This I Believe: Gay Forever, Hell For Never | NPR Illois

Contents:

• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
• THE 50 BT GAY SONGS TO CELEBRATE PRI ALL YEAR LONG
• CAN PEOPLE STOP BEG GAY?
• THIS I BELIEVE: GAY FOREVER, HELL FOR NEVER
• SGLE FOREVER: STORI AND INSIGHTS OM GAY MEN
• DEAR DAD, WE'VE BEEN GAY FOREVER | WH CYNTHIA NIXON
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY
• DEAR DAD: WE’VE BEEN GAY FOR A REALLY LONG TIME

HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY

Part of realizg you're gay, or bi, or trans, or non-bary, or anythg other than cisgenr and heterosexual is acceptg you’re different—and somewhat separated—om the majory. Here he shar his journey to overe the sense of isolatn he felt growg up gay a small U.

THE 50 BT GAY SONGS TO CELEBRATE PRI ALL YEAR LONG

At the time, there were no real gay role mols except for Graham Norton and Jack om Dawson's Creek—and I certaly didn't intify wh him bee I wasn't a football player. I felt like I was pletely on my rried on until I was 16, when I started gog out to gay bars my hometown. I ma one gay iend, who I'm actually close to now.

For the first time I've been able to form a good group of gay iends and create my own support work. I'd go on gay chatrooms but that was jt a facels nversatn wh someone who uld have been anyone. I thk if I'd had iends who were gay when I was growg up, my life would have been so different.

CAN PEOPLE STOP BEG GAY?

I now know there were other kids at my school who were gay, but they didn't e out till much later. Recently, Alan Hollghurst said the gay novel is ad. "There was an urgency, a novelty to the whole thg, " said the gay thor, who won the Man Booker Prize for The Le of Bety.

" Maybe that's bee Baldw said the book isn't actually about beg gay.

"Gvanni's Room is not really about homosexualy, " said Baldw a 1980 terview about queer life.

THIS I BELIEVE: GAY FOREVER, HELL FOR NEVER

Go Tell It on the Mounta, for example, is not about a church, and Gvanni is not really about homosexualy.

SJ Sdu, thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li, lled , "One of the first Anglophone works to challenge the trope of the sad/suicidal gays who die at the end, this book gave a blueprt of what queer fictn uld look like. Forster (A Passage to India, A Room Wh a View, Howards End) wrote the benchmark gay novel Mrice cir 1913, was published posthumoly a lh tale of manners, posn, and sire, the tular character meets and falls for his classmate Clive while at Oxford. The pair embark on a two-year affair until Clive leav Mrice to marry a woman and live out his proscribed life as part of the land gentry, leavg Mrice shambl and seekg to cure his Forster's novel do not end gay tragedy.

SGLE FOREVER: STORI AND INSIGHTS OM GAY MEN

The thor of Night Drop, Marshall Thornton lled the novel "the origal gay romance. Alan Hollghurst famoly qutned the future of the gay novel this year, which is strikg sce he's often viewed as helpg make queer books accsible to a mastream dience.

Hollghurst set his pen on the sexual hypocrisi of homophobic policians, many of whom had their own discretns behd closed doors. The book follows Nick Gut, a gay graduate stunt unofficially adopted by the fay of a schoolmate. The queer g-of-age novel about Jim Willard and his search for love was the first novel om a rpected wrer (Gore Vidal) to speak directly and sympathetilly about the gay experience an era when homosexualy was still very much taboo.

The book is remembered today for this legacy as well as for var them -- Hollywood's glass closet, beg gay the ary, the poisono effects of homophobia on society -- that still reverberate today. The only novel by the great Osr Wil may not be overtly gay, but there's plenty of gay subtext there for the reful rear - about as much gay subtext as a popular thor uld get away wh 's iends Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton exprs tense admiratn for his bety, and passag that show Basil's feelgs for Dorian as more clearly homoerotic were excised by an edor, acrdg to Nicholas Frankel, who eded an edn prentg Wil's origal text the text as origally published has referenc to Dorian's rptn of not only young women but young men: "There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici.

DEAR DAD, WE'VE BEEN GAY FOREVER | WH CYNTHIA NIXON

Cy of Night, a 1963 novel by John Rechy, is a semal piece of fictn that follows the life of a gay htler New York Cy, Los Angel, New Orleans, and San Francis. "This epic chronicle of gay culture the Amerin sixti is as far-reachg as is important, givg a glimpse to inty and motive, " affirmed SJ Sdu, the thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

Gay lerature was forever changed the day Mary Ann Sgleton first met her transgenr landlady, Anna Madrigal, when she moved to San Francis's 28 Barbary Lane.

HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY

The 1982 book by Edmund Whe, which begs wh the first sexual enunter of a 15-year-old boy, is based on his own experienc g to terms wh his gay inty as a youth the Midwtern Uned Stat.

Whe would later wre two addnal novels, The Betiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), which follow his gay protagonist to young adulthood.

DEAR DAD: WE’VE BEEN GAY FOR A REALLY LONG TIME

Together, they form a poignant trilogy that chronicl a gay life the latter half of the 20th century.