, LGBT youth and their allies visibly—and often vibrantly—work the boundaries of the public spaces available to them, whether in their high schools, public libraries, town hall meetings, churches, or through websites. This important book shows that, in addition to the spaces of Main Street, rural LGBT youth explore and carve out online spaces to fashion their emerging queer identities. Their triumphs and travails defy clear distinctions often drawn between online and offline experiences of identity, fundamentally redefining our understanding of the term ‘queer visibility’ and its political stakes. Gray combines ethnographic insight with incisive cultural critique, engaging with some of the biggest issues facing both queer studies and media scholarship. Out in the Country is a timely and groundbreaking study of sexuality and gender, new media, youth culture, and the meaning of identity and social movements in a digital age.

The Routledge History of Queer America presents the first comprehensive synthesis of the rapidly developing field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer US history. Featuring nearly thirty chapters on essential subjects and themes from colonial times through the present, this collection covers topics including: Rural vs. urban queer histories Gender and sexual diversity in early American history Intersectionality, exploring queerness in association with issues of race and class Queerness and American capitalism The rise of queer histories, archives, and collective memory Transnationalism and queer history Gathering authorities in the field to define the ways in which sexual and gender diversity have contributed to the dynamics of American society, culture and nation, The Routledge History of Queer America is the finest available overview of the rich history of queer experience in US history.

Organised with a compelling narrative, this comprehensive history of the GLBT community provides a decade-by-decade overview of major issues and events such as the Harlem Renaissance, changes in military policy, the Stonewall riot, GLBT rights, organisations and alliances, AIDS, same-sex marriage, the media and legal battles. Eaklor brings the steady hand and perspective of an historian to the task of writing history that is both meaningful and relevant to all.

Ryan Murphy is a self-described "gay boy from Indiana," who has grown up to forge a media empire. With an extraordinary list of credits and successful television shows, movies, and documentaries to his name, Murphy can now boast one of the broadest and most successful careers in Hollywood. Serving as writer, producer, and director, his creative output includes limited-run dramas (such as Feud, Ratched, and Halston), procedural dramas (such as 9-1-1 and 9-1-1 Lonestar), anthology series (such as American Crime Story, American Horror Story, and American Horror Stories), sit-coms (such as The New Normal) and long-running serial narratives (such as Glee, Nip/Tuck, and Pose). Each of these is infused in different ways with a distinctive form of queer energy and erotics, animating their narratives with both campy excess and poignant longing and giving new meaning to the American story. This collection takes up Murphy as auteur and showrunner, considering the gendered and sexual politics of Murphy’s wide body of work. Using an intersectional framework throughout, an impressive list of well-known and emerging scholars engages with Murphy’s diverse output, while also making the case for Murphy’s version of a queer sensibility, a revised notion of queer time, cultural memory, and the contributions his own production company makes to a politics of LGBTQ+ representation and evolving gender identities. This book is suitable for students of Gender and Media, LGBTQ+ Studies, Media Studies, and Communication Studies.

Named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 by School Library Journal Queer history didn’t start with Stonewall. This book explores how LGBTQ people have always been a part of our national identity, contributing to the country and culture for over 400 years. It is crucial for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth to know their history. But this history is not easy to find since it’s rarely taught in schools or commemorated in other ways. A Queer History of the United States for Young People corrects this and demonstrates that LGBTQ people have long been vital to shaping our understanding of what America is today. Through engrossing narratives, letters, drawings, poems, and more, the book encourages young readers, of all identities, to feel pride at the accomplishments of the LGBTQ people who came before them and to use history as a guide to the future. The stories he shares include those of * Indigenous tribes who embraced same-sex relationships and a multiplicity of gender identities. * Emily Dickinson, brilliant nineteenth-century poet who wrote about her desire for women. * Gladys Bentley, Harlem blues singer who challenged restrictive cross-dressing laws in the 1920s. * Bayard Rustin, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s close friend, civil rights organizer, and an openly gay man. * Sylvia Rivera, cofounder of STAR, the first transgender activist group in the US in 1970. * Kiyoshi Kuromiya, civil rights and antiwar activist who fought for people living with AIDS. * Jamie Nabozny, activist who took his LGBTQ school bullying case to the Supreme Court. * Aidan DeStefano, teen who brought a federal court case for trans-inclusive bathroom policies. * And many more! With over 60 illustrations and photos, a glossary, and a corresponding curriculum, A Queer History of the United States for Young People will be vital for teachers who want to introduce a new perspective to America’s story.

queer [adj]: 1 differing from what is usual or ordinary; odd; singular; strange 2 slightly ill; 3 mentally unbalanced 4 counterfeit; not genuine 5 homosexual: in general usage, still chiefly a slang term of contempt or derision, but lately used by some as a descriptive term without negative connotations --Webster's Dictionary queer [adj]: used to describe a 1 body of theory 2 field of critical inquiry 3 way of proudly identifying a group of people 4 way of seeing the world 5 sense of difference from the norm -- David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, Queer in America, Now and Then Contrasting queer life today and in years past, this landmark book brings together autobiographies, poetry, film studies, maps, documents, laws, and other texts to explore the meaning and practice of the word queer. By this Shneer and Aviv mean: queer as both a form of social violence and a call to political activism; queer as played by Robin Williams and Sharon Stone and as lived by Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena; queer in the courthouses of Washington D.C. and on the streets of hometown America. Contextualizing these contemporary stories with ones from the past, and understanding them through the analytic tools of feminist social criticism and history, the authors show what it means to be queer in America.

Surveying fiction, poetry, and letters from the Beat writers, this introduction to the sexual reverberations created by this literary movement in the 1940s and 1950s reveals how gay writers were often the people encouraging sexual freedom and experimentation during this period. Original.