Imagine what it must be like to be an adolescent and to either believe or know that you are gay, lesbian, or bisexual (a number of you reading this book do not have to imagine it). All your life, from the time you were a toddler, you were presented with a single model of sexual […]

Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in America face particular problems that are not faced by most heterosexuals. Many struggle with discrimination, prejudice, laws that do not rec­ognize same-sex unions, lack of spousal benefits for their partners, and families who may reject them. On the other hand, many gay and lesbian couples live together in stable, happy […]

Although classic works of Arabic poetry use homoerotic imagery, and young boys were often used as the standard of beauty and sexuality in Arabic writing (Boswell, 1980), ho­mosexuality in Arab countries, like sexuality in general, is usually not discussed. It is not uncommon to see men holding hands or walking down the street arm-in-arm on […]

t’s important to remember that although we have been exploring the gay, lesbian, and bisexual experi­ences in the United States, in different parts of the world GLB adolescents may have very different experiences. Here we take a look at adolescents in a variety of places around the globe. English (male): Between the ages of 13 […]

passing woman Woman who disguises herself as a man. From the 16th century on, homosexuals were subject to periods of tolerance and periods of severe repression. In the American colonies, for example, homosexuality was a seri­ous offense. In 1656, the New Haven Colony prescribed death for both males and fe­males who engaged in homosexual acts. […]

Before the 19th century, men who engaged in homosexual acts were accused of sodomy (SA-duh-mee), or buggery, which were simply seen as crimes and not considered part of a person’s fundamental nature. Homosexual activity was common, homosexual prostitu­tion was taxed by the state, and the writers of the time seemed to consider men loving men […]