Diversity
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I always hated the game that was being played around me. “Is he or isn’t he?” It was never anyone’s business to begin with, and if it mattered that much, all they had to do was ask. I would have answered. The truth is, the people who needed to know, knew. I was always resentful…
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You know, I came out to my parents before anyone else. My mom was the first to know. Then again, a mother always knows. I believe that is true. It was not easy being the odd man out in a family. You learn to adjust. You learn to pay attention. Every time I encountered homophobia…
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Nothing Else Should Matter— Steven A. LaChance How did we learn to live like this,in a world that leans so easily toward hate? Where did it begin,this quiet beliefthat we are somehow betterthan the person standing beside us,to the right,to the left,close enough to touchbut kept at a distanceby nothing more than an idea. What…
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I’ve spent some time over this past week writing about the crucifixion and the resurrection. Not because I felt the need to explain them, and not because I think I have answers that anyone else doesn’t. I wrote because I had something to say, and because it is still rare to see a gay man…
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I have been thinking about Good Friday. Not just as a day on a calendar, but as a moment that changed the course of the world and history in a way that is hard to fully take in. It is often told quickly, moved through on the way to something else. But when you slow…
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I grew up in a time when you could turn on the news and hear people tell you, plainly, that if you were an LGBTQ+ young person, something about you was wrong. Not misunderstood. Not still figuring it out. Wrong. And it wasn’t quiet. It was said out loud, in living rooms, on television, in…
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It was around 1998. I was dating a man who lived in Columbia, Missouri. He was a tennis player. A handsome man who looked a little like a young Robert Redford. I fell hard for those blue eyes and that chiseled jaw. At the time I was raising my three children on my own. On…
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School should be a safe place for all kids regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else that might make them different from others. That is the ideal people like to talk about. But the truth is that it is not and never really has been. Growing up, I understood something very clearly even…
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If you live in this world long enough, you are going to live through some type of instability. I know I have. I could list them out. Hate crimes. Civil unrest. Moments that remind you how quickly things can shift. I remember Ferguson. I remember fire trucks parked across streets like makeshift barricades. I remember…
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Here’s something I’ve learned over the years. Coming out is not a one time event. It is not just something gay people do. It is something we all do, over and over again, in different ways, throughout our lives. We just do not always call it that. Coming out is what happens when you finally…
