ZMag.org – By Michael Bronski
Although I’ve only been teaching gay and lesbian studies for eight years, my involvement in writing about it (and participating in it) stretch back almost four decades. I have learned innumerable things during that time – and engaging with younger queer people has changed my mind about a number of issues. One of the most important changes has come from my realization that teaching “history” is a lot harder than teaching about social issues. Students have no trouble comprehending and grappling with complicated legal issues and political theory. They have no problem figuring out a causal historical timeline, but they often have no real sense of what this recent history felt like, or the extraordinarily high level of emotional content that fueled it or the emotions that emerged from it.