Status Updates From Out on a Limb: Selected Wri...

The End of Gay Culture: this essay was written in 2005 and it was fascinating to read. First it was about gay culture not LGBTQ+ culture which was interesting. Second I have never felt myself to be a part of either, and it is especially interesting to read about a culture that certainly no longer exists due to the fact that 20 years ago he thought it was ending. I Appreciate how far we have come that I live openly

Still Here, So Sorry (2005): A good essay about how we should be terrified of something I am terrified of, HIV. Andrew has the means at the time of the essay’s writing to afford expensive HIV treatments compared to other people allowing him to live past 40, something he never believed would happen. He laments how he is a bad example for HIV prevention because he can live a normal life.

Crisis of Faith: this was the first essay that I found my self much more skeptical of Sullivan’s argument and premise. I was interested in it but typically I find myself nodding along, this one not so much.

Superstar: short essay about the complicated papacy of JPII. Starts with praise but ends with criticism about his handling of the church sex abuse crisis.

Life Lesson: a reflection on a speech Hillary Clinton gave in 2005 as a Senator where she argued that though abortion is morally complex and a tragedy for women to have to choose it should still be legal. A much more nuanced perspective than I’ve heard from any politician in the last decade.

Log Cabin Republican: I’ve also believed for a long long time that Lincoln was likely gay. My favorite president and not for that reason.

Integration day: an essay written on the day gay couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and what this now means for gay couples everywhere. Fascinating that this essay was 15 years after he wrote his seminal essay on Marriage Equality and then within 11 years time it was legal nationwide. And we are now 9.5 years from that change. A lot of progress in 35 years.

I am bear; hear me roar: an interesting essay on the emergence of the bear homosexual subculture and what that says about homosexuality and its emergence into broader society post HIV/AIDS and how the bear subculture differs from subcultures that came before it.