Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Notes from a same-sex wedding, three days after Obama's intervention. "A cultural barrier has been crossed, a taboo forever retired. Gays have not claimed marriage; it has claimed us. We are a sideshow, an outlier, no longer"
"The joining of husband and wife yields a more productive firm, because it allows one spouse to specialise in earning income from working in the market, while the other specialises in the domestic sphere." But times change
"One day, not long from now, it will be hard to remember what worried people so much about gay and lesbian couples committing themselves to marriage." Eventually the US Supreme Court will "do the right thing", as Obama has just done
"With his switch from ambivalence to advocacy, Obama is sending a signal to the courts that the country is ready for gay marriage, giving them cover to uphold it. Courts like to stay within the mainstream. Obama has just moved it"
Arana recalls teenage experience of being pushed into undergoing ex-gay therapy. It didn't work, of course. Far from it. Years later, he confronts the psychologist who made a career out of offering this therapy
Last year, New York legalised same-sex marriage. Four Republican state senators broke ranks to support the bill. Here's why they did it, what effect it had on their careers, and how the political landscape on this debate is shifting
"Military service is mandatory for all Turkish men – they can escape it only if they are ill, disabled or homosexual. But proving homosexuality is a humiliating ordeal." Young, gay Turks explain what it took to gain exemption
In 2003, the US Supreme Court decided the case of Lawrence v Texas, ruling that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional. But what was the story behind the case, and what if the facts weren't at all as presented?
Remember the case of the Rutgers student, Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after his roommate allegedly filmed him having gay sex and broadcast it online? This monumental reconstruction suggests it wasn't that straightforward
On the emergence and mainstreaming of queer studies. "It brought about its own dissolution, as academic studies moved from a strict Q-ness to big-tent Q-ness. The Q factor expanded to make room for all kinds of difference"
For all that you hear about homophobia in Uganda, fewer people are beaten and killed for being gay there than in the US. Notes from the thriving gay scene in Kampala. It's a country with islands of tolerance, islands of hatred
"We are the first generation of gay men to grow up free of oppression and imminent crisis. Growing up after Aids means profiting from the civil rights battles it occasioned. But in some ways we are still hopelessly lost"
AP
