I’ve done it, and I’m just beginning to understand how

Me biphobic?

I’m one of those gay guys who ALWAYS understood how sexual attraction exists on a spectrum. That understanding seared into me when I was a gay teen in love with a boy who wanted girls as badly as he seemed to ache for trysts with me.

Oh, my tender heart!

I didn’t feel any attraction to girls or women (and never have), but I felt deeply with him. I didn’t doubt my friend’s bisexuality then, and I’ve never since had reason or desire to dismiss bisexuality or find it objectionable.

Me biphobic?

Why, I’m a modern, woke, progressive, academically up-to-date paragon of queer sensitivity. Cough. So how come in a conversation yesterday with Medium’s own sexuality guru and pansexual Elle Beau ❇︎ I suddenly recognized patterns of behavior that must over the years have caused hurt to many bisexual people? …

How it feels to struggle for parental love

Reading about a shocking anti-LGBTQ legal case from Indiana last week, I flashed back on my struggles to become a gay dad. My partner and I had to fight because authorities didn’t understand queer families and didn’t have the tools to evaluate us equally. More on Indiana in a second, but for just a moment, let me show you how it feels to be LGBTQ and fight for parental love.

There’s a lot of love in this room

My boyfriend and I, along with our not-yet-official foster son Brent, suffered a lot of prickly nerves and sour stomachs before the senior case manager’s words let the air out of our tension. …

LGBTQ storytelling from Prism and Pen — November 22, 2020

by James Finn

Prism & Pen storytelling plumbs change and fear

This week’s edition of P&P trends dark, with writers like Chuy G. Gonzalez, MS, Dennett, and Valentine Wiggin exploring queer loneliness and isolation. But change is a big theme this week, and theoaknotes hits a powerful, positive piece out of the park. You won’t want to miss their perspective on the transgender experience.

We present quite the rainbow cross-section this week, even if some of it lurks behind storm clouds. Let’s get started with three editor’s picks!

If you’re not a Medium member, please click on the underlined links to read for free. …

LGBTQ youth on the street

I don’t think I could have taken much more. I was about done, honest to God. I had no family and exactly two friends in the whole world. It looked like the cops were about to take Bobby away, and Marissa was about to get killed or worse.

Tomas was a mean mother fucker. I’d seen his worst with my own eyes.

So, I was about to break. If I’d been standing on the Manhattan Bridge right then, I probably would have jumped off. When Dan asked me why I was crying, I didn’t even know I was. …

Ironic reminders of historical falsehoods and religious privilege

What a Thanksgiving!

Yesterday would have been hard no matter what. My father died in August, and after moving to rural Michigan where I spent three years caring for him, facing a major holiday alone was always going to be rough.

A big-city mouse all my adult life, there’s nothing like clattering around an empty country cottage to demonstrate that even loving choices can have painful consequences.

As Remington Write would say, life isn’t fair, and that’s just the way it is. We can either deal with reality … or suffer. I consoled myself with the knowledge that millions of Americans were missing their own loved ones due to covid-19, and my own small suffering is nothing in the face of our collective national pain. …

How homeless LGBTQ kids survive

Releasing my serialized novella “Running toward Hope” on Prism & Pen, my primary goal was timing to highlight Marissa’s story on Transgender Day of Awareness.

In this tale of three homeless LGBTQ teens, she’s the hero, although all three characters are powerful and take responsibility for their lives with strength beyond their years.

In this chapter, 16-year-old Bobby tells his story, and it’s heartbreaking. This is the most personal chapter for me and was the hardest to write, because I was there.

Yes, this story is fictionalized, but it’s very true. The hustler bar here is real, and so is Bobby. …

Feeling weird and not watching a movie tonight

Hey, Amazon Prime, no hard feelings, and I hope you understand. I know you don’t owe me anything, but I sure would appreciate a little empathy. Can you give me a second to explain?

I don’t watch a lot of movies. I’m autistic and movies are hard.

Part of my autism is an extreme sensitivity to visual stimulation. On a bad day when colors are too bright and things I see move too fast, all I want to do is retreat into a dark room and put a cool cloth over my eyes. I don’t say that to elicit sympathy. Hell, I rarely admit it. …

Couple claim religious discrimination

Prospective foster parents in Australia just sued an agency that refused to work with them because they say they would try to “overcome” the sexuality of children in their care. The couple are using legal arguments popular among conservative Christians in the United States, and their lawsuit illustrates the dangers of religious privilege, demonstrating the moral and intellectual weakness of conversion therapy proponents.

When I was a teenager, the pastor of my church offered to send me to a program to “heal” my homosexuality. My jaw dropped in shock and my heart exploded into overdrive.

When the youth pastor and I stepped into the office, I knew something was wrong, but I had no clue the youth pastor was about to out me as gay, something he couldn’t know for sure. …