Dennis Altman

The claim that LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights are human rights encounters fierce opposition in many parts of the world, as governments and religious leaders have used resistance to LGBT rights to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neocolonial interference and moral corruption. Queer Wars explores the growing international polarisation over sexual rights, and the creative responses this is prompting among social movements and activists, some of whom face murder, imprisonment or rape because of their perceived sexuality or gender expression. Drawing on international relations, anthropology, cultural studies and the burgeoning literature of the global LGBT movement, this book asks why homosexuality has become so vexed an issue between and within nations, and how we can best advocate for change. It argues that western activists must listen carefully and support local movements, rather than trumpet a universal gay rights agenda that risks endangering those it seeks to empower.

the new global polarization over gay rights

Queer wars

The end of the homosexual?

Global Sex is the first major work to take on the globalization of sexuality, examining the ways in which desire and pleasure—as well as ideas about gender, political power, and public health—are framed, shaped, or commodified by a global economy in which more and more cultures move into ever-closer contact.

Global Sex

An avowed republican investigates the unexpected durability and potential benefits of constitutional monarchies. When he was deposed in Egypt in 1952, King Farouk predicted that there would be five monarchs left at the end of the century: the kings of hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades, and of England. To date, his prediction has proved wrong, and while the twentieth century saw the collapse of monarchies across Europe, many democratic societies have remained monarchies. God Save the Queenis the first book to look at constitutional monarchies globally, and is particularly relevant given the pro-democracy movement in Thailand and recent scandals around the British and Spanish royal families. Is monarchy merely a feudal relic that should be abolished, or does the division between ceremonial and actual power act as a brake on authoritarian politicians? And what is the role of monarchy in the independent countries of the Commonwealth that have retained the Queen as head of state? This book suggests that monarchy deserves neither the adulation of the right nor the dismissal of the left. In an era of autocratic populism, does constitutional monarchy provide some safeguards against the megalomania of political leaders? Is a President Boris potentially more dangerous than a Prime Minister Boris?

The Strange Persistence of Monarchies

God Save the Queen

Dennis Altman first travelled from Australia to the United States when Lyndon Johnson was President, beginning a long obsession with the US. In the early 1970s he was involved in New York Gay Liberation; his 1971 study Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, is widely regarded as a classic work in its field. In the 1980s Altman lived in San Francisco during the onset of the AIDS epidemic. Later he sat on the Australian National Council on AIDS and international organisations including, as president, the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific. The election of Donald Trump took place while Altman was back in California on one of his frequent visits. In this diarised memoir, moving between Australia, the United States, Europe and parts of Asia, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Christopher Isherwood and many others people a story of a half century of activism, intellectualism, friendship and conflict.

Diary of an Accidental Activist

Unrequited Love

Jonathan Symons

The claim that LGBT rights are human rights encounters fierce opposition in many parts of the world, as governments and religious leaders have used resistance to LGBT rights to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neo-colonial interference and western decadence. Queer Wars explores the growing international polarization over sexual rights, and the creative responses from social movements and activists, some of whom face murder, imprisonment or rape because of their perceived sexuality or gender expression. This book asks why sexuality and gender identity have become so vexed an issue between and within nations, and how we can best advocate for change.

Queer Wars

Gore Vidal is one of the most significant American writers of the second half of the twentieth century, having produced a large number of best selling novels, essays, plays and pamphlets which have impacted on major political and social debates for fifty years. He is both a serious writer and a television and movie celebrity, whose increasingly acerbic picture of the United States guarantees he is both revered and reviled. Gore Vidal's America examines the ways in which Vidal's writings on history, politics, sex and religion throw into focus our understandings of the United States, but also recognizes his versatility and inventiveness as a creative writer, some of whose novels - Julian; Myra Breckinridge; Lincoln; Duluth - are among the important literary works of their time. Ranging from Vidal's early defence of homosexuality in The City and the Pillar (1948) to his most recent writings on the war in Iraq, this book provides a unique perspective on the evolution of post-World War II American society, politics and literature. As Altman writes: “Difficult not to see in the results of the 2004 elections, where the Republican right gained in both the White House and the Senate, proof of Vidal's worse fears, namely that the impact of imperial adventure, big money and religious moralism would increasingly imperil the American Republic."

Gore Vidal's America

John C. Hawley

Uses postcolonial theory to critique the globalization of gay culture.

Theoretical Intersections

Postcolonial, Queer

'Dennis Altman's book remains the best work on the subject so far' Time OutOne of the first classic accounts of the implications of the AIDS for the gay community, and for society as a whole.

AIDS and the New Puritanism

Examines the political aspects of the AIDS epidemic, discusses press coverage of the disease, and analyzes public hysteria concerning AIDS and its victims

AIDS in the Mind of America

The claim that 'LGBT rights are human rights' encounters fierce opposition in many parts of the world, as governments and religious leaders have used resistance to 'LGBT rights' to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neo-colonial interference and western decadence. Queer Wars explores the growing international polarization over sexual rights, and the creative responses from social movements and activists, some of whom face murder, imprisonment or rape because of their perceived sexuality or gender expression. This book asks why sexuality and gender identity have become so vexed an issue between and within nations, and how we can best advocate for change.

In this fascinating exploration—part memoir, part political discourse—Dennis Altman, one of the preeminent academics studying gay and lesbian culture around the world, connects the changes that have happened in the queer world over the last 40 years to larger social, political, and cultural trends. Written engagingly, this timely book explores the idea that major changes in the understanding of sexual and gender diversity reflect larger social and cultural shifts. A case study of both local and global change told from a very personal viewpoint, The End of the Homosexual? reflects on decades of cultural and political change and considers the future of sexuality, asking whether the end of the homosexual predicted by gay liberationists 40 years ago is at hand.

The End of the Homosexual?

Sean Scalmer

Red or Green? Traditionally, Australian progressives have supported the Australian Labor Party; increasingly, The Greens appeal. What are the key differences between the parties? Is greater collaboration desirable? Is it likely? Some progressives remain strongly committed to Labor or The Greens. Others have abandoned one or other of the parties from bitter experience. Others still are genuinely undecided, or seek to promote greater understanding and cooperation. What is the best way forward? This volume brings together a range of party leaders, veterans, and academic experts to tackle these important questions. Deliberately pluralistic, it encompasses strongly divergent views. Dedicated to progressive change, it aims both to capture and to advance a vital public debate. The Age has published this edited extract from a chapter written by Adam Bandt for the book How to Vote Progressive in Australia.

Labor Or Green?

How to Vote Progressive in Australia

Jeffrey Weeks

"A pleasure...a really sensitive, lucid account of his personal liberation...a penetrating analysis of the political premises and goals and philosophical background of the movement." —The New York Times "The one to read...may very well be the most intelligible and best written books on the subject." —The Minneapolis Tribune When Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation was first published in 1971, The New York Review of Books, hailed it as the only work that bears comparison...with the best to appear from Women's Liberation. Time wrote that, among the whole tumble of homosexuals who have `come out of the closet', perhaps best among these accounts is a book by Dennis Altman. Long out of print, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation remains a seminal work in the gay liberation movement. Altman examines the different positions promoting gay liberation, and recognizes the healthy diversity in these divisions. Elaborating on the writers of the emergent movement--James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, Herbert Marcuse, Kate Millett, and others--Homosexual suggests that we can nurture a common, progressive movement out of our shared sexuality and experience of a heterosexist society. Today, in the age of AIDS, ACT UP, and Queer Nation, the possibility of such commonality is of critical importance. Jeffrey Weeks's new introduction places Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation in its historical context, while the author's new afterword examines its significance in light of today's lesbian and gay movement.

Oppression and Liberation

Homosexual

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Dennis Altman

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