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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture is a vibrant and rapidly evolving segment of the American mosaic. This book gives students and general readers a current guide to the people and issues at the forefront of contemporary LGBTQ America. Included are more than 600 alphabetically arranged entries on literature and the arts, associations and organizations, individuals, law and public policy concerns, health and relationships, sexual issues, and numerous other topics. Entries are written by distinguished authorities and cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes

When the Students Teaching Students program called for submissions for student created courses I jumped at the opportunity to learn and share with a group of peers dedicated to a subject. The close to year long process culminated in the first Students Teaching Students course at URI, focusing on the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people: HPR 107: Introduction to LGBTQ History. Just getting ready to teach was a multifaceted process, since I tend to fluctuate between ravenously seizing every book I can get my hands on and devising practical applications for that intellectual knowledge. First I needed to create a syllabus that represented what I wanted to teach, which in my case involved questions in the field of Gay and Lesbian studies. Once the syllabus was accepted I set about creating lesson plans and course materials to help get across the ideas I found so important. For example, I looked at questions around the construction of sexual and gender identities, differing sexual customs and practices, and the struggle to create minority identities in America. After months of preparation - including serving as a class assistant for PHL 205: Philosophical Topics where I studied and practiced pedagogical techniques for my course - I was finally ready to teach on my own. Though the preparation for this course was important, the strongest benefit of this project was uncovered through the actual day to day teaching. Twice a week I was able to meet and discuss my favorite ideas with an engaged group of brilliant honors students who worked hard to sustain our common vision for the course. While creating group work, quizzes, essays and lectures helped me process, digest and communicate about the material, interaction with other students, and my evaluation of that interaction, prompted the greatest growth in me as a teacher. My pedagogical preparation was invaluable to my success in this project yet it was though actually working with students that I learned to teach. This project allowed me to test the waters of my field, and I managed to swim to the finish. Not only did I vastly expand my knowledge of LGBTQ history; I developed pedagogical techniques that will sustain me throughout my professional career, a career as a professor of history. Students Teaching Students allowed me to step out of the armchair of academia into the real world, to discuss issues of critical importance to our society and to begin the process of knowledge and understanding that lies at the heart of overcoming oppression.

l was born in Los Angeles in 1947 and learned from my classmates in seventh grade that boys who wrote with their left hand or wore green and yellow on Thursdays were homos. Because I did both, I knew I was in deep trouble from the start and might have some pretending to do. Such was the atmosphere for LGBTQ folks in the United States throughout the 1950s. Things loosened just a bit in the 1960s, when hippies were shaking society up. Then, in the 1970s, gay folks seemed to be-a lot more visible--disturbingly so, in the minds of many-and lesbian women were suddenly a force to be reckoned with. In the 1980s, gays and lesbians were popping up all over the place: the love that dared not speak its name was shouting from the rooftops. Bisexuals gained a voice; transgendered individuals began the long struggle that is still in its infancy. "Queer" began to blur the distinctions that had defined the identity politics of these early decades. In short, "non-heterosexual" America during these decades was as much a part of the civil rights movement as was any ethnicity. Back in 1956, set to Leonard Bernstein's haunting tunes, Stephen Sondheim could write soulful, yearning lyrics that West Side Story put in the mouths of a heterosexual couple ("There's a place for us,/ Somewhere a place for us . We'll find a new way of living, / We'll find a way of forgiving/ Somewhere . . "), but by 1990 Queer Nation was stripping away all pretence of quiet compliance, shouting "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"

For two years, Philip Gambone traveled the length and breadth of the United States, talking candidly with LGBTQ people about their lives. In addition to interviews from David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank, and Tammy Baldwin, Travels in a Gay Nation brings us lesser-known voices--a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and "drag king," a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be lovers, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay frat house, and a pair of Vermont garden designers. In this age when contemporary gay America is still coming under attack, Gambone captures the humanity of each individual. For some, their identity as a sexual minority is crucial to their life's work; for others, it has been less so, perhaps even irrelevant. But, whether splashy or quiet, center-stage or behind the scenes, Gambone's subjects have managed--despite facing ignorance, fear, hatred, intolerance, injustice, violence, ridicule, or just plain indifference--to construct passionate, inspiring lives.

Children with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* and/or queer (LGBTQ) parents have received heightened attention during the processes of policy making regarding adoption and donor insemination legislation in Sweden during the 1990s and early 2000s. Yet, very little academic knowledge exists about children and young people in LGBTQ families and their experiences in schools. We engage the idea of "culturally queer" as a potentially useful framework for understanding the experiences of children and young people with LGBTQ parents. School, with its major impact on young people's lives, is one of the sites where family as discourse and practise is negotiated. This is why a group of researchers from Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Lund University (Sweden) are undertaking a study on the school experiences of children and young people with LGBTQ parents. Our first aim is to discuss how these kids are recognized within queer communities. Our second aim is to analyze what we see as a problematic silence in school around children and young people with LGBTQ parents. This is about the powerful and everyday workings of normative understandings of who family should be. Schools and teachers might not see the need to actively include non-normative family-structures in their work. This seemingly innocent-looking process in fact re-constructs ideals of family, childhood, sexuality and gender. It is necessary to actively work against the silencing of kids with LGBTQ parents in the context of school. This is important for these kids; it is equally important for children and young people with heterosexual parents to see that family can be more than mum-dad-child. We see this as a part of the long-established debate in queer theorizing and activism about the meaning and practises of 'family'. We see a need to further theorize the currently ongoing normalization of queer families. At the same time, there is an equally ongoing need for struggle against indirect homophobia and transphobia.

In 1992, the editorial staff of the gay newsmagazine, The Advocate , decided to banish the most profitable advertising—sexually explicit ads—from the magazine altogether in an attempt to secure ad dollars from national corporations. The banishment had been tried nearly 20 years earlier and failed. Through a historical textual analysis of magazine advertisements and media coverage of the event, this study explains why the timing of the second redesign made it successful. Guided by sociologist Gaye Tuchman's expansion of the concept of symbolic annihilation, this study argues that The Advocate's redesign, which was prompted by competition from new market entrants, had far-reaching implications for the overall gay market, helping solidify that market segment.

The needs and rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students and families are often ignored, generally misunderstood, and only rarely given priority by the school system. This book provides a practical and useful guide for school-based mental health professionals to support students, families, teachers, and administrators in the development of a safe, inclusive school environment for all LGBTQ students and families. It begins with an overview of the unique issues and challenges faced by LGBTQ students and families, including a discussion of sexuality and gender

With few exceptions, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals are generally ignored in the realm of digital games. This ethnography of members of an online gay gamer, or gaymer, community allowed me to better understand their thoughts on LGBTQ representation in games, as well as the construction of the gaymer community. How gaymer identities are constructed, how this community is formed, and how its members discuss the representation of LGBTQ individuals in video games are discussed here. Gaymer identity was found to be more complex than the simple 'homosexual gamer' defi nition often used implies. Finding a space to express this identity was much more important to members than the invisibility of LGBTQ individuals in video game texts. The relative importance of in-game representation was tied to the context of play. The political implications of these fi ndings are discussed in the conclusion of this article.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book examines, through a multi-disciplinary lens, the possibilities offered by relationships and family forms that challenge the nuclear family ideal, and some of the arguments that recommend or disqualify these as legitimate units in our societies.That children should be conceived naturally, born to and raised by their two young, heterosexual, married to each other, genetic parents; that this relationship between parents is also the ideal relationship between romantic or sexual partners; and that romance and sexual intimacy ought to be at the core of our closest personal relationships - all these elements converge towards the ideal of the nuclear family. The authors consider a range of relationship and family structures that depart from this ideal: polyamory and polygamy, single and polyparenting, parenting by gay and lesbian couples, as well as families created through assisted human reproduction.

This essay plies potential connections among Two-Spirit and Palestinian queer critiques to advance a comparative analysis of queer settler colonialism in Canada and Israel. A broad literature in indigenous studies and at its intersections with queer studies now centres the intellectual and political interventions of Indigenous LGBTQ/Two-Spirit people in North America. In turn, after years of organising among Palestinian LGBTQ people in Palestine, Israel, and the diaspora, a broad array of queer critiques of gender and sexuality in Israel/Palestine recently has appeared in social movements and scholarship. This essay compares Two-Spirit and Palestinian queer critiques so as to newly examine the sexualisation of settler colonialism in Canada and Israel. The essay cites an extensive literature on queer settler colonialism in the Americas, and its comparability with queer Palestinian critiques, to illuminate the specificity of queer settler colonialism in Israel. An extended analysis of Eytan Fox's 2006 film The Bubble assists in diagnosing the complicities and investments in settler colonialism that characterise contemporary Israeli LGBTQ politics. The essay concludes by demonstrating how such comparisons deepen knowledge of the relational formation of settler colonialisms, and of their inherently gendered and sexualised formation.