Photo by Adrian Sotomayor
For as long as there has been sex, men have been having it with men. Homosexuality is nothing new. So why does it seem like gay men have been completely invisible in entertainment until relatively recently? Well, probably because for hundreds of years, we were considered forbidden and taboo, too dangerous to discuss or even acknowledge.
But as it turns out, we HAVE been there. You just had to know where to look. My guest this week is Zan Christensen, founder of the LGBT-focused comic book publisher Northwest Press. The first book Zan ever published was a graphic novel adaptation of a same-sex love story written in the 1800s.
The original work was written anonymously, since association with homosexuality was a punishable offense in repressed Victorian England. Back then, gay men were forced to hide. Zan grew up in a somewhat repressed environment himself, but hiding his homosexuality was wasn't an option for long.
Here's a little forbidden British lust for you:
And the gay romance of Maurice, which will always leave me fanning myself:
Madonna throwing caution to the wind in Truth or Dare:
Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/