And that’s why birds do it, bees do it Even educated fleas do it — Cole Porter, 1928 Recently I was asked a question that, in various forms and various contexts, comes up from time to time. It goes something like, “Do you believe that gay men are having more risky sex as treatments for…
A favorite passage in The Velveteen Rabbit for my friend for life, Jan, and me is the part where the Skin Horse and the rabbit talk about becoming real. In that section, the horse recalls how he became real when another little boy loved him into becoming. The rabbit is skeptical, but later in the story,…
Yesterday I wrote that my own sexuality education began on a busy street in Milwaukee nearly 60 years ago. The national discussion of sexuality education, however, heated up over 100 years ago when the National Education Association (NEA) recommended that training be provided to teachers so that they could provide school-based programs on sexual health.…
Somewhere along 16th Street, a block or so south of Oklahoma Avenue in Milwaukee, WI, in September, 1958, I took one of my early steps in becoming a sex educator. I do not remember exactly with whom I was walking home from school, but I do know two of three of us were boys. Today…
The research is ambiguous about whether women apologize significantly more frequently than men, though it certainly seems that they do. In the numerous blog posts I have read about the issue, however, I haven’t seen any discussion about men apologizing less than women. It might sound at first like that means the same thing, but…
I vividly recall the summer that I nagged my mother endlessly to let me have a lemonade stand. I know I was under 8 years old, but I don’t recall exactly how old. We lived in a safe neighborhood where people looked out for each other and anyone’s children. Because everyone was poor or working…
As I write about apologies this week, I am including two posts on not apologizing. The first, Sweet Madeleine, appeared yesterday when I commented on former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times that has been reported as an apology for her assigning to a special place in…
To say that I am not an auditory learner is an understatement. I want a map. I am the guy who needs the visuals. I like the diagram that illustrates the process way more than the verbal directions. It isn’t that I can’t learn by listening. There are just funny results at times when I…
A couple of weeks ago I titled a blog post Sorry, Not Sorry and the statistics for readership shot up. I am not sure it was the title that caused the spike or my fetching photographs or pithy comments, but I will hazard a guess that at least a few readers were snagged by the…
This week I have been writing about love in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. I have written about three facets of love as these apply to interpersonal relationships and civic relationships, namely intimacy, passion, and commitment. The particular model of love that I ascribe to differs from the Greeks, Romans, St. Paul of Tarsus, or Santa.…
Creating Community for Everyone 