I advise supplementing any anthology with additional reading. The Erotic as Power can fit alongside of a study of their poetry. Indeed Lorde's essay on The Erotic as Power compliments nicely the poem Power, which is included in The Heath Anthology . The passage's literary quality is, I admit, not the highest, but it expresses feelings that gay and lesbian students understand and with which heterosexual students can sympathize. Several years ago there were very few books that instructors could use to help them understand gay and lesbian literature.
Today there are monographs and journals that cover the topic.
These are starting places. But I think there are lesbian and gay works that have been excluded from the canon not only because they are explicitly homosexual or lesbian, but because they express a sensibility that heterosexual critics have marginalized. The best example of this marginalization comes from British literature in Ronald Firbank, whose seemingly trivial works have been central to many gay and lesbian writers after him. In American literature, I think Jane Bowles is often left out of courses because her works look too marginal. In fact, I don't think that even gay scholars have a clear idea of what the outlines of gay and lesbian writers' finest work could be.