The pledge taken in marriage is one of the more visible statements of relationship commitment in western culture. Civic pledges, like oaths of offices and the Pledge of Allegiance, are similarly statements of our commitment. We have witnessed the recitation of these promises scores of times, perhaps thousands, by the time we are in high…
Each year I teach about love in a psychology class at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Each semester there are at least a few students who question why I am teaching this content in a course about the psychology of LGBT people. They seem to echo Tina Turner: What’s love got to do with…
As I write about love this week, I went online for all things related to it. What better place to start a search like this than celebrity wedding vows. This one — certainly NOT my favorite — still kept snagging my attention: I vow to keep the spare toilet paper in the bathroom instead of…
I have always loved me some Tina Turner. But when Ms. Turner soulfully sings What’s love got to do with it, I confess that she loses me when she asks, “What’s love but a second-hand emotion?” I think that love might be the life of a community and fear might be its death. This week…
My blog posts are sometimes started days before they are scheduled for online publication. This week as I am writing in concert with my friend Tom whose posts appear at One Whole Life, my writing is particularly organized. We have quite consciously outlined what we will include in each day’s posts, not so much to…
Today my friend Tom wrote in One Whole Life, It is unfortunate it took a deadly virus to bring LGBT people into visibility to society. You would have to know Tom even just a little to know that it would be really difficult to be angry with him. He is the kind of guy that…
In 1982 I ended a relationship with a wonderful man who remains a dear friend still. We are both good guys and generous. I was just not able at the time to understand and address the chasm created by our class differences. Because I had been raised poor and working class, his kind politeness and…
In the early-1980s, baby boomers were looking good. At 35, we were running, pumping iron, and discovering organic. We were taking over in so many ways. Unlike the 1950s and 1960s, when we were crowding into overflow barracks in beyond-capacity schools, in our 30’s we were getting into supervisory roles and management positions that surpassed…
The day after I went to a Patti LaBelle performance last month, I woke with an acute awareness of having lost something. The concert itself was a thing of joy for us die-hard Patti fans. Ms. LaBelle brought it for over 90 minutes. There were people in the audience of roughly 3,000 who had seen…
Accountability has fascinated me for a decade or more. I teach about it over and over. I am a student of it as well. Because of this, I am a stickler at times for how the word is used. I rarely if ever ask to hold someone accountable; the concept of doing so is foreign…
Creating Community for Everyone 