Just So We’re Queer, We’re Still Celebrating Pride Without You, Google Calendar!
June 05, 2025
Gasp! Google Calendar looks much less iridescent and fabulous this June. It’s giving a serious case of the blahs, and the face card is nothing but a 404 error. Where’s that righteous realness for human rights? Oh, that’s right. Google Calendar banished Pride Month into the cyber memory hole. Well, that’s on them. They’ll sashay away into the quicksand of queerphobia as we werk it to keep the party going nonstop.
The GLAAD Alert Desk’s report of anti-trans hate on the rise and the murder of actor Jonathan Joss, known for his role as John Redcorn on King of the Hill, are devastating reminders of why we march for Pride in the first place. This handful of titles from Beacon’s catalog honors this year’s theme of rising up in protest. These titles are also a shout-out to LGBTQ+ writers. Because writing is yet another form to protest.
Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950
“What do we gain from the stories of trans people who have not been sufficiently studied? Trans narratives that were lost, forgotten, or destroyed can still describe breakthroughs, adventures, and influential moments in transgender history. After years of research, it is clear we need to change our cultural appreciation of queer, trans, and gender history. We can use lost histories to foster this understanding—and change—for future trans generations.”
—Eli Erlick
“it is dangerous to love him
to wipe tears from his eyes in a diner
we could die
for what sounds escape our mouths
in the jungle I bare my teeth
add extra edge to my eyes to protect
our untouched futures
each day we escape dying
we danger dodge
twisting open
new doors”
—W. J. Lofton, “danger dodge”
“The day of my father’s funeral had also been my nineteenth birthday. As we drove him to the graveyard, the spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us. It seemed to me that God himself had devised, to mark my father’s end, the most sustained and brutally dissonant of codas. And it seemed to me, too, that the violence which rose all about us as my father left the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his eldest son. I had declined to believe in that apocalypse which had been central to my father’s vision; very well, life seemed to be saying, here is something that will certainly pass for an apocalypse until the real thing comes along.”
—James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son”
“No doubt in Holland,
when van Gogh was a boy,
there were swans drifting
over the green sea
of the meadows, and no doubt
on some warm afternoon
he lay down and watched them,
and almost thought: this is everything.
What drove him
to get up and look further
is what saves this world,
even as it breaks
the hearts of men.”
—Mary Oliver, “Everything”
In Theory, Darling: Searching for José Esteban Muñoz and the Queer Imagination
“Admittedly, it gets exhausting thinking about how to combat erasure. For queer people of color, erasure has defined our collective histories. We have had to fight tooth and nail to recover ourselves in historical narratives that have erased our queerness, or our color, or both at the same time. I think about it when I don’t necessarily even want to think about it. Sitting at home over dinner, or at a bar sipping a cocktail, stewing in queer rage over what was, or what could have been, pointing out pain and injustice on a Monday night or an early Friday evening, not exactly sure what to do with the feelings.”
—Marcos Gonsalez
Let Us Play: Winning the Battle for Gender Diverse Athletes
“Today, gender-diverse people, athletes and non-athletes alike, are facing an unprecedented threat to their very existence. This includes their right to play sports on the team of their choice. And the worsening struggles of trans athletes is occurring while their access to proper healthcare is being eroded. We can’t talk about these two issues as if they’re separate. They are deeply connected. It’s never been more important to debunk the misinformation and misunderstanding regarding trans athletes in order to improve our society as a whole and pave a peaceful path for future athletes of all genders and sexual orientations.”
—Harrison Browne and Rachel Browne
Mean Little deaf Queer: A Memoir
“I thought I’d try my usual trick of performing ‘disabled,’ but the world had progressed somewhat. My assigned counselor had exactly the same kind of deafness I did and saw right through the act. As it turned out Robyn, my counselor, was queer herself. (We are everywhere.) And Robyn had once used the small kind of mini shuttle hearing aids I had, and she was pushing hard for me to do as she had done and get a cochlear implant. I remained unimpressed by her arguments until in the middle of our conversation she reached over, rummaged in her purse, picked up her cell phone, and took a call. I was overcome by the white-hot flame of cell phone envy, which is way worse than penis envy because everyone has a cell phone.”
—Terry Galloway
Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples
“Shortly after [James Baldwin and Lucien Happersberger] became a couple, Happersberger expressed concern that Baldwin’s jittery nervousness meant he was on the verge of a mental breakdown. So the younger man took his new lover to Switzerland, where the pace was slower and the air was healthier than in Paris. They landed in the tiny village of Loèche-les-Bains, where the Happersberger family had a small chalet. ‘There was nothing else for Jimmy to do in that village,’ Happersberger later said, ‘but to work on his novel.’ The partners then went about pursuing their individual creative interests—Happersberger painting and Baldwin writing. For the latter, the words flew onto paper more quickly and more gracefully than ever before.”
—Rodger Streitmatter
“My being skinny had a lot to do with how much I enjoyed sex. I liked the way I looked when I was skinny, and that’s a big deal— liking the way you look. I was still comparing my body to women’s bodies in magazines, but I’d moved beyond Sears catalogues and National Geographic. I was into Playboy, and not at all for the articles: I combed that magazine for women I could possibly become. But more than Playboy, there was tranny porn.”
—Kate Bornstein
Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States
“[A]s LGBT movements have institutionalized, visions of queer liberation have been tamed into a narrow rhetoric of equality within existing systems rather than challenges to the systemic violence and oppression they produce. As Urvashi Vaid, a former National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) director, acknowledges, ‘The goal of winning mainstream tolerance . . . differs from the goal of winning liberation or changing social institutions in lasting, long-term ways.’ Within this frame, anyone who is perceived as not ‘respectable’ enough is seen to be undermining LGBT access to power, and therefore expendable. Ruthann Robson puts it bluntly: ‘LGBT rights’ agendas are premised on an understanding that ‘distance from criminality is a necessary condition of equality.’”
—Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock
The Rainbow Ain’t Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity
“Each color of the rainbow was intended to represent the diversity and solidarity of our communities, visually capturing our nuances, our differences and sameness, and our complex identities. The flag was created as a symbol to not only spread love and inclusivity but also to counter sexual and gendered regulation within mainstream society . . . However, throughout time, some of the most vulnerable yet resilient people within our communities have not found the rainbow marker to symbolize diversity, inclusion, or solidarity. For many, it has symbolized terror—racialized and gendered terror to be specific—causing many to disidentify from the flag’s symbolism, use, and consumption.”
—Kaila Adia Story
We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America
edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page
“When I finally came out as a queer transgender woman at 27 in Tallahassee, Florida, where I was doing my graduate degree, it saved me from committing suicide. It saved me—even as it meant losing something else. I had already decided, months before, that I would not return to Dominica until I could feel safe there as an openly transgender woman. Luckily, I was a dual citizen; all the same, Dominica was my home, and now I had lost it. My parents themselves told me not to return. I cried, many nights, at the things my mother said to me, things I knew mothers could say but never imagined mine would: that I would be disowned, that I should forget I had a mother, that I was a failure and an abomination against God, that she herself now felt suicidal. I still hear those words, sometimes, when the night is too quiet.”
—Gabrielle Bellot, “Stepping on a Star”
About the Author
Christian Coleman is the digital marketing manager at Beacon Press and editor of Beacon Broadside. Before joining Beacon, he worked in writing, copy editing, and marketing positions at Sustainable Silicon Valley and Trikone. He graduated from Boston College and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Follow him on Twitter at @coleman_II and on Bluesky at @colemanthe2nd.bsky.social.