A Moderately Gay History

The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America by Margot Canaday. Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. 296, 6 illustrations. $29.95 cloth

Coming Out of the Margins: LGBTI Activists in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

For decades LGBTQ rights have been approached purely by a legal strategy, in particular advocating for the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community continues to be a major issue in Latin America because of cultural values such as Catholicism and machismo that uphold a standard of and, in turn, have control over people’s sexuality. Using a human rights approach towards the politics of sexuality, LGBTI activists in Costa Rican and Nicaragua have been successful in transforming public opinion about sexuality and more importantly, sexual diversity. As a result of their egalitarian framework and efforts to educate people about sexual diversity, they have made great advancements toward achieving acceptance and equality for LGBTI people. This study focuses on how Costa Rican and Nicaraguan LGBTI activists have worked around traditional cultural values such as Catholicism and machismo that prevent people from accepting and tolerating LGBTI people. The examples of LGBTI activists in these two countries have important implications for other LGBTI activists and the strategies they use to try to achieve full equality (social and legal) for people whose sexual identity differs from the conventional

Testimonial

Douglas Crimp was born in 1944 in Coeur d\u27Alene, Idaho, where his brother and sister still live. As a boy, Douglas imagined that he might become an architect, and he went to Tulane University specifically to study architecture. But soon after beginning his university life, he shifted his concentration to Art History. One Tulane Teacher of Art History in particular enthralled him. This was Bernard Lehman, an eloquent, learned, and effervescent lecturer, and a campy gay man, whom Douglas credits as a primary influence

Comics, graphic narratives, and lesbian lives

Lesbian comics and graphic narratives have gained unprecedented cultural presence in the twenty-first century. Yet despite the surge in interest in the work of artists such as Alison Bechdel, and despite the existence of a substantial online archive about lesbian comics created by artists, readers, and collectors, relatively little critical attention has been directed to this work. The chapter begins to fill this gap. Taking the Bechdel’s work as its start-and-end point, it provides an overview of major developments in lesbian comics and contextualises them including in relation to the gendered conditions of possibility that define comics culture