Politics
A Word In Edgewise: Still Star-Crossed, After All These Years
I saw West Side Story in 1957. I still have my Playbill. Based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the drama of star-crossed lovers that opened the Guthrie’s 2017-2018 season. Their season’s finale, fittingly, is West Side Story, Montagues […]
A Word In Edgewise: Youth Isn’t Wasted on the Young
History was not driven solely by bearded elders—a fact we tend to forget, looking at portraits of the bewigged and edentulate, that the subjects started in youth and vigor. Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, had a […]
Skirting The Issues: Idealism Buoyed Hundredfold: Part 2
Last month, I wrote about my plan to travel across the South to speak about hope with the goal of figuring out if my idealism actually means anything. I took that trip. Over the course […]
Skirting The Issues: Idealist or Naïve: Part I
My official biography lists that I’m a “hopeless idealist.” Often when I’m introduced to audiences, the person making the introduction points this out about me, smiling as they do so. I’m never quite sure whether […]
A Word In Edgewise: ‘Tain’t Funny, McGee!
A friend of mine tells jokes—tells them well—and we usually laugh. “We,” being our group that gathers weekly for beverages and low-stakes wagers concerning the relative values of cardboard rectangles. Recently, he launched into another […]
Skirting the Issues: Allies
I’ve written before about how transgender folks (and yes, even the great Ellie Krug!) need allies, particularly those who engage in “allyship”—the action part of being an ally. “Action” as in, “Hey dude, you just […]
A Word In Edgewise: That Old Question of Apples and Trees
Once again, one of iconic pastor Billy Graham’s progeny is in the news. While son Franklin keeps up his unrelenting background drumbeat of anti-GLBT rhetoric, Graham’s daughter, Franklin’s sister, Anne Graham Lotz, pushes her own […]
Commentary: Is the Queer Community Eating Its Own (Again)?
By Mark Segal Recent battles over the rainbow flag and the Star of David have exposed long-simmering biases. In my almost 50 years of LGBT activism, there has never been a time that worried me […]
