LGBTQ

  • Still Standing

    There are times when I wish I could go back to the days before I saw the darkness for what it really is. Before I understood how deep it runs, not just through the world, but through people too. The difficulty comes when once you have seen that darkness, you cannot unsee it. You cannot…

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  • The Chosen

    My relationship with God is not a complicated one. I live on very even ground with Him. We have an understanding, a quiet agreement that I am who He made me to be. Sometimes I believe that being gay has actually made me one of His chosen. Think about it. You come into this world…

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  • There is a case to be made that Frankenstein is not just a gothic novel or a cautionary tale about science, but also one of the earlier works of queer literature. Mary Shelley wrote it at nineteen, surrounded by the radical thinkers of her time, many of whom challenged the norms of love, gender, and…

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  • To Outlive Them All

    Death itself has never been the thing that frightened me. What terrifies me is the thought of losing everyone I love before my own time comes. That fear has been stitched into me over the years, thread by thread, through loss after loss. When you are young, you believe there is time. You imagine decades…

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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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  • The Boiling Point

    I have been saying this for a year and as I see things ramp up it becomes even more serious. Right now I am looking at the United States from the outside and what I see is alarming. The censorship you are experiencing is indescribable. It is happening in a slow boil and that makes…

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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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