Books that get banned – historically and now in many, many states in the U.S. – are banned not because they are immoral (under accepted and promoted … - Michael Bronski

There are many times that these representations – novels, songs, films, graphic novels, tv shows – make us laugh or cry because we recognize parts of ourselves in them. That’s great. But we shouldn’t think that these representations actually represent us. Rather can’t. We are all much too complicated to be represented in this way. But nevertheless the longing to see our lives represented is powerful – and we need it. It is great to feel connected to a community because of popular culture – we just have to realise that almost any artefact of popular culture that – by its nature becomes popular – is never the whole truth of people’s lives. It is a consumer item – and that’s fine.; just don’t compare it to the authenticity of human experience, to understand the uniqueness of an individual life.

in America, equality under the law is a complicated affair. Certainly it is true that while laws are for everyone, they are often enforced mainly against the disenfranchised.

Whatever sexuality means today and did not mean before, the word, like others before it, has always attempted to describe something we know is not reducible to a word, an identity, or even a set of behaviors.