Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons: Gay LA: New York: Basic Books: 2006.
California’s largest city has its own richly detailed LGBT history. Leading lesbian historian Lillian Faderman and her associate Stuart Timmons delve into the backgrounds of this phenomenon.
There are a few hiccups, although I suspect that gaps in the archival material may well have […]

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Time for some more fiction. Two women, one room, several years later.
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Hello, Trina.
Since when did you have a taste for cocaine, Mary?
Don’t lecture me. It’s a different world now. We’re free.
What good is ‘freedom’ if it’s built on exploitation of others? I cannot believe that you’re doing this, or what you’ve become. Which is a […]

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Later this month, the New Zealand Christian Right will once again display their strange overenthusiasm for corporal punishment when they inflict a so-called “March for Theocracy…” oops, sorry, no, “Democracy” on Auckland.
And yes, it’s about spanking. When isn’t it these days? Despite the fact that the CIR Act 1993 only provides for non-binding indicative referenda […]

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Like New Zealand, Britain’s Criminal Justice Act 2003 has a provision related to criminalisation of hate crimes, which includes sexual orientation, gender identity…and disability. It is the latter that I want to focus on here.
Last month, Geoff Adams, BBC disability issues correspondent, referred to an apparent spate of antidisability hate crimes in the United Kingdom. […]

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It’s breast cancer awareness month. What role does environmental toxicity and degradation play in the spread of this primary women’s health problem?
Ley is writing from the United States, but her work contains a wealth of meticulous research that raises questions beyond its borders. Given recent curtailment of public access to intervention under the Resource Management […]

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 Robert Schnakenberg: Secret Lives of Great Authors: Philadelphia: Quirk Books: 2008.
Author of the hilarious Encyclopedia Shatnerica and a similar book on Christopher Walken, Schnakenberg turns his venomous pen on the literary great and good. There are five lesbians and gay men who enter this picture- Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and William S. […]

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In Uganda, an MP wants to create an “offence” of “aggravated homosexuality” which would warrant the death penalty. MP David Bahati wants capital punishment for gay sex with disabled people, under-18s or when the accused is HIV+.Gay sex is already illegal in Uganda, but Bahati’s “ Anti-Homosexuality Bill” proposes new offences and may toughen existing penalties. BBC Kampala correspondant Joshua Mmali […]

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In the clearest sign yet that the Maxim Institute is rapidly diverging from the Christian Right over public policy issues, the centre-right public policy thinktank has just issued an extraordinary Real Issues newsletter in which it repudiates the Christian Right orthodoxy over binding citizens initiated referenda.
Entitled “Government shouldn’t change the law just because of a […]

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At Outtakes 2009, Shank (UK, 2009) provided a disturbing look at the intersection between ‘underclass’ affiliation and homosexuality. How realistic is it?
For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a plot summary. It focuses on the plight of Cal (19), who participates in a youth gang with Jonno and Nessa, who are hiding their own secrets. […]

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Mission Log: TFV Radclyffe Hall: Subject: Theia.
Orbiting red dwarf star Groombridge 148, Theia should have had a long planetary existence, huddled close to its primary. Sadly, evolution and culture played cruel tricks on this charnel house world. As its testimonial probe tells us, its dominant species was avianoid. They experienced high fertility, although infant mortality […]

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