Yahoo Lifestyle Excerpts From the Gayest, Queerest, Most Lesbionic Page-Turners for Your Pride Season Reading Delight
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."
Hi, if you’re new here (welcome!), rest assured that we are not. Cosmo has been battling regressive moral panic—and the censorship it can spawn—for decades. Over the years, various fringe groups have sought to censor us for printing “pornography” and “explicit content,” aka honest, informative reporting on totally normal physical intimacy and crucial sexual health topics. So you could say we are experts in defending the right to empower readers. Which is why we’re standing with the LGBTQ+ authors whose work is under fire right now from lawmakers and at least 50 groups agitating for book bans at the national, state, or local level.
This isn’t just about Drag Story Hour or inclusive kids’ books anymore. (Although the challenges against both, against titles like And Tango Makes Three—the award-winning, completely unscandalous illustrated tale of two male penguins raising a chick—remain absurd.) It’s not just about parents being denied a say in what their kids can and cannot read. In some parts of the country, the hysteria is preventing even fully grown adults from accessing books—for themselves—that happen to have LGBTQ+ themes.
Last year, the Patmos Library in Jamestown, Michigan, lost its taxpayer funding after staff refused to strip a handful of LGBTQ+ titles from the library’s collection. Targeted books included Gender Queer, a 2019 illustrated memoir that, as a concession to conservatives, was already shelved behind the checkout desk like a controlled substance. (The library has managed to stay open with more than $277,000 raised via GoFundMe, but some of its detractors have stepped up their efforts and are now calling for the removal of all books containing LGBTQ+ themes.) This March, conservative lawmakers in Mississippi advanced a bill aimed at combating so-called internet pornography that would in effect prohibit e-books depicting “homosexuality” or “lesbianism” (among other topics) from public schools and libraries. Meanwhile in Oklahoma, state senate Republicans passed a bill that would ban both printed and digital material from the state’s public and school libraries “that the average person age 18 or older applying contemporary community standards would find has a predominant tendency to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.” It’s easy to guess which kinds of sex those “community standards” would censor.
As crushing as the news can feel, it’s important to understand that this baseless alarmism springs from a noisy, intolerant minority. The truth is that 73 percent of U.S. adults say they oppose book bans, according to a November 2022 national survey conducted by OnePoll. Forty-three percent said they made an effort to read banned or challenged books in the previous year. And there are plenty of people actively challenging the challenges.
“Librarians on the ground are organizing, quite effectively, to push back,” says Emily Drabinski, president-elect of the American Library Association. Drabinski is openly gay and will be sending a clear message when she takes office in June: “I’m gonna have the gayest inauguration brunch in the history of libraries—it’s going to be all rainbows. Now is the time when we have to be really loud and super public about who we are.”
Community involvement is crucial too, so consider joining your local branch’s resistance efforts if you haven’t already. “There are so many more of us than there are of them,” Drabinski says of the would-be censors. “I know we’re on the right side of history and I know we’re on the right side of the present. I totally believe we’re going to win.”
LGBTQ+ writing is essential not just to the queer community—as a guiding beacon of survival, wisdom, truth, and excellence—but to a general public that benefits from understanding the breadth of human experience. Sample some of that goodness on the following pages, where you’ll find stirring passages from 31 LGBTQ+ novels, memoirs, and more, most of which have roared into existence since last Pride season alone. May we be able to read freely, everywhere, and without apology.
Couplets: A Love Story
by Maggie Millner
Unsafe Words: Queering Consent in the #MeTooEra
Edited by Shantel Gabrieal Buggs and Trevor Hoppe
2
Tell Me I’m Worthless
by Alison Rumfitt
Gender Magic: Live Shamelessly, ReclaimYour Joy & Step Into Your Most Authentic Self
by Rae McDaniel
3
Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives
by Amelia Possanza
Horse Barbie: A Memoir
by Geena Rocero
You’re That Bitch: & Other Cute Lessons About Being Unapologetically Yourself
by Bretman Rock
Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America
by Krista Burton
5
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself: A Novel by Marisa Crane
by Marisa Crane
The Family Outing: A Memoir
by Jessi Hempel
Book research by Michelle Hart. All books quoted courtesy of the publishers.
Hi, if you’re new here (welcome!), rest assured that we are not. Cosmo has been battling regressive moral panic—and the censorship it can spawn—for decades. Over the years, various fringe groups have sought to censor us for printing “pornography” and “explicit content,” aka honest, informative reporting on totally normal physical intimacy and absolutely crucial sexual health topics. So you could say we are experts in defending the right to empower readers. Which is why we’re standing with the LGBTQ+ authors whose work is under fire right now from lawmakers and at least 50 groups agitating for book bans at the national, state, or local level.
This isn’t just about Drag Story Hour or inclusive kids’ books anymore. (Although the challenges against both, against titles like And Tango Makes Three—the award-winning, completely unscandalous illustrated tale of two male penguins raising a chick—remain absurd.) It’s not just about parents being denied a say in what their kids can and cannot read. In some parts of the country, the hysteria is preventing even fully grown adults from accessing books—for themselves—that happen to have LGBTQ+ themes.
Last year, the Patmos Library in Jamestown, Michigan, lost its taxpayer funding after staff refused to strip a handful of LGBTQ+ titles from the library’s collection. Targeted books included Gender Queer, a 2019 illustrated memoir that, as a concession to conservatives, was already shelved behind the checkout desk like a controlled substance. (The library has managed to stay open with more than $277,000 raised via GoFundMe, but some of its detractors have stepped up their efforts and are now calling for the removal of all books containing LGBTQ+ themes.) This March, conservative lawmakers in Mississippi advanced a bill aimed at combating so-called internet pornography that would in effect prohibit e-books depicting “homosexuality” or “lesbianism” (among other topics) from public schools and libraries. Meanwhile in Oklahoma, state senate Republicans passed a bill that would ban both printed and digital material from the state’s public and school libraries “that the average person age 18 or older applying contemporary community standards would find has a predominant tendency to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.” It’s easy to guess which kinds of sex those “community standards” would censor.
As crushing as the news can feel, it’s important to understand that this baseless alarmism springs from a noisy, intolerant minority. The truth is that 73 percent of U.S. adults say they oppose book bans, according to a November 2022 national survey conducted by OnePoll. Forty-three percent said they made an effort to read banned or challenged books in the previous year. And there are plenty of people actively challenging the challenges.
“Librarians on the ground are organizing, quite effectively, to push back,” says Emily Drabinski, president-elect of the American Library Association. Drabinski is openly gay and will be sending a clear message when she takes office in June: “I’m gonna have the gayest inauguration brunch in the history of libraries—it’s going to be all rainbows. Now is the time when we have to be really loud and super public about who we are.”
Community involvement is crucial too, so consider joining your local branch’s resistance efforts if you haven’t already. “There are so many more of us than there are of them,” Drabinski says of the would-be censors. “I know we’re on the right side of history and I know we’re on the right side of the present. I totally believe we’re going to win.”
LGBTQ+ writing is essential not just to the queer community—as a guiding beacon of survival, wisdom, truth, and excellence—but to a general public that benefits from understanding the breadth of human experience. Sample some of that goodness on the following pages, where you’ll find stirring passages* from 29 LGBTQ+ novels, memoirs, and more, most of which have roared into existence since last Pride season alone. May we be able to read freely, everywhere, and without apology.
You Might Also Like
