In 1971, Daniel Pinello came out as a gay man in the most public forum then conceivable for a 21-year-old: the front­ page feature article of a Williams College student newspaper. He was the first queer person there unequivocally to disclose a homosexual orientation. Then, after law school, Pinello ran a free weekly walk-in legal-counseling service for lesbians and gay men at the Mattachine Society, a foundational homophile organization near the famous Stonewall Inn.

A professor at the City University of New York, Pinello con­ducted pioneering research on gay and lesbian issues in three pivotal books: Gay Rights and American Law, America’s Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, and America’s War on Same-Sex Couples and Their Families. The empirical foundation for the last two was more than 250 videotaped interviews he carried out between 2004 and 2012 with same­ sex couples in California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Wisconsin.

In 2008, Pinello and his partner committed civil disobedience to lobby the New York Legislature on behalf of marriage equal­ity. They applied for a marriage license from a Long Island town clerk. When their request was denied, the two refused to leave the office until the police issued them summonses for trespass.

All of these heartfelt events and more (including moving love stories with two men) are evocatively chronicled in Equal: A Memoir of Gay Rights.

Gordon Merrick and the Great Gay American Novel is the first biography of Gordon Merrick, the most commercially successful writer of gay novels in the twentieth century. This book shows how Merrick’s novels were largely based on his own life and time as a Princeton theater star, a Broadway actor, a New York reporter, an OSS spy, and the friend of countless artists and celebrities as an expatriate in France, Greece, and Sri Lanka. He lived much of his life as an openly gay man with his longtime partner, Charles Hulse. His 1970 novel, The Lord Won’t Mind, broke new ground by showing that an affirming, explicitly gay novel could be a bestseller. His subsequent gay novels were both a cultural phenomenon and a lightning rod for literary critics. This book also examines the complex, often conflicting responses to Merrick’s novels by gay readers and critics, and it thus recovers the early post-Stonewall debates over the definition of “gay literature.” By reconstructing Merrick’s life and critical fortunes, this book expands our understanding of what it means to be a gay man in the twentieth century.

In Gay Print Culture, Juan Carlos Mezo González investigates the relationship between transnational gay liberation politics, periodicals, and images in Mexico, the United States, and Canada from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. Mezo González examines the production, content, circulation, and reception of leading gay periodicals published in these countries, including community-based gay liberation publications and commercially oriented gay lifestyle and erotic magazines. He demonstrates how they aimed to visualize the political goals of gay liberation, particularly those concerning the liberation and celebration of homoerotic desires. Mezo González contends that visualizing these goals allowed activists, editors, publishers, and artists to foster the formation of gay communities and identities while advancing gay liberation movements at the local, national, and international levels. In so doing, he furthers understandings of the transnational nature of gay periodicals, the relationship between gay liberation politics and visual culture, and the existing tensions between the liberation of some and the oppression of others across the American continent.

3, 2, 1… inhale, deep. From the Victorian infirmary and the sex clubs of the 1970s, poppers vapour has released the queer potential inside us all.

This is the intriguing story of how poppers wafted out of the lab and into gay bars, corner shops, bedrooms and porn supercuts. Blending historical research with wry observation, Adam Zmith explores the cultural forces and improbable connections behind the power of poppers.

What emerges is not just a history of pub raids, viral panics and pecs the size of dinner plates. It is a collection of fresh and provocative ideas about identity, sex, utopia, capitalism, law, freedom and the bodies that we use to experience the world.

In Deep Sniff, what starts as a thoughtful enquiry into poppers becomes a manifesto for pleasure.

Intimate Friends offers a fascinating look at the erotic friendships of educated English and American women over a 150-year period, culminating in the 1928 publication of The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall’s scandalous novel of lesbian love. Martha Vicinus explores all-female communities, husband-wife couples, liaisons between younger and older women, female rakes, and mother-daughter affection. Women, she reveals, drew upon a rich religious vocabulary to describe elusive and complex erotic feelings.

Vicinus also considers the nineteenth-century roots of such contemporary issues as homosexual self-hatred, female masculinity, and sadomasochistic desire. Drawing upon diaries, letters, and other archival sources, she brings to life a variety of well known and historically less recognized women, ranging from the predatory Ann Lister, who documented her sexual activities in code; to Mary Benson, the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury; to the coterie of wealthy Anglo-American lesbians living in Paris.

In vivid and colorful prose, Intimate Friends offers a remarkable picture of women navigating the uncharted territory of same-sex desire.

Joseph Fischel’s provocative book, Sodomy’s Solicitations, builds out a politics of sexual justice that challenges state sex exceptionalism. By tracing several twenty-first century contestations around Louisiana anti-sodomy laws, Fischel examines patterns and practices of sexual injustice that are…

Love in the Lav uncovers Ireland’s queer lives of the past. Averill Earls investigates how same-sex-desiring men lived and loved in a country where their sexuality was illegal and seen as unnatural. Across seven social biographical chapters, each highlighting individuals at the nexus of these…

An unconventional but undeniable story of love and family between men

Originally published in 1950, the long out-of-print novel The Bitterweed Path was rediscovered in 1996 with the support of John Howard’s critical introduction. In the years since, new generations have witnessed its subtle yet…

This first critical biography of radio broadcaster, stage director, and auteur filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis examines his prolific body of work within the socio-political context of his times. Best known as a bold modernist for triple-Oscar-winner ‘Zorba the Greek’, Michael likewise was hailed as an…

When Garrett Glaser came out as gay to his mother at age fourteen, she said, "You are going to a psychiatrist right now, young man! We are going to nip this in the bud." Fortunately, she came around to accept her son's orientation, and Garrett used his psychiatric sessions to address the challenges…

In 1922 Robert Allerton—described by the Chicago Tribune as the “richest bachelor in Chicago”—met a twenty-two-year-old University of Illinois architecture student named John Gregg, who was twenty-six years his junior. Virtually inseparable from then on, they began publicly referring to one another…

A look at the history of psychiatry’s foundational impact on the lives of queer and gender-variant people.

In the mid-twentieth century, American psychiatrists proclaimed homosexuality a mental disorder, one that was treatable and amenable to cure. Drawing on a collection of previously…

Sex is usually assumed to be a closely guarded secret of prison life. But it has long been the subject of intense scrutiny by both prison administrators and reformers—as well as a source of fascination and anxiety for the American public. Historically, sex behind bars has evoked radically…

Conflicts about space and access to resources have shaped queer histories from at least 1965 to the present. As spaces associated with middle-class homosexuality enter mainstream urbanity in the United States, cultural assimilation increasingly erases insurgent aspects of these social movements.…

Taking into account recent historic changes, this second edition updates the essays on the Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, the Right, and trans history. Authors of several other essays have taken the opportunity to add new material and references where warranted.

This renowned history of intersex in America has been comprehensively updated to reflect recent shifts in attitudes, bioethics, and medical and legal practices.

In Bodies in Doubt, Elizabeth Reis traces the changing definitions, perceptions, and medical management of intersex (atypical sex…

Traces important historical changes in both journalism and religious responses to scandal from the 1830s to the late twentieth century. Covers both the most sensational and well-known scandals and never before examined cases of ministerial impropriety.
Uncovers the historical background of the…

A completely revised and updated edition of the classic volume of oral history interviews with high-profile leaders and little-known participants in the gay rights movement that cumulatively provides a powerful documentary look at the struggle for gay rights in America.

From the Boy Scouts and…

When Making History was first published in 1992, the acclaimed oral historian Studs Terkel called it, "One of the definitive works on gay life." Novelist Armistead Maupin said that author "Eric Marcus not only writes with grace and clarity but makes it look so easy—the ultimate measure of…

How female prostitutes and men who sought sex with other men shaped the history and emergence of modern Paris in the nineteenth century

In the 1800s, urban development efforts modernized Paris and encouraged the creation of brothels, boulevards, cafés, dancehalls, and even public urinals.…

Queer Virginia is a long-needed record of the courageous and creative ways that LGBTQ+ people across the commonwealth have persevered and fought for their rights. The history recovered here is remarkable and illuminating, including the life of Hannah Nokes, a Black transgender woman who overcame…

A century ago in Nevada the idea that there was a queer community worthy of equal right, privilege, and responsibility was beyond imagining. Same-gender love was a criminal offense and Nevada’s LGBTQ community faced a desperate battle for equality. As time passed, however, their movement slowly…

The long nineteenth century witnessed the rapid evolution of the American experiment. For men who desired sex with other men, it was a time marked by both bold exploration and tentative community building, as issues of sexual orientation and gender identity played out against the backdrop of a new…

This inspiring biography of Craig Rodwell illuminates the life of a central activist and conscience of gay liberation, the visionary founder of the landmark Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop and the prime mover behind the inaugural pride march of 1970.

Set against the vibrant backdrop of New York and…

Nearly fifteen years before the Stonewall Rebellion and the birth of gay liberation came the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Like its predominantly gay male counterparts, the Mattachine Society and ONE, Inc., DOB was launched in response to the oppressive antihomosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when…