Blog
The highway, the dark, the silent bus, the tablet screen, thoughts of a friend
Our son called twice yesterday, working out the details of a gift for his children. Our daughter came on Saturday and spent the evening here—I cooked, and she talked—before going to Logan to pick up a friend of hers. I have been corresponding with a friend in...
What do we want?
‘Tis the season for it. Wanting things. But the question is really about us gay people and what’s happening now as we wait for the Supreme Court. A commentator this week makes a point about the effect of marriage equality on the behavior of gay people....
The way we are now
The most interesting thing in the Times article by Micah Cohen, on the gay vote, on November 16, is that, among straight voters, the vote was roughly divided, 49% Democratic and 49% Republican. The gay vote, which was 5% of the total, was approximately 75% Democratic,...
Unresolved pain
There is a moment in Homeland, on Showtime Channel, when Damien Lewis, as Brody, sits at a table in a cell, supposedly in CIA headquarters, his feet chained to the floor, his hands chained to the table. Brody had been imprisoned for eight years in an Arabic country....
Now it’s our turn
Barack Obama has proven himself a friend of LGBT people. He’s a friend of the families of LGBT people, and he’s a friend of friends of LGBT people. He has done more for LGBT people than any other president. He steered the effort to overturn DADT, he directed the...
The Court, the Court
Remember the Supreme Court. Remember how fragile is the majority in Roe v. Wade and the majority in Lawrence v. Texas. These are essential cases, defining the kind of nation we live in. If the Supreme Court reverses itself in either one, the place...
Come Out! (3)
Coming out—both the action and the word—differs depending on where you live. It seems it has always been easier to come out in coastal California and in the Northeast than in the South and the middle parts of the country. It has been easier in New York, Los Angeles,...
Come Out! (2)
Conventional wisdom would have us believe that the period before we came out, was a terrible place. The closet. Billeh, in the Daily Kos, quotes Paul Monette, who calls it a “hidden life,” and “half a life.” This is the way gay writers and politicians think about what...
Come Out! (1)
As long as our culture is homophobic, many gay people are going to feel they have to come out. It’s an act of courage, self-defense and self-respect. But I don’t think we think often about what we do when we come out and about what it means. Few people think...
The operative word is “fight”
Before AIDS, people got sick, went to their doctors, were told what to do, and got better—or worse and died—and that didn’t change until HIV had been among us for five years or so. Since the drug companies weren’t coming out with effective medications, and since the...
The effects of the life I’ve led
I told him I didn’t trust therapists. The young man said he didn’t know why a person wouldn’t trust therapists. I reminded him that half my life the American Psychiatric Association had in its diagnostic manual that gay people suffered from various kinds of mental...
The homeless man, his son, and me
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,...
Gentle, stylish, astonishing
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...
Focussing on the most important thing
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...
Travolta and the failure of our language on sex
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,...
When Larry Kramer and 200 men taught us how to fight
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...
Boy Scouts, here are our medals
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 to it all week...
Our literature, our lives, 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,...
Uncomfortable truths
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...
Honoring what gay people know
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...