Here’s a little chiller I’ve been saving. Suppose that a mad fundamentalist scientist unleashed a mutant GE virus that was supposed to attack only those of us who hold the “gay gene”…but something went horribly wrong.
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 ”During four hideous months in 2017, ninety percent of the world’s population died from a mutant virus. We were the only […]

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Welcome to the 23rd Century. The TFV Radclyffe is about to lift off from Auckland Interstellar Spaceport, on a trade and diplomatic mission with several alien species with their own LGBT members.
It’s odd that science fiction has virtually never explored variant sexualities and gender identities amongst extra-terrestrials. While LGBT SF authors exist, and do brilliant […]

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In Britain’s Prospect current affairs magazine, a recent book review referred to the ambiguous ‘homosexuality’ of Herbert Hart, a noted mid-century law reformer and social liberal.
Why did I place inverted commas around ‘homosexuality?’ According to Nicola Lacey, his biographer, Hart didn’t actually have sex with another man at any point during his life, yet is […]

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Sigmund Freud and his followers labelled Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge, as ’schizophrenic’ and a ‘repressed homosexual.’ However, she may have been a pre-surgical transwoman caught in the wrong body, as well as suffering from schizophrenia. And thanks to Douglas Wright’s ponderings about Schreber and his experiences, which inspired this little piece.
Schreber accepted her vocal […]

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Spenser Hughes: The Lambda Conspiracy (1993): Chicago:
Moody Press.
Fortunately, this appalling piece of fundamentalist
antigay conspiratorial fiction isn’t available in any
New Zealand library.However, it does make one thinkabout how the Christian Right scapegoats other marginal
social groups.
In 1992, things were looking up for the US lesbian and
gay communities. Bill Clinton had recently become
President, and there were prospects that […]

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Kitsch is not limited to Western cultures. In the case of tacky plastic and plaster mass produced devotional statuary, some Indians cheerfully admit that Hindus are as prone to that sort of thing as their Catholic counterparts.
However, I wish to draw attention to probably the worst Cantonese film ever made. It was a kung fu […]

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This neglected SF classic described a future post-apocalyptic society where intersexed humans had created a utopian civilisation- and it was written in 1960!
The plot summary is as follows. Charley Johns, a young American civil engineer, wakes up in the utopian future society of Ledom. In this world, violent interpersonal conflict, war, famine and epidemic disease […]

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In the United States, there has always been an intrepid small pocket of evangelical and Catholic leftists (at least on peace, anti-racist and Third World solidarity issues), many of whom are centred on Soujourners, a Washington DC based magazine. Insofar as the above issues go, I applaud their courage in going against the flow when […]

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When the Howard administration finally fell last year, you might have wondered how the Australian Christian Right took their defeat. Well, ponder no more. And yes, the title for this piece was inspired by Marion Maddox’ excellent book on the Australian federal Christian Right, New Right and Howard administration, God Under Howard.
Predictably, the hardcore anti-abortionists […]

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Okay, I’m really starting to get annoyed at the Diana Conspiracy Theory industry. Remember, conspiracy theorists are prone to rejecting mainstream social instructions, professional expertise and evidence-based critical inquiry, and instead preferring “hidden” knowledge from subcultural “luminaries” who claim to be the “only ones” in possession of “The Truth.”
Conspiracy theorists and fundamentalist Christians also tend […]

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