How do you deal with having to come out again?

Scott De Buitléir writes about what it meant to come out again when he moved away from home.

Will there ever be a case when coming out never has to be done? That one day, you can just mention having a boyfriend as another would mention having a girlfriend?

How can you go back into the closet when you go home for Christmas?

Emily Blanchard writes about the Coming Out Workshop at Lancaster University, which helps students who have to deal with coming out on their first Christmas back with the family.

The very fact that we needed to hold the session in the first place was heartbreaking enough, listening to people predict what their parents, family and friends would do or say.

A personal story about accepting a girl friend who has become true to himself.

Lauren’s personal and touching story about a friend’s journey from girl to boy, what that meant to her and what she learned from it.

The stronger version of the kind, warm, and caring friendship we had previously then developed not with the sugary feminine Bekah, but with the sweetly boyish Bek. And it became a beautiful friendship.

River Cultures’ ‘Walking Proud in East London’ LGBT Oral History Project

An exhibition of oral histories of 51 remarkable lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans East Enders is being unveiled throughout February for LGBT History Month 2011.

Celebrating LGBT history means honouring the institutions the LGBT community has built and needed at different times and places, through football clubs, politics, dance classes and youth groups to bars, bath houses, book clubs or churches.

On the world of gay television after Queer as Folk

QaF changed how television dealt with homosexuality, and it also led to the Dr Who revival.

Queer as Folk first aired on 23 February 1999. There were reactions from the tabloids, from Conservative MPs and most surprisingly from Becks Beer, who withdrew their sponsorship.

A ‘weddingophobe’ takes the plunge.

A journey from resistance to acceptance.

I don’t mean to sound as if getting a civil partnership with a foreigner is as simple as getting an Oyster card or a lottery ticket – you have to really want it and the Home Office obviously must be satisfied it is valid. It took six months of applications, travelling, meeting relatives, and missing each other.

Dr Who author David Llewllyn is the guest columnist this month.

David Llewllyn writes about science-fiction, and how it addresses the subject of sexuality.

It’s curious that while non-genre television still tip-toes around the subject of sexuality, sci-fi and fantasy programmes, from Buffy to Torchwood, have tackled it with aplomb. Perhaps this is the Trojan Horse principle in action, and audiences are more willing to accept gay and lesbian characters if they are surrounded by aliens and vampires.

Maurice, the book that helped me to understand my sexuality

How the book, following on from the film, changed the life of William Summers.

Maurice is not a great film. It is not even as great a book as Forster’s others. Yet at the age of sixteen I found it to be revolutionary.

A personal take on civil partnerships

It is not in the end about weddings but about the right to have one.

Even at my best friend’s wedding I had to ward off the evil-eye of the mother-in-law, who thought of me as a second-class citizen as well as other things I will not commit to this page. The Daily Mail had done its work on her.

From Recipes to Pecs: A brief personal history of gay magazines

A look back at this history of gay magazines, and recollections of their importance of the coming out process, by Paul Baker.

Gay Times used to feature pictures of gay celebrities or icons on its front cover in the 1980s and early 1990s – can you imagine Jimmy Somerville getting on the front cover of GT now? By the mid 1990s a change was afoot and now the rules were that the front cover was always a meaty young orange torso, with almost every other issue featuring the word SEX in big bold capitals.