by itabix | Jan 20, 2017 | Adam in the Morning, Anger, Barack Obama, Ceremonies, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Fighting Back, gay community, Generational Divide, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Race Point Light, Stonewall National Monument, The Myth of Sisyphus, Winter Rain, Writing
Many people are quoting Martin Luther King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And many people believe that means that eventually things are going to get better. But you know that’s bullshit. There is no “moral universe.” And we...
by itabix | Jan 10, 2017 | Adam in the Morning, Alcoholism, Barack Obama, Being gay, Bookstores, bookstores, Ceremonies, Coming to terms with the past, eBooks, Gay literature, Publishing, Race Point Light, The effects of bigotry, Uncategorized, Walking wounded, Winter Rain, Writing
I read an article on Slate today on writing and money, and it compels me to respond. The point of the article is the fact that so few writers actually make any money at their writing. Just about all writers are supported by doing something else, like teaching, and yet...
by itabix | Nov 21, 2016 | Barack Obama, Courage
One of the ironies of these days is a video image that shows up every evening on the evening news. The Trump organization has not provided many opportunities for the press to photograph the president-elect as he goes about putting together an administration. The major...
by itabix | Jun 26, 2016 | Assimilation, Barack Obama, Books, Celebration, Coming to terms with the past, Don't Tell Me to Wait, Fighting Back, Gay Pride, Stonewall National Monument, Victory
Monday, tomorrow, is the forty-seventh anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and today is the forty-sixth Gay Pride Parade in New York. Two-and-a-half million people watched last year’s parade, and organizers expect at least that many today. Click here for information...
by itabix | Jun 10, 2016 | Assimilation, Barack Obama, Celebration, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Fighting Back, Freeing yourself of it, Queer, SCOTUS, Sexuality, The future, The Gay Revolution, Transgender
Last night, Rachel Maddow interviewed Elizabeth Warren. Warren endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Presidency and, toward the end of her comments, spoke of Clinton’s character and what she has shown through the long primary fight. (counter 8:00) She won because she’s a...
by itabix | May 19, 2016 | AIDS, Anger, Barack Obama, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Fighting, Frank Kameny, Generational Divide, London April 23 2016
I want to look at the issue of fighting versus negotiating. What has brought us our success? In the last couple of weeks, the President has brought this up in London and then again later at Howard. Over last weekend, a person I know wrote me, questioning whether I was...
by itabix | May 12, 2016 | Barack Obama, Celebration, Fighting, Fighting Back, SCOTUS, The effects of bigotry, Transgender
Amazing things have been happening in the last four days. Last week, the Department of Justice delivered a five-day ultimatum to the Governor and State of North Carolina and the University of North Carolina, and others, which fell due Monday. Instead of giving in and...
by itabix | May 2, 2016 | Barack Obama, DOMA & DADT, London April 23 2016, SCOTUS
Friday, April 23, President Obama spoke with a group of 500 youth leaders at a town hall meeting in London, and among the students who spoke were a number who raised questions that involved the relationship between principles and tactics in social movements like LGBTQ...
by itabix | Feb 25, 2016 | Barack Obama, Coming to terms with the past, Federal Court Cases, SCOTUS, The future
At first, writers found good things to say of Antonin Scalia. From the day of his death (February 13, 2016), TV commentators took the he-celebrated-the-rule-of-law-despite-his-conservatism route when writing obituaries or appreciations of him. They said he was...
by itabix | Jan 12, 2016 | Adam in the Morning, Barack Obama, Being gay, Ceremonies, Coming to terms with the past, Freedom, Freeing yourself of it, Race Point Light, Sexuality, Words and their meanings, Writing
Fair Shaw and his partner Chris and their friend David, and a younger man, Julio, had been at the Tea Dance at the Boatslip late in the last day of Race Point Light. Then, instead of going to a restaurant, the four of them decide to get food at the grocery store and...
by itabix | Nov 19, 2015 | Barack Obama, The effects of bigotry, Walking wounded
This is the President of the United States at his press conference in Antalya, Turkey, November 16, 2015: But what we do not do, what I do not do is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America...
by itabix | Oct 25, 2015 | Barack Obama, Books, Coming to terms with the past, DOMA/DADT, Don't Tell Me to Wait, The future, The Gay Revolution
Two books on LGBTQ subjects have been published in the last few weeks that respond to an LGBTQ need to study ourselves and our past. Lillian Faderman’s The Gay Revolution, September 2015, covers the period between 1945 and May 2012, and Kerry Eleveld’s Don’t Tell me...
by itabix | Jul 8, 2015 | Alan Turing, Barack Obama, Coming to terms with the past, DOMA & DADT, Life and death, Teenage Suicides, Walking wounded
When the state, or society, or the culture commits a wrong against a gay citizen, there are a number of ways that wrong can be corrected—a new law, a court judgment, a social movement, among others. What usually can’t be corrected are the effects of that wrong on the...
by itabix | Jun 26, 2015 | Barack Obama, Celebration, SCOTUS
I began to realize yesterday that the SCOTUS decision on marriage would probably come down today, and I already knew that Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s funeral was going to be today, with the President giving the eulogy, and it occasionally crossed my mind that they might...
by itabix | Nov 6, 2014 | Barack Obama
It is Thursday night, at 10:24, and I am watching Lawrence O’Donnell. He and his guests are discovering the one responsible for the disaster on Tuesday night. It was, he says, the Democrats!, and specifically the Democratic leadership, who set the strategy for the...
