Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature

Will Roscoe has been active in the the LGBTQ movement since 1975, when he helped found Lambda, the first Gay/Lesbian organization in Montana (still active today as the Lambda Alliance).

The following year, he served an intern at the National Gay Task Force, and in 1977, as coordinator of the Gay People’s Alliance at the University of Oregon. In 1978, he served as voter registration coordinator for the No on 6 campaign in San Francisco (the Briggs initiative).

In 1979, Will attended the first radical faerie gathering, where he met Harry Hay, and became involved in efforts that led to the founding of Nomenus, a faerie sanctuary in Oregon. In 1980, with Tede Mathews and other local artists he organized “Mainstream Exiles: a Lesbian and Gay Men’s Cultural Festival” and between 1980 and 1982, he published and edited with Bradley Rose, Vortex: A Journal of New Vision. In 1984, he became Project Coordinator for the Gay American Indians History Project and edited "Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology."

Will's research on the Native American "berdache" or two-spirit tradition has appeared in several journals and publications. He is the author of "The Zuni Man-Woman," which received the Margaret Mead Award of the American Anthropological Association and a Lambda Literary Award. He has since published "Queer Spirits: A Gay Men’s Myth Book" and edited "Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder" by Harry Hay. He is also co-editor of "Islamic Homosexualities" and "Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities." In 1998 he published "Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America," a series of historical and anthropological studies of two-spirit people and traditions. His most recent book, "Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love" received a Lambda Literary Award for best work in religion/spirituality. Under the pen name Tonne Serah, he wrote a satirical murder mystery set in the San Francisco circuit party scene, "Drop...Dead: The DJ Murders."

Will holds a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has taught in Anthropology, Native American Studies, and American Studies at UC/Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, UC/Berkeley, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Dominican College.

Will is especially proud to have been canonized as Saint Vera Severa by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for his work in promoting harm reduction in the dance music scene. In 2003, he received the Monette-Horowitz Achievement Award in recognition for lifetime contributions to combatting homophobia.

My new Kindle book (Pieces for a History of Gay Studies) recounts my involvement during the mid-1970s in founding gay academic groups in which I was unusual in that I was not doing gay research. This changed and two articles published in 1979 (The art of gay insulting, Institutional elaboration of a quasi-ethnic community) are (to some chagrin on my part) my most often cited articles.

I put together a series of books about roles and conceptions of those involved in same-sex sex between 1987 (Male Homosexuality in Central and South America) and 2002 (Pacific Homosexualities) culminating in "Homosexualities" (2000).

My University of Toronto dissertation was a social history of ethnolinguistics/sociolinguistics. It was published in 1983, revised and expanded in 1994, and what I originally conceived as my dissertation, updated with accounts of groups and networks (American Sociolinguistics, 1998). With Keelung Hong I have written two critical accounts of Anglophone social science about Taiwan (Looking Through Taiwan). I also wrote a book on the Khmer society that erected Angkor Wat (,Angkor Thom, et al.), "Angkor Life."

I am currently (not) working on two books: "Male Desire" and "Reading Sicily in English." I have lived in San Francisco since 1978, on (relatively) sunny Potrero hill since 1982, and have been writing about books, movies, and music on epinions since 2000.

I welcome feedback on my writing: at som1950@hotmail.com.