Spying has come a very long way since I was a kid.

Back then, we had Bella who lived a few doors down from us. All of five-foot tall with a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon, she knew everything about everybody in our South Philly Italian neighborhood. Not… Read full post »

“Harvey Milk's people do not have anything to apologize for. Now the society is going to have to deal with us not as nice little fairies who have hairdressing salons, but as people capable of violence. We're not going to put up with Dan Whites anymore.”

With those words (quoted… Read full post »

I’ll never forget the look on his angelic face, that dark, curly-haired Italian/American guy who came to our Gay Liberation Front (GLF) meeting in Philadelphia in the Fall of 1971 to tell us of the ordeal he endured after going for help at Temple University’s student counseling program.&n… Read full post »

You who came screaming into the room to find my limp five-year-old body that had fallen while I was swinging from the marble mantle, pounding on my chest with your fists to force air back into my lungs, then bolting out of the house and into the middle of the street… Read full post »

It’s really difficult to believe that SF Pride could make a tense situation even worse, but they managed it with flying colors last night, and not the colors of the rainbow flag. 

For those who may be out of the loop, a quick recap: For two weeks now, the board… Read full post »

Queer apple pie and motherhood are safe once more: Bradley Manning is no longer a grand marshall of the San Francisco Pride Parade that gets underway on the last Sunday of June. 

Manning, the person accused of giving classified military documents to WikiLeaks, a site that publishes… Read full post »

In no special order, here are ten reasons I will not be celebrating Earth Day because it is a complete waste of time:

The amount of money corporations spend to convince us they are “green” when the only “green” they understand is the green of hard cold cash, their bottom line.… Read full post »

It was hard holding back tears when Tim Redmond from the SF Bay Guardian told me Ron Lanza had died. He wanted to get a quote, but it was difficult to talk, something rare for me, as any reporter who has ever interviewed me will tell you. Finally, after fumbling through some rambling/… Read full post »

If I had my way, the trailer for Chris Jordan’s documentary Midway would be pumped into every computer in this nation so that people have no choice but to see it. They would have no way to stop or even to pause it.  

It would be shown in every… Read full post »

There’s nothing original about the Jesus story. By the time the Christians came along (and they were latecomers, by Mediterranean standards, to the business of pushing a new religion), the virgin birth and the death and resurrection routine had, as they say, been done before. Ad nauseam,… Read full post »

Being a writer is dangerous. That’s the impression I got from Papa. He didn’t like the idea that I wanted to be a writer. He thought that all literature was somehow subversive. Not to mention pointless. 

Everything I needed to know in life, he informed me, was contained in tra… Read full post »

Ever since my friend Howard Wallace, a longtime gay activist and union organizer, died the other day, I’ve found myself sifting through old photos in boxes that I keep in my closet. Death does that to me sometimes. It makes me want to glimpse back nostalgically at what once was and… Read full post »

The Republicans not only lost an election, but in the process they also discovered evolution. In his post-election analysis, right-wing radio host Sean Hannity said, in reflecting on the fact that 70% of Latinos voted for Obama, “We’ve got to get rid of the immigration issue altogether.&r… Read full post »

Last night I went back in time. It wasn’t a miracle or some mysterious anomaly like the one that explained many a strange occurrence on the old Star Trek series. No time machine was used. Nor was there a mad scientist working for years in secret in his laboratory out in… Read full post »

In Philadelphia, my hometown, Halloween once belonged to drag queens. It was the one day of the year they could parade through the streets in their finest wear without any fear of harassment or arrest from Philly’s Finest. 

Many cities, including Philly, had laws against “impe… Read full post »

Let’s face it, democracy in America is like Santa Claus: a fantasy. Merely something nice to believe in. After all, who wouldn’t want some jolly old grandfather type sliding down their chimney with lots of presents, or a country where a crusader for truth and justice can get elected to of… Read full post »

Yesterday I was nominated by the rules committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for a position on the LGBT Senior Task Force that they’re forming. Its purpose is to come up with recommendations for how to deal with a whole host of problems that queer seniors face in this… Read full post »

I’ll give it to Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, he knew how to go out with a big bang (as in the one that his fellow church leaders don’t believe created the universe). Just hours after he died last Friday at age 85, one of Italy’s biggest daily newspapers, Corriere della Sera,/… Read full post »

So here’s something interesting, but not completely surprising: a relatively new (founded in 2009) group of “gay and straight” Republicans and Libertarians calling themselves GOProud held a glitzy “Homocon” on August 28 during the Republican National Convention. It drew… Read full post »

We always suspected that we were being watched. It wasn’t paranoia. It was a no-brainer. J. Edgar Hoover, the supreme enemy of freedom of speech and assembly, was head of the FBI, and we were no doubt on his list of activists to be spied upon.

Our crime: we… Read full post »

Now that Tropical Storm Isaac is expected to upgrade to Hurricane 2 status and the National Republican Convention is being delayed a day or so because of possible problems that may arise, I have a question: if this right-wing political party is so connected to that guy in the clouds who… Read full post »

When those 50,000 or more good ol’ boy and girl Republicans descend on Tampa, Florida next week for their national convention and to officially select Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as their anointed ones, Tropical Storm (possibly Hurricane) Isaac won’t be the only one dumping a lot of hot air… Read full post »

We weren’t exactly swimming in money. My mother wore house dresses and blouses with rips in them. My brothers and I got hand-me-downs. Or clothes from Lu Belle’s, the local thrift store where the huge piles of rich people’s throwaways on long display tables were pulled at, and fough… Read full post »

“Who will love a little sparrow/ who’s traveled far and cries for rest?”

Simon and Garfunkel, “Sparrow.”

Not only are skyscrapers ugly as all hell (metal and glass monstrosities with no redeeming qualities, as far as I’m concerned), but they’re… Read full post »