(Karl) Soehnlein (born November 24, 1965) is the American author of the novels The World of Normal Boys (2000), a 1970s coming-of-age story that won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Fiction; You Can Say You Knew Me When (2005), set in San Francisco during the Beat era of 1960 and the dot-com boom of 2000; and Robin and Ruby (2010), which follows the brother and sister characters of The World of Normal Boys into the mid-1980s.
[2][3] It follows a young gay man swept up in the excitement, fury, and poignancy of the AIDS activist group ACT UP/New York, of which Soehnlein was an early member, beginning in 1987.
[6] Early in his writing career he published short stories in queer literary journals including The James White Review, Modern Words, and Lodestar Quarterly.
[13] Soehnlein was prompted to found Queer Nation after being the victim of an anti-gay assault at the Wigstock festival in Tompkins Square Park in 1989.
[14] Following the mass shooting at the queer nightclub Pulse, in Orlando Florida in June 2016, Soehnlein launched the viral campaign #TwoMenKissing.
While they have been legally married since 2015, they originally exchanged vows at a commitment ceremony in San Francisco circa 2009 that was featured in The New York Times weddings section.