Civil Rights

  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • One Life

    The world is restless.The walls speak in riddles of decline.I have lived enough unfairnessto know it rarely gives back what it steals. But I am not alone.I sit in the quiet with Rick’s laughterstill echoing in the room,a thread of warmth that refuses to break.Happiness is not a thunderclap.It is the brush of his hand…

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  • Testing Ground?

    This week Trump authorized the mobilization of National Guard troops in 19 states. Officials say their role is limited to administrative support for DHS and ICE, not direct policing or arrests. At the same time, separate deployments are already active in Washington, D.C. with talks of expanding into cities like Chicago. On paper this is…

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