GLR September-October 2025

succeeded, and in July 2011 the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act—known as the FAIR Act—became law. It was the first such mandate in the U.S. Passage of the FAIR Act was cause for celebration, but as Romesburg demonstrates in compelling detail, it was far from the end of the story. Activists had to work for several more years to make implementation possible. As California state education officials began reviewing the pre-existing frame work for history and social science curriculum content, a statewide coalition of LGBT activists came together. It first had to fight to defeat right-wing Christian efforts to have the FAIR Act repealed. But then, with the help of professional historians and other educators, it also had to create resources to aid individual educators across the state. It pushed pub lishers to revise textbooks to include significant LGBT his torical figures and events. Perhaps most significantly, it had to keep pressuring California’s Board of Education to make inclusion a reality. As Romesburg reveals, “in the end, we were successful.” In 2016, five years after passage of the FAIR Act, Califor

nia’s new History-Social Science Framework had LGBT con tent for inclusion in elementary, middle, and high school classes, from the second to the twelfth grade. And, as he turns his attention away from California to the national picture, Romesburg takes pride in the “incredible strides” made since 2011. Trade publishers are now producing textbooks that have a significant amount of LGBT material in them. And while con servative states are passing “Don’t Say Gay” laws, seven oth ers—Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington—have approved inclusion. Apart from the overall arc of the history that Romesburg laid out, what most touched me about his narrative were the in stances of courageous and innovative action by individual teachers. Even without mandates, many teachers have taken it upon themselves to add queer stories into their teaching of U.S. history. This is no small achievement, since even college-level history courses are often lacking this content. If college students who are aiming to be teachers are not learning this history in their undergraduate years, it will make the work of inclusion harder to implement. But, as Romesburg demonstrates, activist educators are making resources available. Projects like History Unerased offer tremendous online resources available to teach ers everywhere. In this period of escalating attacks on the LGBT commu nity, Romesburg’s account of the dedicated, determined work of activist educators over more than a generation provides some much-needed hope and inspiration. It can also serve as a re source for future progress.

MRI Strapped down on my back in a sci-fi spacecraft, I wait, like an astronaut, for liftoff.

— Linda Pastan, “MRI”

After he mummifies me in white blankets and secures my ears with old headphones, a black, tipped-back tiara, the kind tech slides me into this dark, narrow tunnel, akin to an old morgue’s cold chamber, only this weird geometry pumps out music I once danced to nearly naked and sweating in a plastic, wide-bar cage while guys with dollar bills watched and wanted perfect thrusts, squats, and glazed eyes, their own cheap, firm grasps, a chance. Not now. Some thirty years on, I lie here obedient as a dead, bloated extra on SVU, my eyes gauging closed space, and I want to rip off the cheap shroud, noise blockers, and silly gown, have the bouncer hoist me, lithe, tanned, thonged, onto the platform so I can grind for familiar scanning as trance or techno pulse an expert meeting whose warm mouth offers fireworks and no regrets— unlike this affair that leads right to the doctor’s sterile office, disinterest, and pat speech.

B ILLY C LEM

September–October 2025

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