When my mother worked at the hometown Walmart when I was a boy in the 1970s, one rule was chiseled in granite: “Do not call me at work, ever — unless the house is on fire or somebody’s dying!” Mom practiced what she preached, so it was a shock thirty years ago this month when…
Essay
The MAGA Movement Embodies the Real Sin of Sodom
For generations, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has been weaponized to justify discrimination—particularly against LGBTQ+ people—by those who claim the cities were destroyed due to sexual deviance. But a closer reading of both the Bible and historical religious commentary reveals a different, often overlooked truth: the real sin of Sodom was a brutal inhospitality…
What My Father’s Death Taught Me About Love Too Late
When my father died, I didn’t know how to feel. We weren’t close. We hadn’t spoken in years. There was no big dramatic fallout just a slow, quiet fade. Phone calls that stopped coming. Texts were never answered. Time stretched the distance wider until we were strangers who shared a last name. Then came the…
Laurence Luckinbill Is a Straight Man Who Helped Make Gay History
The first series of events organized in October 1994 for the inaugural LGBTQ+ History Month was a film festival on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where I was completing a graduate degree in history. Ten films were screened on four successive Monday nights: October 3, 10, 17 and 24. Among the selections…
Isolation Song
My quarantine began on the afternoon of January 4, 2020, when my boyfriend told me we needed to separate, that things weren’t working, and that his feelings for me, for us, weren’t what they were when his eyes used to soak into mine and the world became something bright and blue and beautiful. My isolation began soon…