When I started working on Medicine for the Blues, I insisted that it have a happy ending. This conviction first dawned on me when I saw a gay-themed film at the Seattle International Film Festival back in the 1980’s. It was a French film called The Wounded Man [L’homme blessé, original title, 1983], which climaxes with a murder-suicide. As the film came to an end, the audience booed loudly.

That was a revelation to me. I had become so used to gay stories ending with a suicide, that it didn’t even occur to me that there was something wrong there. The lyrics to the theme song for the Best of the Left podcast says it brilliantly: “It’s a cryin’ shame, how we get so trained.”

The antidote for movies like The Wounded Man is movies like Shelter by Jonah Markowitz and A Beautiful Thing by Hettie Macdonald. Check them out.

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Read more about LBTQ history in my novel Acquaintance. Buy the book HERE.

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