PALM SPRINGS -- Page-turners of the gay and lesbian romance novel type are in for a big treat next weekend, when Bold Strokes Books holds its sixth annual LGBTQ Book Festival in Palm Springs.

The book festival begins Thursday, March 1, 2012 and runs through Sunday, March 4.

Once again partnered with Casitas Laquita Resort, the four day festival will feature 30 authors reading from their latest releases, signing copies of their many books and conducting interactive panel and round-table discussions with attendees.

The first eighteen to twenty-four months of transition for the transgender person can be an awkward period of appearance, very similar to puberty. 

It is during this timeframe that a "self-centered" person in transition would indeed not take family and friends into consideration, to allow time to adjust and accept this new exterior. 

It's common for the person in transition to feel as if they have finally exited "the cave" and now that they have finally accepted themselves, they want the world to accept them, too. 

SAN DIEGO – Jeanne Córdova, author of When We Were Outlaws, will be in San Diego this weekend, giving a lecture of interest to the LGBT community.

Her talk, entitled, "The New Queer Identity," will take place at the San Diego REPertory Theater in the Lyceum space in Horton Plaza on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2012, at 6 pm.

It will precede the play, In the Wake, the latest offering from lesbian playwright Lisa Kron, which starts at 7 pm.

Child sexual abuse is sadly the norm on the evening news these days.

Almost nightly, we hear stories of rape, sexual abuse and even the murder of innocent children, specifically girls, but more and more we are hearing about male victims.

There seems to be an underlying belief system that has developed over time, almost like an epidemic, in the male community.

Those beliefs have been reinforced through the extremism of macho gender codes inflicted on our boys.

The misguided notion is that rape only happens to girls.