Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
https://ebooks.faithlife.com/product/271976/gay-bar-why-we-went-out
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: The New York Times * NPR * Vogue * Gay Times * Artforum *
“Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.” –Maggie Nelson
"Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” –New York Times Book Review
As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what’s being lost in this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history.
Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?
In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.
The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity—a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.
Comments
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Hi Matillo, thank you for bringing this to our attention, it has been removed.
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I assume gay bars are erotic, so there's that. Not like the other bars. Applying the new standards.
But I'm just mystified why you can't go thru the titles and publisher descriptions? On a decent server, with your library size, what, maybe a second to find them all. At least the ones that are fun to embarrass Logos with (that new email reporting address just doesn't quite gratify ones righteousness).
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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by what criteria?
[quote]
- Best Sellers Rank: #72,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #64 in LGBTQ+ Demographic Studies
- #73 in LGBTQ+ Biographies (Books)
- #84 in Law Enforcement Biographies
I certainly didn't read your policy as excluding biographies ... I mean next you'll be banning Saint Teresa of Ávila, Rabi'a al-Basri, Mechthild of Magdeburg ...
I thought we were past responses to individual complaints and were following understandable standards. So now I'm force to read biographies that are of no interest to me just to see if you are being true to your policy?
So seriously, i don't particularly care if this book is carried or not. I do care that the decision is made against understandable guidelines not individual complaints or biases against particular groups. On the surface of it, this appears to be a social/cultural history book not erotica which leaves me again mistrusting your policies.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I am thankful that, even if late, Logos retains some decency,
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While I find it refreshing in our topsy-turvy world when sanity makes a cameo appearance and some of these LBGTO442+ books are not deemed universally appropriate, I must admit a stylish and nuanced nostalgia for a time when drag queens were not paid from school taxes on one's property.
macOS (Logos Pro - Beta) | Android 13 (Logos Stable)
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Yeah, I would have been deeply disappointed had this one not been pulled.
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MJ. Smith said:
On the surface of it, this appears to be a social/cultural history book not erotica which leaves me again mistrusting your policies.
I disagree. Feel free to look for a copy on a place as pdfdrive to verify, but this line from the blurb that Mattillo thankfully pasted into his post, is telling enough.
"Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.” –New York Times Book Review
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for discussing gay sex.
Oxford languages definition of erotica [quote]
- literature or art intended to arouse sexual desire.
I remember when a coworker in the 1980's had watched a PBS show on gays and was musing on "how they did it" ... not realizing that 3 out of 8 people in our cul-de-sac, including two at the table, were gay. Note: because the state was our employer at the state university, it was a safe place for gays to work so we had many more than the average workplace. Ignorance breeds prejudice. I strongly support removing books of a prurient nature.
One ministry I consider important is support for Christian parents with gay children. A prior I knew was dealing with an assistant pastor, who chose to leave the priesthood, who was dealing with recognizing he was gay. The prior read widely on gay social history and culture and gay biographies. He even met with a counselor for several months so that he truly understood what he was dealing with. Another pastor, a conversative Presbyterian, counseled a young parishioner who was gay and wanted a military career. The encounters led to the pastor changing denominations and becoming a military chaplain. Given that pastors and priors rarely speak of the topics of counseling, I assume that if I know of two cases in different denominations, it must not be rare. This is the sort of book I suspect Christian parents and pastors would need when confronting the situation in real life and actually wanting to understand the person they are counseling. Canned "it's a sin, get over it" doesn't cut it. They have come for counseling in part because the understand that the church says "it's a sin". Do we ban books that discuss alcoholism? drug dependency? gambling adiction? Tell me, why is sex any different - we have the same need to understand.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
One ministry I consider important is support for Christian parents with gay children.
I strongly agree. But this book, at least as described in the information provided by the original poster, does not appear to be well suited to that purpose:
- "...this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history."
- "Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit..."
- "...a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory..."
I have a child who has periodically questioned their sexuality. My spouse and I have found Rosaria Butterfield's books, among others, very helpful. But based on the promotional blurb, at least, this doesn't appear to be something that would be useful.
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EastTN said:
- "...this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history."
- "Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit..."
- "...a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory..."
As I have indicated with bold highlighting, I read those as exactly why the book likely has value. Rosaria Butterfield looks interesting; I've not seen it.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:EastTN said:
- "...this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history."
- "Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit..."
- "...a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory..."
As I have indicated with bold highlighting, I read those as exactly why the book likely has value. Rosaria Butterfield looks interesting; I've not seen it.
As so often, it may be in the eye of the beholder. I would highlight different words in bold. There's a difference between studying and promoting ("celebrating"). And regardless of the topic, "randy" is not what I'm looking for from Logos.
There's doubtless a place for books that position alternative sexualities as a source of "liberation" - but wherever that place may be, I personally am not looking for them in my Bible software package.
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MJ. Smith said:
Tell me, why is sex any different - we have the same need to understand.
My first response is Amen, sister. But then I remembered how an Abbot I know commented how across history the Church is given by God even leaders that have problems with the same things that the larger society has.With the problems our society has with sex, a very good case can be made that we need even MORE to understand it, and so we should not be afraid of resources like this.
The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann
L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials
L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze
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All this and now with Logos going Subscription, I am slowly getting squeezed out. After all the 10's of thousands I have invested. I just never thought this would happen.
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GaoLu said:
All this and now with Logos going Subscription, I am slowly getting squeezed out. After all the 10's of thousands I have invested. I just never thought this would happen.
I've never bought a paid version of Logos, but have spent $10k+ on resources. You and I will still be able to access all our books just fine. Mark Barnes has said over on the General Forum:
Will I be forced to subscribe to Logos in the future? What about all the books I’ve already bought?
No one will be forced to subscribe to Logos to retain access to their existing content. You will always be able to access all the books you’ve purchased without further payment. Your books are your books. Subscriptions are for those who want access to the latest improvements, which aim to help you uncover deeper insights in less time.
Subscriptions aren’t required to maintain access to your existing content. They’re for those who want access to new and improved features. With Logos, your content investment is always safe, and you’ll always be able to access it for free. The subscription benefits....for features don’t apply to books in the same way, so we don’t foresee a time when we’ll stop selling perpetual licenses to books.
we will continue to update our software, for free, to run on future operating systems, so that you can continue to enjoy the books you have bought.
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Thanks Paul. All that is reassuring. I am sure Logos probably won't soon cut off access to my investment. Even if it ages out--there will be the future free version of the software. Although, I suppose that won't be seen as profitable for long. I am inclined NOT to invest much more in the current state of Logos. But we shall see what the future brings. All that may change for the better. New leadership will be a good thing. We shall see.
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