Blog
Where we’re headed in the SCOTUS hearing
The two articles published by SCOTUSblog written by Michael Klarman, which I linked to in the post on April 17, are all we are going to get from Klarman. That’s a shame, because he’s knowledgeable and writes well, and I thought he was going to give us a longer series...
Imagination, the ICA, the SCOTUS, and the amicus briefs
I was in the Institute for Contemporary Art yesterday, at an exhibition entitled When Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South. I left South Carolina temporarily in 1957 and permanently in 1963. While I’ve not always been interested in what was going on...
Run-up to the SCOTUS hearing
SCOTUSBLOG.COM has introduced a seriously good series by Michael Klarman. They say, “As part of our expanded coverage of this month’s oral arguments in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage, we are pleased to present this post by Michael Klarman on the...
The run-up to the SCOTUS hearing, April 28, and the decisions in June 2015
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate proposes that the gay marriage cases will be the most important gay rights cases ever. I think everybody agrees. These cases will be argued on April 28, 2015, in two weeks, with a decision in late June. Between now and then, it behooves us to...
The President of the United States
President Obama leaving Jamaica. Photograph by Pete Souza, White House photographer. At last, we get a photograph of the metaphysical truth of our times.
Dirty politics, family relationships
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas announced that he was not going to sign the first version of his state’s Religious Freedom Act—the anti-gay version—and said that his son, Seth Hutchinson, had signed a petition on Facebook asking him not to. Many people have assumed...
Haunted by Nashville
I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1963 to 1968. Nashville meant country music, but if you read in the histories of the civil rights movement, you’d know that many of the major advances were led by students from Fisk, the historically black college in Nashville....
The fierce Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a badass. Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, tells us how she got that way and whether she’s happy being called that, and whether it’s OK for people who support the ascendency of women to use terms like that to describe a longtime feminist. It’s a great...
Alcohol and me
I quit drinking today, in 1979. I started swimming every day, and then lifting. I accepted that I was gay, and I no longer hung out with anyone who wasn’t able to accept a sober, gay me. I divorced my wife and began the process of getting my relationships with my...
We make history
“A new survey out this week shows that support for marriage equality is at 59% with just 33% opposed. This means that marriage equality is slightly more popular than the Pope.” Matt Baume, American Foundation for Equal Rights. The link is to a video, with Matt Baume...
Gross indecency
Yesterday we found that Leonard Nimoy died. His character gave us the belief that it would be possible to live rationally, and even though many people loved Spock, it is probably true that it was never possible to live totally rationally. The Imitation Game is a...
Being weird and different
“When I was sixteen years old, I tried to kill myself. I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I didn’t belong. Now I’m standing here. So I would like this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she’s weird or she’s different or she doesn’t fit...
One of us
“The change in people’s attitudes on that issue has been enormous,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. “In recent years, people have said, ‘This is the way I am.’ And others looked around, and we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor -- we’re very fond of them. Or...
Difference, and human responses
It has been reported everywhere (Daily Mail, here) that in the last several days ISIS members in Syria have thrown a bound gay man off the roof of a seven-story building. When he survived his fall, a crowd who gathered at the foot of the building stoned him to death....
Getting to yes
The president was in Boise, Idaho, on Tuesday, which is, as Rachel Maddow said, the reddest of red states, and the crowd around him was mesmerized, cheering him on. He spoke, briefly, of what has been accomplished in Washington. He touched lightly on his achievements,...
The last chapter
So, they took ‘em! This puts us in a different place entirely. Now the Supreme Court has granted the petitions from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Having accepted that a split in the Circuit Courts is a bad thing, they pretty much had to, to resolve the...
Pain, suffering
After showing a new video of the Kouachi brothers in Paris, Chris Hayes Tuesday night had a guest, Reza Aslan, a scholar of religions and author of No god but God, the Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Professor Aslan has studied the violence in the Middle East...
Petition Denied, Revolution Begun
Before the recent series of Supreme Court cases—Romer v. Evans (1996), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and United States v. Windsor (2013)—, gay people had no constitutional rights in the United States. It was only after these court cases that gay people were recognized as...
Marriage and other victories
So, this is the end of it.The best year ever for gay people (except for 1969 the year they rioted at the Stonewall, or 1996 the year they discovered protease inhibitors and HIV cocktails, and some others, like 1912 the year Marcel Proust first submitted In Search of...
Returning, carrying on
Since last July, we’ve been working on updates and improvements to Adriana Books—putting the site and the blog in the same place and making the experience easier. These improvements also include a revamping of the appearance of the site. I hope that these changes will...