Steven LaChance
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I’ve been seeing something lately that I don’t remember seeing quite so frequently before. Americans are calling the president of the United States a traitor. Not simply a liar, a criminal, or a corrupt politician. A traitor. That’s a serious word. It’s one of the most serious accusations an American can make against another American,…
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Ten years of this has been enough. Ten years of the hate is enough. Ten years of the division is enough. Ten years of seeing the worst of humanity brought to the surface is enough. I’ve told this story before, but I’m going to tell it again. Within the first half hour of Donald Trump’s…
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Every time I look at Donald Trump or even hear his voice, it tests my moral compass. I’ve always believed that we shouldn’t hate another human being. I’m certainly not going to borrow that tired Christian Nationalist line they love using against gay people like myself: “We don’t hate the person. We hate the sin.”…
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I read something recently that said LGBTQ+ people are going to start going back into the closet. I’m not sure how that is even possible once that door has been opened. It is true that in some ways we come out every time we meet someone new or find ourselves in a new situation. I…
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What do you suppose Christopher Isherwood meant when he wrote these words? “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” The beginning is easy enough to understand, and it is the part most often remembered. I am a camera. Isherwood was a writer observing the world around him, recording the…
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I have debated writing this, but I believe it is our responsibility as writers to record what we observe. This is not meant as a political statement. It is simply an observation from someone who now lives outside the United States and returns several times a year. I read an article today written by someone…
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You know I believe in research. You know I believe in not jumping to conclusions. And you know I believe that in order to understand our country, we need to educate ourselves about it. Right now, America is having an argument about socialism when much of what we’re actually arguing about is social democracy. And…
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I’ve been reading a great deal lately about humanity’s place in the universe. The deeper I go, the more fascinated I become by one simple fact. Across thousands of years, civilizations that never knew one another often arrived at remarkably similar questions about reality itself. I’ve spent time in Sumerian texts, Buddhist teachings, Greek philosophy,…
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the word queer lately. I’m a gay man, and I’m also part of the queer community. To me, those two statements are not contradictory. One describes me specifically. The other describes the larger community I belong to. I understand why the word queer makes some people uncomfortable. It was…
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Can you imagine being a kid, going to church, doing your best to be good, and then hearing something that changes your world? The very thing you were born to be, they are saying, is unholy. That you are unholy. You go to school, so happy to make friends, and that’s when you’re called “fag”…
