Beyond the Closet

Gay life has become increasingly open in the last decade. In Beyond the Closet, Steven Seidman examines this lifestyle change and looks at the lives of contemporary gays and lesbians to see how their "out" status has been altered. Powered by the raw, honest stories of today's gay men and women and analysis of gays in recent films and in popular culture, Seidman shows how the closet is a twentieth-century historical oddity, one that could only exist in a period that combined a strong sense of gay identity with oppressive antigay discrimination.