This revelation not only unifies the canon, but it also reminds readers that beneath Duplechan's breezy style lurks a great deal of pain and suffering. Indeed, the humor with which his work is infused is often a coping mechanism. While Duplechan may be a comic writer—he has described his books as "romantic comedies"-- he knows that in life comedy and tragedy coexist and intensify each other.

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Duplechan is a student of comparative religions. After many years of being alienated from Christianity, in his forties he returned to the faith, though not to the fundamentalism with which he grew up. For several years he served as a deacon in the Metropolitan Community Church and even considered entering a seminary.

Duplechan and his husband Greg Harvey currently attend Westwood Presbyterian Church, where they sing in the chancel choir.

The African-American gay male literary tradition consists of a substantial body of texts and includes some of the most gifted writers of the twentieth century.

In the twenty years since its first appearance in the West, AIDS has been the subject of a large body of literature, most of it written by gay men and much of it designed to expose readers as closely as possible to the emergency of the epidemic and the suffering of affected individuals.

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.

Combining elements of incongruity, theatricality, and exaggeration, camp is a form of humor that helps homosexuals cope with a hostile environment.

Like other minority groups, gay men and lesbians have had to develop both a particular sense of humor among themselves in order to make their marginal social status endurable and also a defensive awareness toward the rest of the world in order to disarm their adversaries with laughter.

The glbtq history of Los Angeles, the U.S.'s second largest metropolis, is replete with cultural, social, and political firsts.

James Baldwin, a pioneering figure in twentieth-century literature, wrote sustained and articulate challenges to American racism and mandatory heterosexuality.

The pseudonymous Andrew Holleran has placed his homosexuality at the center of his commercially and critically successful novels.

Controversial playwright, novelist, and essayist Larry Kramer has been a pioneer in the gay political response to AIDS in America.

One of the most gifted interpreters of romantic ballads in the history of American popular music, Johnny Mathis is notoriously reticent about his own romantic life.

Mystery writer Michael Nava has increasingly been recognized as an important novelist whose mature work transcends the limited expectations of a popular and highly specialized genre.

Singer Johnnie Ray caused a sensation in the 1950s with energetic concert performances of hit songs, but his career was damaged by arrests for solicitation and gossip about his sexuality.

One of the most prominent and highly acclaimed figures of contemporary gay literature, Edmund White works in many distinct categories of fiction and nonfiction.