by itabix | Aug 31, 2012 | Being gay
Right now, I can’t escape thinking about politics and our choices. The question that occupies me is raised in my walks around the city by the demands made on me—on my time and energy—by various groups asking for money and support, by a homeless man holding a sign,...
by itabix | Aug 25, 2012 | This website
Check this one out. It’s a car ad, and it’s running in Japan only. It raises the issues we’ve been talking about here—the beauty of men and of women, the range of possibilities before us which may or may not include sex, the essential need for surprise, a...
by itabix | Aug 22, 2012 | Fighting Back, SCOTUS
Now it is time to focus on the Supreme Court. Here are the stakes: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in 1933, Stephen Breyer in 1938, and Anthony Kennedy in 1936. These three justices were part of the majority in both major GLBT civil rights cases of the last...
by itabix | Aug 17, 2012 | Being gay, Who can tell?
Last week people wanted John Travolta to come out, and he wouldn’t, and then writers retracted their requests, ending up with statements like, “Nobody’s personal life is my business.” We think very badly about sex in our culture. Mary Elizabeth Williams,...
by itabix | Aug 5, 2012 | AIDS, Fighting Back
My partner is out of town for the weekend, and this afternoon I went by myself to Dark Knight Rises. Much of the outdoor shooting takes place on Wall Street in pitched battles between the New York police and the bad guys. In the first image, Wall Street is cleared of...
by itabix | Jul 26, 2012 | Fighting Back
When I was thirteen or fourteen in South Carolina—we’re talking about the early fifties here—the Boy Scouts were different from all the other activities a boy could do. We went on weekend overnight campouts to some local “woods,” and I looked forward...
by itabix | Jul 21, 2012 | Coming out
Some writers have taken “coming out” as the beginning of the plot and then made a novel of it. It might start, “In 1993, when I was fourteen, I came out to my best friend….” Others have taken “coming out” to be the climax of the plot, whose final sentence might end,...
by itabix | Jul 14, 2012 | Coming out
I was on Boston common today, talking to a friend. We’d just gotten to know each other and we were asking the kinds of questions people ask, exploring each other’s lives. He asked me, “Since you’re gay, how did you manage to stay married so long? How did you do...
by itabix | Jul 6, 2012 | Assimilation
I recently wrote to a friend: “Like most peoples who are faced with the possibility of assimilation, many gay people wonder what they will be giving up in the process, and what they will be getting in return.” You see it every day in the city, watching...
by itabix | Jun 27, 2012 | Fighting Back
Today is June 26th, and tomorrow is June 27th, and after midnight tomorrow night, one hour into June 28th, we will be into the forty-third anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. If you stay up one hour past midnight, it will be exactly forty-three years since Lt. Pine...
by itabix | Jun 23, 2012 | Alan Turing
Today is Alan Turing’s one-hundredth birthday. Alan Turing contributed to the Allies winning World War II by breaking the Enigma codes that Germany used to communicate with its submarines. He had a large hand in inventing the computer that we use today and that today...
by itabix | Jun 13, 2012 | Fighting Back
The mixed news from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, discussed here last post, and the continuing epidemic of gay teenage-suicides around the country—it’s hard to find any positive aspect of that fact—may be what caused some of us to find Gay Pride a...
by itabix | Jun 3, 2012 | Coming out
Brandon K. Thorp posts on Towleroad, about President Obama proclaming Gay Pride Month: “At some point, I’m sure the novelty of seeing presidents speak this way about LGBT folk will wear off. For this writer, it hasn’t yet.” To get the same sense of...
by itabix | May 30, 2012 | Coming to terms with the past
I have been writing to a man who went to the school I attended my first two years of college. I didn’t know him then—1957-1959—and we haven’t written in the intervening years. Then, about a week ago, he found my page in a leaflet for our fiftieth class reunion. On my...
by itabix | May 17, 2012 | Barack Obama
Newsweek’s cover, “Our First Gay President,” has caused people to ask, “Is he really?” Andrew Sullivan used the word in the same metaphoric sense that “black” is used in the sentence, “Bill Clinton is our first black president.” It meant that much of Obama’s...
