Activism

  • Murder by Proxy

    Murder by Proxy

    Two gay men who were granted asylum are being sent back to Iran, a country where their sexual orientation places them in real and documented danger. This is not hypothetical. Everyone involved knows what awaits them. In Iran, being gay is illegal. It has been punished with prison, torture, and execution. These are not rumors…

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  • Cruelty doesn’t look like a monster.

    It looks like people we recognize. I keep coming back to this because cruelty rarely announces itself as something obvious or extreme. Most of the time, it shows up quietly, carried by ordinary people defending it. Neighbors justifying harm, violence, even death, as long as it’s aimed at someone they’ve decided is in the way.…

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  • Did We?

    You know, they say every generation of LGBTQ+ people stands on the shoulders of the accomplishments of the one before it. That is true, at least in part. And yet lately, it can feel as if we have faltered some along the way. I catch myself in those darker hours of the night, when sleep…

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  • Understanding Constitutional Safeguards

    What does it take to remove a sitting president in the United States.

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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Making a Scene

    There is a difference between living straight and living queer. That difference follows us everywhere even when no one speaks of it. Straight people rarely notice because the world already belongs to them. They see themselves reflected on every screen, in every commercial, on every billboard, in every book. Their stories are told without question.…

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  • Living at a Safe Distance

    I left the United States eight years ago. People ask me why, and the answer is simple. Until you are part of a minority that is under attack, it is hard to understand what it feels like to wake up every day in that kind of world. You learn to live with a weight in…

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  • To be a gay father raising three children in the nineties was to live in quiet. Only the closest people to me knew the truth, because protecting my children mattered more than my own openness. I came out at twenty-nine, but even then it was carefully measured, told only to those who needed to know.…

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