As of August 2001, 12 states, as well as the District of Columbia, had laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation" (Horvath & Ryan 115). In the case, High Tech Gays v. Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office (1987), a district court held that lesbians and gay men constituted a quasi-suspect class because "homosexuals have historically been the object of pernicious and sustained hostility, and it is fair to say

This is to the extent whereby the theorists have begun to look at lesbianism as a provisional identity in that it takes into account the racial, class and ethnical differences and these are what the queer theory has failed to do so far Epstein, 1994: 197() Some scholars have argued that the development of the queer theory means that lesbianism is not going to disappear anytime in the recent future.

Homosexuality in Shakespeare's Tragedies Elements of sexuality and lust are very openly present in the works of Shakespeare's tragedies. No matter if one is reading Othello, Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, one can't deny the frequent allusions to concepts such as love and lust, hatred and desire, want and self-absorption, even violence as they relate to relationships and sexuality. This common theme pervaded much of the work that was written during

homosexual practices might have begun in the early centuries, the word "sodomy" was first used by a Catholic missionary, now a saint, Father Peter Damien around 1050. By sodomy, he meant masturbation and anal intercourse between men, a sin he condemned as the most perverse of sexual sins in his long letter to the Pope, entitled "the Book of Gomorrah." He emphasized that God designed sex exclusively for procreation

African-American Duality of Identity: Literary Criticism of the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin James Baldwin's face, with its piercing eyes and craggy forehead, is a frequently depicted image upon anthologies and volumes of African-American literature and criticism, particularly post-colonial criticism that emphasizes the alienated sense of self and national identity frequently experienced by Blacks in America during the 1960's when Baldwin wrote some of his greatest works, including the short

Willa Cather About the Author The author Willa Cather Sibert born on 1873 is an American writer, and one of the country's leading novelists. Here vigilantly skilled prose express dramatic pictures of the American landscape along with those people who were molded. She was influenced by the writing style of the American regional writer Sarah Orne Jewett. However, she set many of her works in Nebraska and the American Southwest areas with which