Activism

  • The Shape of Permission

    The Shape of Permission

    The voice promised renewal. It promised safety. It promised pride. It spoke about enemies without ever fully defining them. It spoke about “them” with just enough vagueness that anyone already disliked could be folded into the category. Outsiders. Intellectuals. Journalists. Artists. Minorities. “Degenerates.” The list stayed flexible on purpose. At first, nothing felt extreme.

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  • A Moment for Conscience

    A Moment for Conscience

    I waited until Christmas was over to say this, because some things need room and the right moment to be said. As a son, a father, and a grandfather, I have been sitting with what has unfolded over these past weeks. The continued revelations surrounding the Epstein case, and the effort to minimize or obscure…

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  • SNAP and the Truth About Who Needs Help

    I keep seeing posts floating around about how people who collect SNAP benefits are lazy or do not want to work. Let’s deal with the facts. Right now about 42 million Americans receive assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That is roughly one in eight people in this country. Of those households, nearly 60…

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  • The America We Were Sold

    I wish I still believed in the United States of America we were sold when we were kids. You remember the one. The country built on the solid foundation of freedom. The place where all men were said to be created equal, and where anyone could achieve the American dream if they worked hard enough.…

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  • The Chosen

    My relationship with God is not a complicated one. I live on very even ground with Him. We have an understanding, a quiet agreement that I am who He made me to be. Sometimes I believe that being gay has actually made me one of His chosen. Think about it. You come into this world…

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  • It Only Takes One

    The danger of what lies ahead feels familiar to anyone who remembers Kent State. On May 4, 1970, in Ohio, a group of college students gathered on the Kent State University campus to protest the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. They were young. They were angry. They were unarmed. The National Guard had…

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  • If you believe in free speech and the First Amendment, then you also have to believe in the right of others to speak their minds, even when what they say clashes with your own beliefs. That is the hard truth at the center of democracy. Free speech was never meant to protect only the voices…

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  • The Zeitgeist of Hate

    I came to an understanding recently. What we are dealing with in the United States is not political and should not be framed that way. It runs deeper than red or blue. Yes, people often line up that way and the extremes on both sides dominate the noise. But most Americans live in the quiet…

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  • When I first began writing Grace, it was not because I wanted to predict a future. It was because I was watching the horror of hate and how fast a city and a nation could ignite into flames. The story began for me in 1992 after the Rodney King verdict when I saw how quickly…

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  • For years I told myself I would find a man and build a life that did not have to exist in bars or bathhouses. I wanted something steadier. I wanted a partner I could grow old with, a man I could have a family with, someone who would walk beside me in the ordinary days…

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