I have no “vision” as a professor. I think the best I can do is give my students interesting, provocative material they cannot find on their own and … - Michael Bronski

entertainment in its broadest sense-popular ballads, vaudeville, films, sculptures, plays, paintings, pornography, pulp novels-has not only been a primary mode of expression of LGBT identity, but one of the most effective means of social change. Ironically, the enormous political power of these forms was often understood by the people who wanted to ban them, not by the people who were simply enjoying them.

Humans are taught to think in dualities – left/ right, good/ evil, sacred/ profane, sin/ grace, clean/ dirty – the American Dream necessitates the creation of an American Nightmare. Who gets to be in the Dream v/s who is forced into the Nightmare is dependent on many factors: race, gender, class, income, physique, standards of beauty, sexual identity. In the past 40 years some queer people -- those who fit into standards of certain acceptability – were allowed into the Dream; but not all. Many LGBTQ people (those who were in the Dream) saw this as progress. But it is not progress until there is no more divide between the Dream and the Nightmare. There is an old Gay Liberation slogan which is “we don’t want a piece of the pie – the pie is poisoned.” So is the dichotomy between this Dream and the Nightmare.

Today we routinely use LGBT, a fairly recent, and accepted, amalgamation of identities, each of which has a specific history that often had little to do with the others.