Queer Love and the Right to be Happy

For this meetup, we’re reading and discussing two classic queer romances: * Maurice by *E. M. Forster* \- A male/male love story about honesty\, class\, repression\, and the courage it takes to choose love in a world that says you shouldn’t\. * The Price of Salt / Carol by *Patricia Highsmith* \- A female/female love story about longing\, risk\, freedom\, and two women trying to imagine a life beyond the rules written for them\. These books provide a chance to talk about love from more than one angle. For straight readers, this is an opportunity to look from the other side; to sit with stories where love is not casual, easy, or socially guaranteed. For LGBTQ+ readers, this is also a space to acknowledge the long history of having to hide, translate, soften, or defend love that should never have needed defending in the first place. We’ll talk about romance, shame, courage, identity, social pressure, and the quiet radical act of wanting happiness. Read one or both. Come as you are.