Pride month is populated by LGBTQ iconography, celebrating the figures across history who demanded the right to live and love freely. Yet how is gay history oversimplified when we only spotlight the heroes of the movement? In Bad Gays, authors Ben Miller and Huew Lemmey have the courage to complicate things. Recounting the lives of people who made mistakes, harmed others, acted in contradictory ways, and happened to be queer, they reveal hidden, human nuances across queer history. At the Library, Miller will offer a more critical perspective on the current status of LGBTQ politics, asking who has been excluded from the political terrain, how previous political failures have been glossed over, and how introducing nuance into our understanding of queer identity can lead to a more just queer future. 

About the speaker:

Ben Miller is a writer and historian living in Berlin. With Huw Lemmey, he hosts Bad Gays, a podcast about evil and complicated queers in history, which has been downloaded nearly a million times; a book based on the show and passionately arguing for a more complex and political queer public history, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, was published by Verso in 2022. Since 2018, he has been a member of the board of the Schwules Museum, the world’s largest independent institution devoted to archiving and preserving LGBTQI* histories and visual cultures.

Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Miller will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.

This event requires advance registration.

Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.