Mario Mieli was a leading figure in the Italian gay movement of the 1970s, respected as one of the movement's most profound intellectuals. He committed suicide in 1983 at the age of 30. His work Towards a Gay Communism (Pluto, 2018) was considered a controversial classic of the era.Massimo Prearo is currently a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Research Centre Politesse of the University of Verona, where he is studying the rise of Italian LGBT activism in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. He is also the Director of the academic electronic journal Genre, Sexualité & Société.Tim Dean is Professor of English at the University of Illinois. He is the author of numerous books including Porn Archives (Duke University Press, 2014), Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (University of Chicago Press, 2009), and Beyond Sexuality (University of Chicago Press, 2000). Evan Calder Williams is a writer, theorist and artist based in Santa Cruz, California. He is the author of Combined and Uneven Apocalypse (Zero, 2015).

'An indispensable, pioneering example of the long, difficult effort to articulate queer struggle with anti-capitalist struggle'

• Foreword: 'I Keep My Treasure in My Arse' by Tim DeanIntroduction by Massimo PrearoTranslator’s Preface by Evan Calder WilliamsPreface1. Homosexual Desire is Universal2. Fire and Brimstone, or How Homosexuals Became Gay3. Heterosexual Men, or Rather Closet Queens4. Crime and Punishment5. A Healthy Mind in a Perverse Body6. Towards a Gay Communism7. The EndAppendix A: Unpublished Preface to Homosexuality and Liberation by Mario Mieli (1980)Appendix B: Translator’s additional note from Chapter 1Index