Frans Kellendonk's Mystiek lichaam (The Mystical Body [1986]) is one of the few novels in Dutch and Flemish literature in which AIDS plays an important role. With this book, Kellendonk, who was born in 1951 and died of AIDS in 1990, caused a major uproar in the Dutch literary community.

Many critics assumed a one-to-one relation between the philosophy expressed in this novel and Kellendonk's own views on social topics, and they accused him of antisemitism and .

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Mystiek lichaam is a family saga about a father, his gay son Leendert, and his "silly" pregnant daughter Magda or "Prul." Despite her silliness, Prul's heterosexuality leads to procreation and is associated with life and nature, whereas Leendert's homosexuality is sterile and associated with death (by an unnamed, "new disease") and artificiality.

The portrayal of homosexuality in this novel is certainly not very encouraging to gay readers. Nevertheless, the doubts Kellendonk had about his own homosexuality, gay lifestyles, and gay liberation deserve literary expression. They challenge readers to redefine their own positions and roles in today's society.

Famous as a major gay tourist destination and for its tolerance of glbtq people, in the second half of the twentieth century Amsterdam became a leader in the struggle for glbtq equality.

In addition to having many legal protections for glbtq people, Belgium became the second country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

Nineteenth-century Decadent literature either describes aspects of decadent life and society or reflects the decadent literary aesthetic.

Although the question of homosexual identity is a complex one, it has polarized activists, theorists, and literary critics into two primary camps, essentialists and constructionists, both of which can contribute usefully to an understanding of the gay and lesbian literary heritage.

The successes of the Dutch emancipation movement have served as an inspiration to the international struggle for glbtq equality.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, intimate, exclusive, and often erotic romantic friendships between women were largely perceived as normal and socially acceptable.

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.

The relative popularity of the term "third sex" to refer to homosexuals is closely connected to its use by some of the most prominent representatives of the early homosexual rights movement in Germany.

Alexandrian Greek poet C. P. Cavafy has written some of the greatest homoerotic poems of all time.

The brief reign of the third-century Roman Emperor Elagabalus was legendary for its sexual excesses and he became emblematic of the debauched, sexually perverse ruler.

Radclyffe Hall, who lived her lesbianism openly and proudly, is best known for The Well of Loneliness, arguably the most important lesbian novel ever written.

German-born Magnus Hirschfeld deserves recognition as a significant theorist of sexuality and the most prominent advocate of homosexual emancipation of his time.

Amsterdam's Homomonument is one of the world's foremost public memorials acknowledging the persecution endured by gay men and lesbians during World War II and throughout history.

The influential novelist Gerard Reve was a pioneer in European gay writing and in the liberalization of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Netherlands.

Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.