by itabix | Feb 4, 2017 | Courage, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Fighting Back
Twenty-four hours ago, on Daily Kos, Jeff Garrett considered the mode of our opposition to Trump’s presidency. He considers where we are at this moment and says, Now we must sustain the outrage, the unity, and continue the work. Then he gives ways of actually doing...
by itabix | Jan 31, 2017 | Anger, Courage, Fighting Back, Stonewall Riots
Rachel Maddow often begins a story and makes me wonder Where is she going with this? She began her lead story Friday night with a Harvard scientist working with hydrogen in its various states. She informed us that hydrogen can have a gaseous or a liquid or a solid...
by itabix | Jan 26, 2017 | Courage, Fighting, Fighting Back
I’m proud of this. See here and here. Resist!
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 | Jan 7, 2017 | Ceremonies, Ceremonies, Charles Howard, gay community, Gay kid, inclusive gay community, Stonewall Riots, Timothy, Transgender
When you’re telling a story, before you say your first word, you have to decide how you start. Once upon a time gets you into a certain kind of story, and Call me Ishmael gets you into another. To get into a story about what happened after Bernie Mallett was murdered...
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 | Nov 11, 2016 | Hillary Rodham Clinton, The future, The Myth of Sisyphus
We’ve always known that nothing lasts forever, despite the fairytale, whose last words are “happily ever after.” We know that everything changes. Decay is real. Divorce is real. We have known that this time in our lives was going to end. Barack Obama’s term will end...
by itabix | Nov 6, 2016 | A single man, Adam in the Morning, Anger, APA, Ceremonies, Charles Howard, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Fighting, Fighting Back, Gay Pride, Publishing, Race Point Light, Stonewall Riots, The future, Winter Rain
At the time I started writing my first gay political novel, I had only been out for 24 months, and I was steeping in the literature of gay political theory. The weekend that Charles Howard was murdered (July 7, 1984)—he was the man on whom Bernie Mallett of Ceremonies...
by itabix | Nov 6, 2016 | A single man, APA, Charles Howard, Coming to terms with the past, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Publishing, Sexuality, The Gay Revolution, Writing
Even though I didn’t have many extended, free-wheeling conversations with friends about the military’s rules against my serving (I served anyway), still the fact that what I was doing sexually was a crime occupied me deeply. A novel about me during the sixties in...
by itabix | Nov 3, 2016 | A single man, Publishing
Writers write about political subjects all the time—Henry James wrote about the place of women in late nineteenth century England, and Charles Dickens wrote about the legal system and the poor in the nineteenth century, William Faulkner wrote about black people in the...
by itabix | Oct 30, 2016 | AIDS
We learn things. On October 26, 2016 researchers released the results of their study into the way that HIV/AIDS came to America. They find that it came from Africa by way of the Caribbean, it landed first in New York by 1970, and it spread to San Francisco by 1976....
by itabix | Oct 22, 2016 | Coming to terms with the past, Generational Divide, Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Walking wounded
We will get to the place where the President, the Congress, the courts, and the people of the US will acknowledge the fact that the nation has abused gay people. They will apologize for it, and then they’ll pay reparations. Because this is what Americans do. But this...
by itabix | Oct 13, 2016 | Michelle Obama
If you haven’t seen or read it, here is where you can find Michelle Obama’s speech today in New Hampshire. Video here. Text here. I would suppose you already know what she said. It has been widely covered in the press. But there are some speeches so important that...
by itabix | Oct 1, 2016 | Anger, Coming to terms with the past, Gay kid, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Sexuality
In 1957, when we were students at a school in Tennessee (I was eighteen), students understood that it was against the law to engage in same-sex sex. You could be arrested, tried, and convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for a felony. What I think we were more...
