Band of Thebes

Oh, You Silly Things

Those affirming, gay arts & lifestyles articles timed to coincide with Pride -- will we never be free of them?

Dave Itzkoff compares the stale and tired old queens of the Brit sitcom Vicious to characters on Will & Grace and Modern Family in his article, Oh, You Silly Thing, Of Course He's Gay. He asks, "Is a television character who exhibits stereotypically gay qualities a stereotype himself? Or does the presence of such figures demonstrate that TV is making progress on gay representation? And who gets to decide what attributes are offensive, or stereotypical or gay?"

A queer sports talk with Billie Jean King and Jason Collins.

Ten years later: catching up with the first same-sex couples to appear in the NYT vows.

David Leavitt does By the Book.

Who is your favorite novelist of all time? And your favorite novelist writing today?

Penelope Fitzgerald. The Beginning of Spring, The Gate of Angels, and The Blue Flower are novels I return to again and again, with joy and awe.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

If I am to be honest, I must admit that most books disappoint me. Contemporary American fiction in particular. What so many writers seem to have forgotten, or never to have learned in the first place, is that reading should not be a torture. 

I will also admit that I find whimsy fatiguing.

...And When Gay History Happens to Straight Players

I, too, can swallow a lot of egomania if it produces results like bringing marriage equality to 38.3 million residents. In their new book Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality spotlight hoggers Ted Olson and David Boies bray about their success with the Prop 8 case at the Supreme Court (while not dwelling on the $6 million fee they earned for their noble quest), but the real triumph was Roberta Kaplan's arguing US vs. Windsor, thus overturning DOMA. That was the gamechanger -- a much bigger deal and a story far better told by lesbian New Yorker staffer Ariel Levy in the magazine's fact piece, The Perfect Wife: How Edith Windsor fell in love, got married, and won a landmark case for gay marriage.

Hillary-Come-Lately Resents Terry Gross's Questions about Gay Marriage

Years after her husband evolved (July 2009), months after Obama finally did (May 2012), Hillary Clinton was virtually the last Democrat on earth to support marriage equality (March 2013). Now she only wants praise for her lgbt record. Yesterday, Fresh Air host Terry Gross asked about her changing views. Did not go well.

2014 Marriage Equality States vs. 1860 Slave States

 This week's 17th and 18th consecutive court wins for marriage equality, in Oregon and Pennsylvania, were even better than most because the governors won't appeal and the rulings are final. That's especially noteworthy with Tom Corbett, who like Scalia and Santorum, is a Catholic Republican.

Also on Monday, a federal judge ruled Utah must recognize the 1000+ same-sex marriages performed in December 2013.

The key to the marriage equality map above, by Stephanie Grimes via, is

blue: legal, red: banned, yellow: ban overturned but stayed, orange: civil unions

Below, a map showing free, slave, compromise, and Dred Scot states in 1860. Some similiarities.

If You're Keeping Score, It's 16 to 0

Tuesday's ruling, by yet another Bush-appointed judge, Candy Dale [pictured], in yet another conservative state, hardcore Idaho, is the sixteenth consecutive win in court for marriage equality since the Supremes' landmark Windsor decision last June. The number of court defeats since then is zero. Twelve of the sixteen wins have been in federal court and four in state courts. Most recently it's been red states all the way: Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, and purply Virginia. Almost all states have been granted a stay pending appeals, to the relief of bigots like Idaho's governor, Butch Otter. Last week in Arkansas, gay marriages began in a few counties; surprisingly, a higher court noted a technicality, which halted the weddings; the judge has since closed that loophole paving the way for clerks to resume issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples; but now the Democrat AG who supports gay marriage is upholding state law and requesting another stay.

Gay marriage is legal in seventeen states and DC. This is how far we've come in exactly ten years. Massachusetts began issuing same-sex marriage licenses on May 17, 2004.

Out Today: Queer Paris, Marriage Miscarriage, Roberts Memoir

  

For her 17th novel and 28th book overall, Francine Prose reclaims forgotten historical queer lives in Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 [Kindle]. In an approving review for the NYTBR, Edmund White called it "a novel of great reach and power." 

NYT reporter Jo Becker's story of how we got marriage equality -- because of Chad Griffin?? -- has at last united the entire gay community... against it. The gay left consideres the book "bullshit," the gay middle says it's "truly horrendous," and the gay right memorably calls it "a fellatial account" by "an ignorant reporter" "who knows nothing of the movement's history." Confirming just how backward and out of touch the straights are when it comes to representing queer lives, Penguin has bizarrely given this high-profile gay success story a jacket fit for a funereal. Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality [Kindle].

Good Morning America star, cancer survivor, and recently out lesbian Robin Roberts releases her inspirational memoir Everybody's Got Something [Kindle].

Another Republican For Gay Marriage: "It's Very Simple"

Seven months ago Sen. Alan Simpson came to our wedding reception and toasted my brand-new husband as "a smooth-talking son of a bitch." Now this. USAToday reports the ad "will run in Colorado, Oklahoma and Wyoming TV markets, as well as on the Sunday morning talk shows in Washington."

Marriage Equality Gains

Two weeks off to get that hot husband of mine birthdayed up and look at all the changes:

A Bush-appointed federal judge ruled Kentucky must honor gay marriages performed in other states.

Nevada's governor and AG withdrew their defense of the state's ban on gay marriage from a trial that has just been granted an expedited hearing.

Virginia's governor and AG announced they will not defend the state's anti-marriage-equality law in court.

AG Eric Holder announced additional equalities for same-sex married couples. And he repeated that the federal government will recognize those Utah gay marriages even though the state won't and has since halted them.

Scotland became the 17th country to approve marriage equality nationwide (effective October) in a romping vote of 105 for and only 18 against. Gay weddings begin in England and Wales on March 29.

A Clinton-appointed federal judge in Oklahoma ruled the state's ban on marriage violated the US Constitution. The decision is stayed pending an appeal.

A Clinton-appointed federal judge in Texas heard a request to block the state's ban on gay marriage, but did not issue a ruling, saying he would do so, "sometime."

Bucking the trend, Indiana lawmakers move forward a bill to ban marriage equality. The even worse version of the bill includes a purely evil "second sentence," that would also ban civil unions and prevent employers from offering benefits to same-sex couples. If it passes it will go to a voter referendum in November. UPDATE: Now, not before 2016.

Plaintiffs in Louisiana and Missouri join the fray, bringing the total number of states with legal challenges to their bans on marriage equality to twenty-four. 

A good place for all the breaking news on the topic is Freedom To Marry.

Boy Scouts Deliver Pizza to Utah Marriage Clerks, Gay Couples in Line

Regardless of whether you do your Santa tracking via NORAD or Google, the best thing you see today might be these murky photos of Utah Boy Scouts -- one in a rainbow kerchief -- delivering pizza to clerks in the Salt Lake City marriage bureau who skipped lunch in order to continue issuing licenses to same-sex couples waiting in very, very long lines. 

72% compliant: Of Utah's 29 counties, 21 (shown in green) are already issuing same-sex marriages licenses, 2 counties (yellow) will do so soon, and only 6 counties (red) are defying Judge Selby's order and refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

It is likely the Tenth Circuit will grant Utah's request for a stay until the appeal has been heard and decided. Both of the Supreme Court victories last summer affirmed a state's right to determine its own marriage laws. (In the DOMA case, the issue was the unequal treatment of legally married gay New Yorkers. In the Prop 8 case, it was simply that the outsider meddlers had no standing to appeal Judge Walker's ruling.) SCOTUS had the opportunity to rule that (gay) marriage is a fundamental right and declined to do so.

Australia High Court Rejects Gay Marriage Law, Invalidates Unions

The several dozen same-sex couples who have wed in the Australian Capital Territory since Saturday, today saw their unions dissolved by a unanimous high court ruling that rejects marriage equality. The silver lining comes via George Williams, a constitutional law expert who:

"said it was significant that the high court made clear the federal parliament had the power to legislation for same-sex marriage nationally. He had not expected this to be spelled out in the ruling.

"That’s a very significant finding and it’s significant because when the federal bills have come into the parliament the ‘no’ people have argued strongly it would be unconstitutional … This clears the way for a federal law."

Queering Marriage

Unsure about that the rush to the altar? Read Katrina Kimport's Queering Marriage: Challenging Family Formation in the United States [Kindle] for an analysis of how same-sex marriage cuts both ways: subverting the heteronormative institution while propping it up. Or, as the flap copy says, simultaneously "entrenching and contesting heterosexual privilege." Here's more:

"During her deeply personal conversations with same-sex spouses, Kimport learned that the majority of respondents did characterize their marriages as an opportunity to contest heterosexual privilege. Yet, in a seeming contradiction, nearly as many also cited their desire for access to the normative benefits of matrimony, including social recognition and legal rights. Kimport’s research revealed that the pattern of ascribing meaning to marriage varied by parenthood status and, in turn, by gender. Lesbian parents were more likely to embrace normative meanings for their unions; those who are not parents were more likely to define their relationships as attempts to contest dominant understandings of marriage."

This may be the best time to revisit Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage edited by Yasmin Nair and Ryan Conrad.

Walter Benn Michaels wrote, "Against Equality makes the powerful argument that same-sex marriage is an essentially conservative cause, an effort to prop up a fundamentally unfair system. As an alternative, it offers us the inspiring vision of a truly radical queer politics, devoted to attacking injustice, not just allowing a few more gay people to benefit from it."

Jessica Max Stein said, "Rather than being merely anti-marriage, the book deliberately articulates multiple alternative visions - such as building and valuing our own grassroots familial 'networks of accountability' - thus edging us closer to true 'equality,' or dare I say liberation, celebrating our differences as queers." 

Ariel Levy Profiles Edith Windsor in The New Yorker

In a long fact piece for The New Yorker called "The Perfect Wife," lesbian staff writer Ariel Levy profiles lesbian plantiff Edith Windsor and includes her lesbian lawyer Roberta Kaplan. Triple the awesomeness. Read it here.

It begins:

“Fuck the Supreme Court!” Edith Windsor said, one hideously hot morning in June, when she’d had just about enough. Then she sighed and mumbled, “Oh, I don’t mean that.” What she really meant was that she was hot, she was tired of waiting, and, most of all, she was tired of being told what to do. “I’m feeling very manhandled!” she said.

It was Windsor’s eighty-fourth birthday, and she was spending it staring at a laptop screen as information from scotusblog.com flashed by in a typeface too small for her to read comfortably. Four years earlier, Windsor’s partner of more than forty years, Thea Spyer, died, leaving Windsor her sole heir. The two were legally married in Canada, in 2007, but, because of the Defense of Marriage Act, Windsor was not eligible for the exemption on estate tax that applies to husbands and wives. She had to pay $363,053 in taxes to the federal government, and $275,528 to New York State, and she did not think that was fair. So, with the help of her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, Windsor sued the United States. “When I saw it in print on the brief—Edith Windsor v. the United States of America—for a moment I panicked,” she said. “Then I thought, If Robbie’s not terrified, I’m not terrified.” But the waiting was getting to her. Once, when Spyer was alive, Windsor attended a meeting with the head of the Human Rights Coalition, at which someone asked him about gay marriage. He replied that it was something that ought to be dealt with later. Windsor stood up and barked, “I’m seventy-seven years old, and I can’t wait!”

Windsor first sought representation for her suit in 2009; she approached a number of gay-rights organizations. “I was told it was the wrong time for the movement,” she said. So a friend of a friend introduced her to Roberta Kaplan, who had been co-counsel on the (unsuccessful) case for marriage equality in New York State in 2006 but usually works at the furthest extreme from gay-rights non-profits. As a partner at the corporate law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, she has numbered among her clients J. P. Morgan Chase and Fitch Ratings. Kaplan is a vigorous, highly assertive forty-seven-year-old, who wears a Rolex and drives an Audi. (Recently, she took her wife, Rachel Lavine, and their seven-year-old son, Jacob, to Yellowstone, on her way back from a conference in Montana. I asked if they had camped out. “Yes,” Kaplan said. “At the Four Seasons.”) . . .

Read more.

Joel Derfner's Lawfully Wedded Husband

Moving beyond his Gay Haiku and Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever and What Ended Up Happening Instead, yesterday Joel Derfner published Lawfully Wedded Husband: How My Gay Marriage Will Save the American Family [Kindle]. The University of Wisconsin Press copy says, in part, "Add to the mix a reality show whose director forces them to keep signing and notarizing applications for a wedding license until the cameraman gets a shot she likes; a family marriage history that includes adulterers, arms smugglers, and poisoners; and discussions of civil rights, Sophocles, racism, grammar, and homemade Ouija boards—coupled with Derfner's gift for getting in his own way—and what results is a story not just of gay marriage and the American family but of what it means to be human."

Terry Castle on Being Gay Married

Here's what you're going to do. You are going to read Terry Castle's LRB essay on the real joy and underlying ambivalance about marriage equality, which is really an examination of how comfortably or uncomfortably the new acceptance rests on all the rejection that came before. With sentences like, "In those days (and yes, even now) one’s mother could always be counted on, likewise, to underscore one’s alienation from the rest of humankind," it's mandatory reading:

"Some of the diffidence I felt no doubt had to do with the fact that Blakey and I had already been living together – delightfully, with nary a closet in sight – for six years. Apart from the political statement – rah, rah, cheers, queers – the ritual, I grumbled, was beside the point. Yet troubling too were a host of larger metaphysical questions. Marriage had always been defined (and naturalised) as a relationship between a man and a woman; could it now, merely by way of a few wishful speech acts and contrived theatrical gestures, be completely reconceived? Was it possible – just like that – to revamp one of the key kinship structures around which human society had been organised for millennia? What would Wittgenstein have said? Was ‘gay marriage’ part of ‘everything that is the case’? Would he have got married? To himself or another person? One could noodle away the hours pondering such things.

"My own seemingly innate, sometimes Arctic, aloofness had to be part of the equation too. Anyone who knows me knows it: my perverse tendency to stand sadly apart from sociability and look rejected, even when surrounded by affable people doing everything possible to show their affection for me. In some skittish, not so deeply buried part of me, it’s always San Diego in 1967 and the treacherous lunch court at Marston Junior High School. I’m 13 again; shy, pudgy and unpopular, eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich in miserable, Cain-like isolation, while the more confident girls – those who shriek and rat their hair and travel in ardent, gossipy packs – point at me and guffaw. What a weirdo. Shall we just say that my childish heart turned then to adamant? That self-protection meant fixing one’s eyes on blankness and acting dead? When I began thinking of myself as a lesbian – not so long afterwards, really – the age-old stereotype of the female homosexual as doomed misfit, lost in a dark and sterile world of shadows, seemed purpose built for me."

If you somehow still don't know Castle -- whom Sontag named "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today" and James Wolcott calls "a Jedi knight of literary exploration" -- for goodness' sake, get the essay collection The Professor: A Sentimental Education [Kindle only $3.79].

With Royal Assent, Marriage Equality Legalised in England, Wales

Congratulations to the brave David Cameron and a cheery Now bugger off, please! to Britain's homophobes AND to the fretful allies who didn't want to attempt the marriage equality bill this year because it wasn't a sure thing. Look what happens when a leader actually leads and forces the issue. See also: Andrew Cuomo.

One perspective on how rapidly gay life has changed in England comes in Patrick Strudwick's short piece in the Independent, remembering 22 years ago when he was a scared 14 year-old coming out:

"I will not be able to have sex legally until I am 21. My teachers are not allowed to talk to me about being gay. Any business can refuse my custom. Future employers are free to fire me. Violence and hatred will stalk me, a prison for no wrongdoing. Aids could well bring a gasping, early death. I will never have children. I will never enjoy the family life I was raised within. I will never marry."

Farther back, the Wolfenden Report in 1957 recommended that consenting gay sex between adults should be decriminalized, which finally happened in 1967. The atrocious law Section 28, enacted under Thatcher in 1988, stated local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" and was not repealed until 2003.

Same-sex weddings will begin by next summer. If you want to celebrate with some literary confetti, try William Corlett's light novel of a chic London gay couple transplanted to the country, Two Gentlemen Sharing.

Atlantic Cover Story: Gay Couples Much Awesomer than Married Straights

Missed this last month: the Atlantic ran a 9,800-word cover story by Liza Mundy summarizing decades of sociological studies comparing same-sex unions and hetero marriages. Among the many findings, all of which are direct quotes lifted from the article:

• Same-sex unions are happier than heterosexual marriages.

• Researchers found that the quality of gay and lesbian relationships was higher on many measures than that of the straight control group (the married heterosexual siblings), with more compatibility and intimacy, and less conflict.

• Gay and lesbian couples were fairer in their dealings with one another than straight couples, both in intent and in practice. 

• Other studies have since confirmed findings that same-sex couples are more egalitarian.

• A growing body of scholarship on household division of labor shows that in many ways, same-sex couples do it better.

• In all couples, the person with the higher income had more authority and decision-making power. This was least true for lesbians; truer for heterosexuals; and most true for gay men. Somehow, putting two men together seemed to intensify the sense that “money talks.”

• [on conflict] In same-sex couples, the partner with the bone to pick was rated “less belligerent and less domineering” than the straight-couple counterpart, while the person on the receiving end was less aggressive and showed less fear or tension. The same-sex “initiator” also displayed less sadness and “whining,” and more affection, joy, and humor. 

• [on an experiment of parents and kids playing with toys] The same-sex couples are far more likely to be in there together, and the opposite-sex couples show the conventional pattern—the mom more involved, the dad playing with Tinkertoys by himself.” When the opposite-sex couples did parent simultaneously, they were more likely to undermine each other by talking at cross-purposes or suggesting different toys. The lesbian mothers tended to be egalitarian and warm in their dealings with one another, and showed greater pleasure in parenting than the other groups did. Same-sex dads were also more egalitarian in their division of labor than straight couples, though not as warm or interactive as lesbian moms. (Patterson says she and her colleagues may need to refine their analysis to take into account male ways of expressing warmth.)

• We know that heterosexual wives are more likely than husbands to initiate divorce... Intriguingly, in Norway and Sweden, where registered partnerships for same-sex couples have been in place for about two decades, research has found that lesbians are twice as likely as gay men to split up. 

Liza Mundy is the author of three books, most recently The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Our Culture.

Flashback to the Democrats Who Voted for DOMA

With huge joy, in the midst of great celebrating: Screw you, Bill Clinton. Victory shouldn't whitewash the unnecessary and unconstitutional 17-year burden that brought us here, yet once again the former president can't quite recall the facts of DOMA. (Here and here.) Today he and Hillary had the temerity to release this statement that fails to acknowledge he's the one who signed it into law:

"By overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, the court recognized that discrimination towards any group holds us all back in our efforts to form a more perfect union. We are also encouraged that marriage equality may soon return to California. We applaud the hard work of the advocates who have fought so relentlessly for this day, and congratulate Edie Windsor on her historic victory."

Similarly, he omitted DOMA in his 1,052-page memoir. The index entry for "gay rights" lists two pages.

Apologists yammer on about the veto-proof majority, but Clinton's early support for DOMA gave the senators cover and helped to create that landslide. His Dept of Justice, headed by Janet Reno, delivered a memo to Congress stating the DOJ determined DOMA was constitutional. After that, these many Democrats were among the 85 senators who voted for DOMA in 1996:

Max Baucus (D-MT), Joe Biden (D-DE), Bingaman (D-NM), Bill Bradley (D-NJ), Breaux (D-LA), Bryan (D-NV) Bumpers (D-AR) Robert Byrd (D-WV), Conrad (D-ND), Tom Daschle (D-SD), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Dorgan (D-ND) Exon (D-NE) Faircloth, Ford (D-KY), John Glenn (D-OH), Graham (D-FL), Harkin (D-IA), Heflin (D-AL), Hollings (D-SC), Johnston (D-LA), Kohl (D-WI), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Murray (D-WA), Sam Nunn (D-GA), Harry Reid (D-NV), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), and Paul Wellstone (D-MN).

Read the full roll call.

Major kudos to the mere fourteen senators who voted against DOMA: Akaka (D-HI), Boxer (D-CA), Feingold (D-WI), Feinstein (D-CA), Inouye (D-HI), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerrey (D-NE), Kerry (D-MA), Moseley-Braun (D-IL), Moynihan (D-NY), Pell (D-RI), Robb (D-VA), Simon (D-IL), and Wyden (D-OR).

In the House, 118 Democrats joined 224 Republicans in voting for the bill, while 65 dems and one gay Republican voted against it. List here.

In the spirit of healing, wouldn't it be healthy for Janet Reno to apologize now?

Elsewhere, the Onion profiles a more nefarious crew: Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito Suddenly Realize They Will Be Villains In Oscar-Winning Movie One Day.

About the Peers' Surprise Overwhelming Vote for Marriage Equality

As the Lords debated marriage equality, 150 members of the Gay Men's Chorus sang in a large rally outside Parliament

With the nonstop thumping book awards all week, it was easy to lose sight of Tuesday's magnificent House of Lords vote showing support for marriage equality at a wider margin than the younger, more progressive House of Commons' vote last month. The average age in the House of Lords is 69 and they defeated a "wrecking amendment" to derail the same-sex marriage bill by more than two-to-one, at 390 to 148. The vote followed months of campaigning and two days of intense debate -- everything from absurd antigay insults (most offensive twit: Lord Tebbit, 82. most creative nit: Baron Vinson, also 82, direly warning it would be comparable to "mixing many paints together. The end result is a dull, amorphous moral mess.") to Baroness Barker coming out about her longterm lesbian relationship. 

Recent weeks have seen a tremendous number of peers reverse long and deeply held beliefs about marriage, and it's been inspiring to see them evolve. Lord Filkin: "I was wrong. I changed my mind." Many credit the 86 year-old Thatcher Tory Lord Jenkin's speech as a tipping point. His daughter-in-law Baroness Jenkin, 57, said she would not have supported the bill in the past but now is proud to do so.

Alas, victory is not certain. While most are reporting the first same-sex marriages will take place in July 2014, others worry antigay forces may again try to "scupper" the marriage bill. The first openly gay appointed peer and the youngest-ever life peer in 1998, Lord Alli, writes for Pink News:

"We won the vote, but there is still a long way to go. The further stages of the bill will see opponents deploy every tactic and wheeze to try and scupper the legislation... But we can’t stop now. The bill comes back in committee the week commencing 17th June, it will have its report stage 8th July and third reading on the 15th July."

NYT Op-Ed: "How Latin Culture Got More Gay"

Radcliffe Institute fellow and author of The Night Is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of Aids, Hector Carrillo penned this opinion piece for the NYT asking how the recent great strides for lgbt rights in Central and South America -- including Tuesday's judicial ruling that may lead to marriage equality throughout Brazil -- can be reconciled with "the stereotype of Latin culture as a bastion of religiosity and machismo?"

He writes:

"Since the 1970s, protest movements helped end military dictatorships or long periods of one-party rule; this democratic opening empowered left or center-left governments that have strongly emphasized human rights and individual freedom... gay and lesbian activists piggybacked on this wave of democratization.

"The recent expansion of same-sex marriage rights has come about in part through alliances of left-of-center legislative majorities with progressive executives... judges have played an important role in advancing the cause of gay equality, as evidenced this week in Brazil, where the National Council of Justice, which oversees the judiciary, ruled that notary publics may not refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. (Judicial appeals, or legislative action, could reverse the decision.)

"These achievements were not inevitable; for decades the left, with ideological roots in class struggle, could be as patriarchal and homophobic as the capitalists and soldiers it condemned. So to understand why the politics changed, we must also look to society.

"In the 1990s, I interviewed dozens of Mexicans, straight and gay, in Guadalajara, the country’s second largest city. They spoke about how they wanted their lives to differ from their parents’. Women wanted to be recognized as sexual beings, with legitimate desires and the ability to pursue them. Men felt the old models of machismo were constraining, not empowering. As the anthropologist Matthew Gutmann found in Mexico City around the same time, this was the first generation of Mexicans for whom machismo was a dirty word.

"This desire for individual autonomy — which in some ways lagged behind the sexual revolution in the United States — extended to gay and lesbian people. The emergence of aids as a global epidemic coincided with a period of energetic democratization. Of course, increased visibility generated homophobic reactions, but it also motivated gays to declare their identities and organize politically."

Here's the essay in full.

For more, read these:

Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil: Sexual Rights Movements in Emerging Democracies, Rafeal de la Dehesa

Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America, Matthew Guttmann

Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, Carla Trujillo

Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader

From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction

With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians

Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing

Compañeras: Latina Lesbians: an Anthology

Virgins, Guerrillas, and Locas: Gay Latinos Writing about Love

Besame Mucho: An Anthology of Gay Latino Fiction

Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression

Latina Lesbian Writers and Artists

The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, Manuel Munoz 

And get the current PEN Faulkner winner Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Only yesterday on FB, Garth "Mitko" Greenwell and Bob "Selfish and Perverse" Smith were raving about the seven wonders in Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. 

Minnesota's Marriage Equality Win Is a Big Deal

Tuesday night Minneapolis' I-35W bridge lit in honor of the marriage equality victory

Late yesterday Minnesota's senate (37-30) followed the house (75-59) in passing a marriage equality bill ahead of the governor's promised signature, and this morning that news is nowhere to be found on the front page of the websites of the NYT, the Washington Post, or USA Today. It's the 12th state - plus DC - to achieve marriage equality and many people think the story is already ho-hum. But as a tipping point, Minnesota is huge: the first heartland state to get same-sex marriage through the legislative process. (Iowa got it via judicial ruling.) It is also a stunning turnaround from six months ago, when voters were asked by the likes of local nut Michele Bachmann to confine marriage to one woman + one man. On election day, only six states allowed same-sex couples to marry. Now it's doubled. 

God bless the trailblazers back east but many of the gay marriage states cluster at the bottom of a ranking by population: Vermont #49, Delaware #45, Rhode Island #43, New Hampshire #42, and Maine #41. With 5.4 million people, Minnesota is one of the more populous states to get marriage equality. 

To understand the state's gay past, read Stewart Van Cleve's Land of 10,000 Loves: A History of Queer Minnesota.

Below, the state's only out senator and author of the marriage bill, Scott Dibble, begins his speech with 54 seconds of Langston Hughes.