LGBTQ+

  • Dracula: Icon of Secret Desire

    Dracula has always walked with shadows, but some of those shadows are cultural rather than supernatural. From the moment Bram Stoker penned his tale, whispers have followed that the Count himself is a coded figure of forbidden desire. Stoker, a man who lived in Victorian England at a time when homosexuality was criminalized, poured into…

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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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  • 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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  • Examining the gap between the Constitution’s ideals and lived reality Many will tell you the United States is a great country. In some ways, they are not wrong. There is a difference between the ideals written on paper and the reality lived by its people. For some, especially those who are white, straight, and Christian,…

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  • I Am Not the Secret

    I am not the secret,though they tried to make me one—hiding truth behind closed doors,feeding silence instead of love,teaching bitterness as inheritance.I was the boy they blamed,the brother they resented,the son who stood in the shadows of lies. I am not the sin,though they laid it on my shoulders.I am not the weight of their…

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  • I can’t even begin to tell you the scope of my new book Grace. It feels vast and uncontainable at times, yet it remains grounded in the most intimate way possible because the story is always brought back to people and their lives. That is where the true terror and the true beauty reside. At…

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  • The Gay Day of Truth

    There may come a time when the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans are pushed so far backwards that silence is no longer an option. When that day arrives it will not be corporate policy changes or legal filings that shake the political landscape. It will be people. Ordinary citizens who have lived quietly with extraordinary truths.…

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  • The reality is we are living in a time when our rights can be taken away faster than they are given. If you are a queer couple in the United States, being proactive is not paranoia. It is survival. You cannot wait for a crisis to prepare. Love is worth protecting and so are you.…

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  • Why do you hurt me?was the prayer I never said aloud.It lived in my mouth like a dying bird,fluttering, breaking its neckon the cage of my molars. You looked at me likesomething ungrateful.Something wild you forgot to tame.I didn’t understand.Not when I still thoughtblood meant safety,that family meant shelterand not war dressed as tradition. Later—I…

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  • Friendships and relationships. Missed, hidden, and mourned There’s a part of coming out no one really prepares you for. People talk about the joy, the freedom, the sense of finally stepping into yourself. And that’s real. But there’s another side too. A quieter, harder side. One that lingers. It’s grief. The Ones I Never Got…

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