Brokeback Mountain is an elegy, in which one man, who loved another and was loved in return, but who then rejected him out of shame and fear, remembers and grieves over the loss of his friend. This approach not only relates Brokeback Mountain to the nostalgia typical of Western narrative, but also to the ancient tradition of masculine homoerotic poetry, which begins with the Greeks and Romans and extends through the Renaissance and the Romantics to contemporary gay writing.

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Of course, for audiences today, this sense of nostalgia for lost male love is deepened even more by regret over the tragic accidental death of one of the two beautiful, gifted actors who ensured the greatness of the film, Heath Ledger. Though the Motion Picture Academy failed to bestow and Academy Award on Ledger (or on Jake Gyllenhaal, and the brilliant film they helped to make), Brokeback Mountain stands as an extraordinary, enduring affirmation of the centrality of male love in the tradition of the American Western.

Although largely invisible to the general public, a large body of twentieth-century gay male literature by American authors was published prior to Stonewall, some of it positive but most of it tinged with misery or bleakness as the price of being published and disseminated.

After Stonewall, gay male literature became focused as a movement, aided by the development of gay newspapers, magazines, and quarterlies and the founding of serious gay and lesbian bookstores.

Although the roots of country music are in conservative rural America, in recent years many gays and lesbians have become attracted to it, and there has been an emergence of gay and lesbian country performers.

A poetic response to the death of a greatly loved person, the elegy has had since classical times a homoerotic component.

Since cinema began, Hollywood has been fascinated with finding ways of representing homosexuality.

Film spectatorship is an integral part of queer culture, affording a process of self-invention and making possible the coded articulation of queer desires and identities.

McCarthyism, which attempted in the late 1940s and early 1950s to expunge Communists and fellow travelers from American public life, made homosexuals the chief scapegoats of the Cold War.

A social role for individuals who crossed or mixed male and female characteristics was one of the most widely distributed institutions of native North America.

Post-Stonewall gay male photography merits recognition for its contribution to fine art, documentation, photo-journalism, and advertising, as well as erotica.

Although sparse in images documenting the gay community, pre-Stonewall gay male photography blurs the boundaries between art, erotica, and social history.

The International Gay Rodeo Association, a thriving group with more than thirty affiliates across the United States and in two Canadian provinces, celebrates both the cultural heritage of the rural West and the glbtq identities of its participants.

Appealing to glbtq people who enjoy romantic fantasy, the queer romance novel has recently come into its own.

Critics use the term male romantic friendship to describe strong attachments between men in works ranging from ancient epics and medieval romances to Renaissance plays, Gothic novels, westerns, and war movies.

From ancient times, homoerotic writing has been a notable part of the literature of war.

Both male and female berdaches (or two-spirit persons), common among Native American tribal cultures, were characterized by gender variation sanctioned by supernatural dreams and visions.

Both male and female berdaches (or two-spirit persons), common among Native American tribal cultures, were characterized by gender variation sanctioned by supernatural dreams and visions.

Montgomery Clift was not only an extraordinary actor, but also an isolated and tortured, closeted gay man, who used drugs and alcohol to escape his pain.

Playwright Mart Crowley deserves honor for having blazed the trail for gay-themed theater with his 1969 groundbreaking play The Boys in the Band.

Although he spent only two years in Hollywood before his untimely death, James Dean became an enduring icon of American film, one whose brooding non-conformity helped challenge rigid notions of masculinity.

Although actor Cary Grant consistently denied rumors of his bisexuality, his good looks, charisma, and ambiguous sexuality enchanted women and men alike.

Prominent American artist Delmas Howe seeks to visualize gay history by linking the past with the present in intensely homoerotic, deceptively naturalistic paintings.

A product of Hollywood's star system, Rock Hudson became an international symbol of heterosexuality, wearing a mask until it was savagely ripped off when he was diagnosed with AIDS.

Long before she came out, lesbians had made singer k.d. lang their own.

An influential figure in a unique American style of art, George Quaintance was a pioneer of male physique painting.

One of the most significant and influential American movie directors of the twentieth century, Nicholas Ray created characters and situations that continue to resonate with queer viewers.

In his novels about hustling, preeminently City of Night and Numbers, John Rechy moves from the world of homosexual behavior into the world of gay identity.

British director John Schlesinger has been a significant force in introducing homosexual themes into mainstream British and American films.

Defiantly rejecting the invisibility, homophobia, and indignities of pre-Stonewall life, the men in Tom of Finland's drawings reflect a hyper-masculine, working-class version of homosexual manhood that proved important to the emerging gay rights movement.

The Village People, a disco-era singing group, successfully translated the interests, coded language, and iconography of the gay male subculture into music that crossed over into mainstream pop.

Although Andy Warhol is generally remembered either for a single film--Sleep (1963)--or for works that he did not actually direct, his contribution to gay cinema is incalculable.