Offers a more democratic way to think about families, politics, and public life.

Public policy often assumes there is one correct way to be a family. Rethinking Sexual Citizenship argues that policies that enforce this idea hurt all of us and harm our democracy. Jyl J. Josephson uses the concept of "sexual citizenship" (a criticism of the assumption that all families have a heterosexual at their center) to show how government policies are made to punish or reward particular groups of people. This analysis applies sexual citizenship not only to policies that impact LGBTQ families, but also to other groups, including young people affected by abstinence-only public policies and single-parent families affected by welfare policy. The book also addresses the idea that the "normal" family in the United States is white. It concludes with a discussion of how scholars and activists can help create a more inclusive democracy by challenging this narrow view of public life.

The first book to focus on the experience of LGBT archival research.

Finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Anthology presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation

Out of the Closet, Into the Archives takes readers inside the experience of how it feels to do queer archival research and queer research in the archive. The archive, much like the closet, exposes various levels of public and privateness-recognition, awareness, refusal, impulse, disclosure, framing, silence, cultural intelligibility-each mediated and determined through subjective insider/outsider ways of knowing. The contributors draw on their experiences conducting research in disciplines such as sociology, African American studies, English, communications, performance studies, anthropology, and women's and gender studies. These essays challenge scholars to engage with their affective experience of being in the archive, illuminating how the space of the archive requires a different kind of deeply personal, embodied research.

"Out of the Closet, Into the Archives represents the exciting directions for scholarship enabled by this rapid growth of new LGBTQ archives. Although mindful of critiques of the archive as an institution of power and attentive to experiences and ephemeralities that can escape it, the essays published here practice forms of the archival turn that put relentless curiosity and unapologetic passion to use as methods for intellectual invention." - from the Foreword by Ann Cvetkovich

Uses the state of Oklahoma as a case study for how US conservatives have attempted to unqueer America since the 1950's.

By exploring the scandal-filled lives of four Oklahomans, this book demonstrates how unqueering operates in a conservative American context. Carol Mason weaves a story about how homogenizing, antigay ideas evolve from generation to generation so that they achieve particular economic, imperial, racial, and gendered goals. Using engaging and accessible commentary on antigay crusaders (Sally Kern and Anita Bryant) and two queer teachers dismissed from their positions (Billy James Hargis and Bruce Goff), Mason illustrates how the lives of these figures represent paradigmatic moments in conservative confrontations with queers and help us to understand the conflation of terrorism with homosexuality, which dates back to the McCarthy era.

Examines strategies and best practices that effectively integrate LGBTQ areas of teaching and research with student life activities.

Many educational professionals agree that the time has come to expand their circle of inclusion and broaden their definition of diversity by increasing LGBTQ studies, but the question of how to do so is still debated. Although some colleges and universities have been incorporating LGBTQ studies for decades, courses and programs continue to be pockets of innovation rather than models of inclusion for all of higher education. Colleges and universities need to encourage faculty members to teach and research a wide range of LGBTQ topics, as well as support student life professionals in building inclusive campus communities. This book includes testimonies that alert educators to possible pitfalls and successes of their policies through an analysis of changing student attitudes. Based on these case studies, the contributors offer practical suggestions for the classroom and the provost's office, demonstrating not only the gains that have been made by LGBTQ students and the institutions that serve them, but also the tensions that remain.

Uses historical case studies to illuminate women's claims to emancipation and to sexual subjectivity during the tumultuous Wilhelmine and Weimar periods in Germany.

Desiring Emancipation traces middle-class German women's claims to gender emancipation and sexual subjectivity in the pre-Nazi era. The emergence of homosexual identities and concepts in this same time frame provided the context for expression of individual struggles with self, femininity, and sex. The book asks how women used new concepts and opportunities to construct selves in relationship to family, society, state, and culture. Taking a queer approach, Desiring Emancipation's goal is not to find homosexuals in history, but to analyze how women reworked categories of gender and sex. Marti M. Lybeck interrogates their desires, demonstrating that emancipation was fraught with conflict, anachronism, and disappointment.

Each chapter is a microhistorical recreation of the actions, writings, contexts, and conflicts of specific groups of women. The topics include the experience of first-generation university students, public debates about female homosexuality, and the stories of three civil servants whose careers were ruined by workplace accusations of homosexuality. The book concludes with a debate between the women who joined the 1920s homosexual movement on the meanings of their new identities.

Argues that homophobia will not be eradicated in the United States until religion is ended.

Slouching towards Gaytheism brings together two intellectual traditions-the New Atheism and queer theory-and moves beyond them to offer a new voice for gay Americans and atheists alike. Examining the continued vehemence of homophobia in cultural and political debate regarding queer equality, this unabashed polemic insists that the needs met by religion might be met-more safely and less toxically-by forms of community that do not harass and malign gay and lesbian Americans or impede collective social progress. W. C. Harris argues that compromises with traditional religion, no matter how enlightened or well intentioned, will ultimately leave heteronormativity alive and well. He explores a range of recent movements, such as Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project, reparative "ex-gay" therapy, Christian purity culture, and attempts by liberal Christians to reconcile religion with homosexuality, and shows how these proposed solutions are either inadequate or positively dangerous. According to the author, the time has come for "gaytheism": leaving religion behind in order to preserve queer dignity, rights, and lives.

Exposes how ex-gay and post-abortion ministries operate on a shared system of thought and analyzes their social implications.

A staple of the culture wars, the struggle between Christian conservatives and progressives over sexuality and reproductive rights continues. Focusing on ex-gay ministries geared to helping same-sex attracted people resist their sexuality and postabortion ministries dedicated to leading women who have had an abortion to repent that decision, Cynthia Burack argues that both are motivated and characterized by a strain of compassion that is particular to Christian conservatism rather than a bias and hatred toward sexual minorities and sexually active women. This compassion reproduces the sexual ideology of the Christian right and absolves Christian conservatives from responsibility for stigma and other forms of harm to postabortive and same-sex attracted people. Using the democratic theory of Hannah Arendt, the popular fiction of Ayn Rand, and the psychoanalytic thought of Melanie Klein, Burack studies the social and political effects of Christian conservative compassion.

Offers an analysis of the political economy of care in order to explain how lesbian and gay citizens in Europe benefit from equality more than those in the United States.

Why Europe Is Lesbian and Gay Friendly (and Why America Never Will Be) examines the differences in politics, policy, and culture in leading Western democracies and offers an explanation as to why lesbian and gay citizens in Europe reap more benefits of equality. This analysis of the political economy of care calls attention to the ways in which care is negotiated by various investors (the state, families, individuals, and the faith-based voluntary sector) and the power dynamics of this negotiation.

Historically, Christian churches have been leading primary investors in care, providing a direct safety net for children and the elderly. Despite European secularization, the involvement of the Christian church elites in both the provision of service and the setting of the values frame for welfare cannot be underestimated. The historical involvement of Christian churches is unique in each country, but one common factor is the normative interpretation of "the family." The role of Christian values-from left-leaning social justice, Reformed Protestant individualism, or social conservatism-in relation to the political economy of care gives a distinctive flavor to questions about under what circumstances policymakers are compelled, or not, to expand policies to include lesbian and gay citizens.

Collection of letters written to the first openly gay magazine in the United States.

Long before the Stonewall riots, ONE magazine-the first openly gay magazine in the United States-offered a positive viewpoint of homosexuality and encouraged gay people to resist discrimination and persecution. Despite a limited monthly circulation of only a few thousand, the magazine influenced the substance, character, and tone of the early American gay rights movement. This book is a collection of letters written to the magazine, a small number of which were published in ONE, but most of them were not. The letters candidly explore issues such as police harassment of gay and lesbian communities, antigay job purges, and the philosophical, scientific, and religious meanings of homosexuality.

An analysis of unpublished letters to the first American gay magazine reveals the agency, adaptation, and resistance occurring in the gay community during the McCarthy era.

Finalist for the 2013 Over the Rainbow Selection presented by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table (GLBTRT) of the American Library Association

In this compelling social history, Craig M. Loftin describes how gay people in the United States experienced the 1950s and early 1960s, a time when rapidly growing gay and lesbian subcultures suffered widespread discrimination. The book is based on a remarkable and unique historical source: letters written to ONE magazine, the first openly gay publication in the United States. These letters, most of which have never before been published, provide extraordinary insight into the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of gay men and lesbians nationwide, especially as they coped with the anxieties of the McCarthy era. The letters reveal how gay people dealt with issues highly relevant to LGBT life today, including job discrimination, police harassment, marriage, homophobia in families, and persecution in churches and the military. Loftin shows that gay men and lesbians responded to intolerance and bigotry with resilience, creativity, and an invigorated belief in their right to live their lives as gay men and lesbians long before this was accepted and considered safe. Groundbreaking chapters address gay marriage and family life, international gay activism, and how antigay federal government policies reverberated throughout the country.

Provocative take on the negative effects of increasing queer visibility and assimilation on the lives of queer people and politics in the U.S.

In television shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and movies like Brokeback Mountain, as well as gay young adult novels and other media coverage of queer people-including the outing of several prominent Republicans-queer lives are becoming more visible in the media and in U.S. culture more generally. How does the increasing visibility of queer subjects within mainstream culture affect possibilities for radical and transformative queer activism? Provocative and challenging, W. C. Harris argues that rather than simply being a cause for celebration, this "mainstreaming" of queer lives may have as many negative effects as positive ones for contemporary gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Harris builds on the work of queer and political theorists such as Eve Sedgwick, David Halperin, Michael Warner, and Wendy Brown to examine the side effects that can be generated when queers assimilate, and argues for a reinvigorated queer essentialism in order to claim a separate and visible political and activist space within U.S. culture.

Explores the Christian Right's use of tailored rhetorics to advance multiple and varied antigay political projects.

While the Christian Right has spearheaded a variety of antigay projects over the past fifteen years, including interventions in public schools, antigay-rights initiatives, and support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, observers of the institutionalized Christian Right have also noted a softening of antigay public rhetoric. Sin, Sex, and Democracy analyzes these two ostensibly conflicting phenomena. Examining Christian witnessing tracts, the ex-gay movement, and recent linkages between gays and terrorists, Cynthia Burack argues that as the Christian Right has become a more sophisticated interest group, leaders have become adept at tailoring different messages for mainstream audiences and for the internal pedagogical processes of Christian conservatives. Understanding the rhetoric and the theological convictions that lie behind them, Burack claims, is essential to better understand how American politics work and how to effectively respond to exclusionary forms of political thought and practice.