Search results

Within the past few years, responsible educators, librarians, parents, counselors, social workers, therapists, and religious groups of all sexual persuasions and lifestyles have recognized the need for readily available reading material for lesbian and gay youth. Unfortunately, this material is often buried, because it is embedded in larger works. To meet this need, I have compiled and annotated 100 of the best works for young homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals. I have also included a few of the best works currently available on heterosexuality as a much needed source of knowledge for all young adults whether they are gay or straight, whether they remain childless or eventually become parents.

Content analysis was used to determine how a sample of 32 gay and lesbian novels for young adults were treated in 158 reviews from five prominent reviewing journals. Findings indicate that most reviews (84.8 percent) were favourable, many (79.7 percent) contained clear reference to the homosexual content, and there were few differences between the individual reviewing journals. Some reviews contained cautions and warnings about the gay and lesbian content, some denied or downplayed it, some justified the content if it was used to teach a lesson, and most described these stories as “problem” novels. Analysis also showed that gay and lesbian fiction is now regarded as a distinct genre of young adult literature. While librarians wishing to identify gay and lesbian fiction for collection development will be able to do so through the reviewing media, ambivalence about this literature and the young adults it represents was also evident in the reviews.

This exploratory study aims to examine gay travelers’ travel psychographics (allocentricity and psychocentricity) in relation to openness about sexual orientation, collective self-esteem and socio-demographic variables.

A survey is developed and study participants are recruited from attendees at a large annual gay event. A total of 196 gay men were used as samples for correlation analysis and independent samples t-tests.

The findings suggest that collective self-esteem is positively correlated with allocentricity. Also, gay couples showed higher allocentricity than single gay men, and white/Caucasian gay men showed higher allocentricity than other ethnic minorities gay men. Yet, psychocentricity was higher for lower income gay men than higher income gay men.

Tourism marketers should recognize that the gay market is not as homogenous as it has been portrayed in the tourism literature. Hospitality service providers and destination marketers should be aware of the importance of the gay community, gay travelers’ psychographics and, more importantly, the diversity within the gay market to develop effective products and services to better position themselves in this niche market.

This research contributes to the tourism literature by enhancing the understanding of gay travelers’ socio-demographic profiles and their travel-related behaviors and perceptions.

Only data from developed countries were used to estimate the sexual orientation difference in wages. This paper is the first, which aims to identify the wage discrimination of gay men in Russia – a country where institutional discrimination and ignorance against gay men are known to present.

Gays are identified as men who reported having sex with other men in several waves of the national household survey. A wage equation is used to estimate the gay wage penalty. Extending the wage equation to implement a difference-in-difference design, the paper also evaluates the effect of the gay-propaganda law of 2013 on gay wages.

No wage discrimination is identified. The law also has no adverse effect on gay wages.

Cross-country comparison and theoretical generalizations are premature, and better identification strategies are needed to understand sexual orientation differences.

Policymakers should be aware that in both discriminatory and equitable environments, there may be hidden inequality even if researchers do not detect it.

The findings are implausible and add to existing evidence that gay discrimination measured with wage equation suffers from endogeneity and should be interpreted with caution. Particular caution should be exercised in cross-sectional and time-series comparisons, as a tendency to report the orientation honestly and unobserved confounders vary by location and time.

Purpose – In this paper, we contribute to the study of conservative, reactive mobilization through a study of the ex-gay movement in the United States.

Design/methodology/approach – Using state-level event history analyses over 25 years, we examine the role of threat, resources, and political opportunity in the formation of the first ex-gay organization in each state.

Findings – Our results demonstrate the importance of threat, particularly perceived challenges to traditional definitions of morality, in the formation of ex-gay groups. We find little support for either resource mobilization or political opportunity.

Research limitations/implications – This study indicates a need for further research on sociocultural threat and the ex-gay movement.

Originality/value – It expands scholarship on countermovement emergence, conservative and reactive countermovements, and the role of threat (especially sociocultural threat) in movements.

Reports on a comparison of the 1992 Lambda Book Award titles and a sample of titles reviewed in the Lambda Book Report with a control group of titles listed in Publishers Weekly, “Forecasts”. Finds that while the Lambda Award titles received about the same number of reviews as the control group titles, the LBR sample received significantly fewer reviews. However, both samples of gay/lesbian/ bisexual books are held in significantly fewer OCLC libraries than are the control titles. Examines the content of reviews of sample books and finds that they show no apparent bias on the part of the reviewers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the needs of potential end-users of a database dedicated to Swedish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) literature (e.g. prose, poetry, drama, graphic novels/comics, and illustrated books), in order to inform the development of a database, search interface functionalities, and an LGBTQI thesaurus for fiction.

A web questionnaire was distributed in autumn 2021 to potential end-users. The questions covered people's reasons for reading LGBTQI fiction, ways of finding LGBTQI fiction, experience of searching for LGBTQI fiction, usual search elements applied, latest search for LGBTQI fiction, desired subjects to search for, and ideal search functionalities.

The 101 completed questionnaires showed that most respondents found relevant literature through social media or friends and that most obtained copies of literature from a library. Regarding desirable search functionalities, most respondents would like to see suggestions for related terms to support broader search results (i.e. higher recall). Many also wanted search support that would enable retrieving more specific results based on narrower terms when too many results are retrieved (i.e. higher precision). Over half would also appreciate the option to browse by hierarchically arranged subjects.

This study is the first to show how readers of LGBTQI fiction in Sweden search for and obtain relevant literature. The authors have identified end-user needs that can inform the development of a new database and a thesaurus dedicated to LGBTQI fiction.

This article aims to help ensure high-quality subject access to Swedish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexual (LGBTQI) fiction, and aims to identify challenges that librarians consider important to address, on behalf of themselves and end users.

A web-based questionnaire comprising 35 closed and open questions, 22 of which were required, was sent via online channels in January 2022. By the survey closing date, 20 March 2022, 82 responses had been received. The study was intended to complement an earlier study targeting end users.

Both this study of librarians and the previous study of end users have painted a dismal image of online search services when it comes to searching for LGBTQI fiction. The need to consult different channels (e.g. social media, library catalogues and friends), the inability to search more specifically than for the broad LGBTQI category and suboptimal search interfaces were among the commonly reported issues. The results of these studies are used to inform the development of a dedicated Swedish LGBTQI fiction database with an online search interface.

The subject searching of fiction via online services is usually limited to genre with facets for time and place, while users are often seeking characteristics such as pacing, characterization, storyline, frame/setting, tone and language/style. LGBTQI fiction is even more challenging to search because indexing practices are not really being standardized or disseminated worldwide. This study helps address this important gap, in both research and practical applications.

Most young men who are homosexual are not raised in an environment in which homosexual development is even recognized, much less encouraged. It is not unusual for men who have recently identified themselves as gay to not have any idea what being gay is all about. It is common, even typical, for the gay male to “come out” during his late teens or early twenties and to begin both exploring his sexuality and developing a sense of what it means to be gay. There are many resources available which will be of great use to the newly “out” gay male. The resources in this guide may also be of interest to other gay men, but the purpose of the pathfinder as it has been constructed is to provide a strategy for: