GLR May-June 2026

to 1981, chalked this up to the “ Christopher Street mystique”: To be published there could make a writer’s career and was, in intellectual or artistic gay circles, considered a triumph. By its tenth year, the magazine had originated several bestselling and influential books: Lovers: The Story of Two Men , by Denneny; S tates of Desire , byWhite; The Confessions of Danny Slocum , by Whitmore; I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore , by Mordden; The Mayor of Castro Street , by Randy Shilts; Jail bait , by Brad Gooch ; and Male Fantasies/Gay Realities: Inter views with Ten Men , by George Stambolian. §

This core belief also extended to gender. Christopher Street was founded with a commitment to balance lesbian and gay male voices. During its first two years, editors like Bertha Har ris and Sharon DeLano were generally successful, publishing a conversation between Elaine Noble and Rita Mae Brown; excerpts of novels by Brown, Harris, and Kate Millett; poetry by Renée Vivien; profiles of Barbara Grier and Adrienne Rich; and think pieces about female cruising and lesbian pornogra phy. Yet the magazine quickly confronted the limitations to this balancing act.

From the outset, according to Heather Frayne, the magazine’s advertising director, the readership was primarily male, and while women would read the magazine if there was an article of interest, Christopher Street did not have “a strong presence in the les bian community” due to the vibrant lesbian print ecosystem at the time, including pub

The October 1977 “Arts and Poetry” issue was its moment of coming out as a serious literary and cultural magazine.

T O RETURN TO THE EARLY DAYS , it was the Oc tober 1977 “Arts and Poetry” issue that was arguably Christopher Street ’s moment of coming out as a serious literary and cultural magazine. Published under the guest editor ship of Patrick Merla, the cover strikes the

reader with Peter Hujar’s monochrome, languorously erotic self portrait, his naked torso and chest exposed, hairy pits and all, his gently jowly face turned to the viewer, eyes simultaneously fatigued and seductively glinting. Surrounding the photograph is a sleek array of names Merla marshaled for this special edition: letters from Tennessee Williams to Donald Windham; Edmund White’s review of Jasper Johns; poems by Richard Howard, James Merrill, Thom Gunn, James Purdy, Paul Monette, and George Whitmore; photography by Nadar and Horst P. Horst; il lustrations by Don Bachardy. It boasted the first publication of Johns’ and Horst’s art in an openly gay publication and Mon ette’s first appearance in a gay magazine. Here ambitious young gay writers and artists from the post Stonewall generation appeared alongside those of a previous generation who had already become icons. In their biographies and art, they represented older and newer attitudes, styles, val ues, and stories regarding homosexuality, especially along the lines of overt versus covert, straightforwardly gay versus allu sive and opaque, out versus closeted. Included in the issue were Williams’ explicit letters of campy references to gay friends and lyrical, play-by-play descriptions of fucking; White’s discreet, dryly formal analysis of Johns’ art with no mention of the artist’s sexuality; and Horst’s chaste photographs of plants. In featuring these disparate approaches to gayness, as well as the deeply closeted (Johns), the semi-closeted (Merrill), and the openly gay (Monette, White, Whitmore), the magazine allowed them to come together, interrogate each other, and probe the boundaries and meanings of being gay. This issue is exemplary of Christopher Street ’s mission to describe, present, and cultivate a gay world. In featuring a range of gay lifestyles, from a highbrow, aristocratic homosexuality that employed implicit signals and erotic allusions to a post Stonewall generation of gay men whose world was increasingly working-class in its æsthetics and explicit in its sexual presen tation and popular tastes (Western and S/M bars, the clone look, role-playing as hypermasculine proletarians), Christopher Street was implicitly posing the question: Does a gay world exist, and, if so, can it encompass these multitudes and have them coexist in a mutually enriching, pluralistic manner? In showing what this world could be in every issue, the magazine answered in the affirmative.

lishing houses like Naiad Press and a plethora of lesbian mag azines and newsletters. As Denneny pointed out, both lesbians and gay men were grappling with their own identities and cul tures and needed their own spaces. There were financial reper cussions: when the magazine put a woman on its cover, sales slumped as male readers stayed away, yet large numbers of les bian readers would not replace them. This was not sustainable, and by the 1980s the magazine be came primarily focused on men. But while gender politics may have been top of mind, race and ethnicity were less so. It’s not

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