This post was submitted by Philip Clark

Today’s column will mark my last for now with TNG. Before I exit stage left, I wanted to take a moment or two to thank everyone and explain why I’m walking away.

There’s a variety of reasons for the decision, but my main one is simply that I have too many other obligations at the moment. In addition to a changing job and some changing priorities, I am hard at work to wrap up a four-year editing process on my first book, Persistent Voices: An Anthology of Poets Lost to AIDS. It will be released this fall by Alyson Books, which is an exciting time, but also one full of deadlines I have to hit. That, combined with a variety of other writing and editing projects, is leaving me too stretched and stressed to research and write my history and books columns for TNG without a loss of quality. I’d rather step away than see that happen.

This isn’t an easy decision, though, because there were still so many history columns I wanted to write! I wanted to talk about my visit to the Parker/Russo Library in New York, and a famed children’s book author who wrote a beautiful and bizarre gay novel, and how artists as diverse as Keith Haring and the Village People became co-opted and prettied up for popular consumption. I won’t be able to tell you about the unknown connection between Al Gore and a gay poet, or share the sculptures of African-American artist Richmond Barthé, or ask “Who’s Lisa Ben?” I wanted to talk more about community, which is why we’re all here, and about sex, which so often gets shoved under the rug in our rush to respectability, and about art, which makes it all worthwhile.

But even though it may not be on this site, I will never stop writing about these people and places and ideas. My first post for TNG was roughly a year ago, about Gay Youth Pride Day in D.C. This past Saturday, I represented the Rainbow History Project at this year’s Gay Youth Pride. As the kids (and adults!) filtered by RHP’s table, it was amazing to see how many faces lit up while looking at the books and brochures and timelines about D.C. gay history. I think gay kids (and adults!) really appreciate learning about the history of the GLBT people who came before them…as long as they know that history exists.

So it’s goodbye for now, but thanks to everyone who read my columns, and special thanks to anyone who took the time to contact me about or make a kind comment. It was deeply, deeply appreciated. You can catch up to me over at the Rainbow History Project, at Velvet Mafia: Queer Fiction, Poetry, and Erotica for Restless Minds, or by e-mail at philipclark@hotmail.com.

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