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 | Apr 10, 2016 | Celebration, Courage, Fighting, Fighting Back, the South, Victory
North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia—where do these states get their morals? It is often said that they get them from their religion—this is, after all, the Bible Belt, which has been, in itself, enough to drive many of the rest of...
by itabix | Mar 27, 2016 | AIDS, Assimilation, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Generational Divide, Queer, The effects of bigotry, Walking wounded
Jeff Zirpolo died this week—C’s colleague, our friend—whom we have known since early in the AIDS years. The wake was on Thursday in Watertown. There were about a hundred people there, his birth family—his brothers and his sisters-in-law, and his sister and his...
by itabix | Mar 14, 2016 | AIDS, Anger, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Fighting Back, Larry Kramer, The effects of bigotry, Walking wounded
Each day the response from LGBTQ people and their allies gets more furious. First, on Friday, March 11, 2016, two days ago, Hillary Clinton complimented Nancy Reagan on her “low-key” AIDS advocacy in the early eighties, which, she says, started a national...
by itabix | Mar 11, 2016 | APA, books, Coming to terms with the past, Gay literature, Movies, Reviews, Walking wounded
In the flurry of marriages and commitments at the end of Downton Abbey—Edith to her Marquess, Mary to her racing car driver (the week before), Daisy to Andy (prospective), Mrs. Crawley to Lord Merton (promised), and perhaps Mrs. Patmore to Mr. Mason—amid all the...
by itabix | Feb 29, 2016 | Fighting Back, SCOTUS, The future
Bruce Hay, a faculty member in the Law School at Harvard, has written an essay on Antonin Scalia, published on Salon. See here. He speaks of being a “naive young fool,” when he first took a job as one of Scalia’s law clerks. He concludes this way: He [Scalia] died as...
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 | Feb 12, 2016 | Adam in the Morning, Fighting, Fighting Back, Stonewall Riots, Writing
Last week I bought and watched Margin Call, directed by J. C. Chandor and starring Kevin Spacey and Too Big to Fail, from HBO, directed by Curtis Hanson and starring William Hurt. I started watching a Showtime series, Billions, going back to S1:01, starring Paul...
by itabix | Jan 31, 2016 | AIDS, APA, Coming to terms with the past, DOMA & DADT, Fighting Back, Stonewall Riots, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Teenage Suicides
Reparation is an act of reconciliation.* This is the oldest (1348, and now obsolete) meaning of this word in English, and this meaning continues to lie submerged beneath more modern meanings. Two persons or communities, which have been divided by something in their...
by itabix | Jan 27, 2016 | APA, Coming to terms with the past, DOMA & DADT, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Walking wounded
I said I didn’t trust psychiatrists, and the man said, “Why?” I said, “Because for thirty years or so of my life, psychiatrists said being gay was a mental illness” on no respectable evidence, and then in 1973 they changed their minds. In the US, there are millions...
by itabix | Dec 30, 2015 | AIDS, Coming to terms with the past, Compulsion of time, Courage, eBooks, Fighting Back, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Race Point Light, Sexuality, Stonewall Riots, The future
This excerpt is from late in Race Point Light. The narrator is Fair Shaw. He is just arriving at the Boatslip, a hotel on the water in Provincetown that hosts a tea dance every afternoon during the summer. It is June, 2004. Shaw is with his partner, Chris, and their...
by itabix | Dec 20, 2015 | Coming out, Compulsion of time, Courage, Fighting Back, Gay kid, Generational Divide, language, The future
In the last day or two, I have been buying kids clothes, gifts for grandchildren, and this has caused me to think about kids coming out. Many people think that most kids are going to grow up to be straight, and they continue to think that until the boy or girl tells...
by itabix | Dec 11, 2015 | Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Courage, Freedom, Sexuality, Teenage Suicides
C and I were in Provincetown this past weekend—cloudless sky, temperature in the sixties— and occasionally men and women were seen wearing red Santa Claus caps in anticipation of the season. It’s a good place to go at any time—the bars, the restaurants, the...
by itabix | Nov 29, 2015 | Alan Turing, APA, bisexuality, Coming out, Compulsion of time, Freedom, language, Sexuality, Straight marriage, Words and their meanings
The man’s name is Nyle DiMarco, and he describes himself as “sexually fluid.” His picture and the article about him—he’s worth reading about—appeared in Towleroad this week. What is interesting about him is the idea of someone being sexually fluid. What does...
