Stalling Civil Rights: Conservative Sexual Thought has been in the Toilet Since the 1940s

By Gillian Frank 20th and 21st Century United States, Childhood and Youth, Trans

The conservative idea that civil rights protections sexually endanger women and children in public bathrooms is not new.

Dr. Spock and the History of Sexuality

By Janet Golden 20th and 21st Century United States, Childhood and Youth

Serendipitously, on June 26, 2015, I found several letters to Spock regarding homosexuality.

AIDS, Sexuality and American Religion: An Interview With Anthony Petro

By Anthony Petro 20th and 21st Century United States, Author Interviews, HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ, Medicine and the Body, Religion and Sexuality

Religious responses to the emergence of AIDS in the United States in the 1980s and 90s.

“The Gay Revolution”: An Interview with Lillian Faderman

By Lauren Gutterman 20th and 21st Century United States, Author Interviews, LGBTQ

The Gay Revolution provides a moving account of the LGBT movement in the United States.

“What can I do to be normal?” Queer Female Desire in Letters to Dr. Alfred Kinsey

By Amanda Littauer 20th and 21st Century United States, LGBTQ, Medicine and the Body

Many postwar Americans were obsessed with sexual normality but their stories reveal queer possibilities.

Archives of Desire: A Lavender Reading of J. Edgar Hoover

By Christopher Elias 20th and 21st Century United States, LGBTQ

Collier’s made one of the earliest print references to the sexuality of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

Red War on the Family: An Interview with Erica Ryan

By Erica Ryan 20th and 21st Century United States, Author Interviews

1920s conservatism foreshadowed the New Right’s use of sex & gender as an organizing tool.