If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
Wildly hateful confabulations may serve to rile up the anti-gay base, but they are utterly repulsive to anyone who knows us.
For too many of our children, attending school can be a frightening experience. As parents, families, friends, and allies we need to do something to make schools safer for ALL students.
Courts have no legal authority to deprive individual citizens of their fundamental constitutional rights until "the voters" decide to grant those rights on their own. Such an approach is incompatible with the very idea of constitutional freedoms.
Gov. Daugaard is allowed his views and since he was duly elected by the people of South Dakota, I'm not going to second guess their decision. But it is fairly clear that Daugaard's view doesn't belong at the NAD conference. So why was he invited?
Marriage equality is important, but I challenge the LGBTQ community to work together to prioritize legislation that encompasses a wider range of our community. Not everyone wants to get married. But everyone needs a job.
We'd be foolish to think that judgment wasn't placed on us by ourselves and others based on how we self-identify and how closely that aligns with our actual behaviors. Where is the line between fantasy, desire, bedroom behavior, and identity, and who gets to draw it?
In the wake of Amendment One, you should feel proud, and perhaps a feeling of pride is easy to understand. In spite of the outcome, we can't forget the fact that hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians stood up for equality and justice.
Chalk it up to progress that some celebrities are now embarrassed to be thought of as having been in the closet, which increasingly seems like a relic from the last century (even as it still endures mightily).
As the truism advises, "Think globally, and act locally," my hope is that we can join together to create the world as be a place where everyone will celebrate their Pride safely and with integrity in ways that express their truest joys while showing their full humanity, freedom, and liberty.
If a legendary figure like Bob Spitzer can correct his mistakes, surely the American Psychiatric Association can do the same -- for the sake of protecting our patients and keeping the mental health field united.
Ravi's Twitter posts, webcam spying, and homophobic attitude were stigmatizing, and it is possible that these pushed Clementi to a tipping point. But Clementi's suicide did not happen in a bubble with only him and Ravi; it took place in a society in which homophobia is still rampant.
I got to thinking: LGBT teenagers need to be shown the bigger picture. They need to know they're not alone. They need to know that it does get better. They need to be shown the future, especially their own. So I wrote a letter.
Black women should treat the black church the same way they would treat a patriarchal, self-serving, preachy boyfriend, and let their feet do the talking. If they ever do, patriarchy and homophobia in black churches will fall by the way side.
I have decided I don't need a contract to declare or define my relationship. I understand and respect that others see it as more than that, but right now I am not interested. But I deserve the right to make that choice for myself and not have someone else make it for me.
As in most presidential election years, noisy battles have been raging as the nation's political armies gear up for what promises to be an even nois...
The reparative therapy described in "Hiding Out" and my later related reportage chronicled torture practices that were coercive and, in many ways, the same as what was happening in the Iraqi torture sites: humiliation, isolation, extreme physical positions, and forced confessions.
