Parting Glances Best of Sr. Scatterpin (2 of 3)
I had a tarot reading last Sunday by a psychic friend of Sr. Serena Scatterpin. “She’s a marvel and a looker,” was Sister’s intro. “If just a tad off her ever-lovin’ spiritual rocker.” Glad that [...]
Creep of the Week: Donald Trump
Being in prison sucks. Granted, I have never been in prison, but one doesn’t actually have to spend time behind bars to know it’s awful. I’ve been conditioned my entire life to recognize that prison [...]
Being and Becoming
There is a certain popular culture view of transgender people that cannot be easily shaken: transgender people are born as men or women, and choose to become women or men.
Parting Glances: The Best of Sister Scatterpin (1 of 3)
No matter the time or the weather, there’s something emotionally tingling about the cellphone vibrations whenever Sr. Serena Scatterpin, Renegade Sisters of Mary, rings me up.
Creep of the Week: Robert Oscar Lopez
Hey gentlemen, if you’re a Gay and want to become a Heterosexual, you can do it today in 10 easy steps with this one weird trick called self-hatred and denial! Well, that’s two weird tricks, [...]
Wrong in All the Right Ways
In March, Rachael and I took her 9-year-old daughter Sophie to see Pink perform in her Beautiful Trauma world tour in Grand Rapids. We bought the tickets way back before Christmas and had been counting [...]
Parting Glances: Been there! Done that!
“It’s a pity that youth is wasted on the young,” said George Bernard Shaw, whose play “Pygmalion” was given a fresh start, with an ongoing heart pacer as Broadway's “My Fair Lady.”
Creep of the Week: Jim Bridenstine
Congratulations, LGBTQ America! Donald Trump, the man who stumbled and swindled and lied his way into the presidency, has finally made good on his promise to be the very bestest president queers ever done seen. One word: Germany.
Transmissions: Secrets and Truths
Trans people - and I am using the term in its broadest sense, inclusive of gender fluidity and nonbinary identities - tend to have a pretty short list of wants. Really, I can boil it down to one simple statement: we just want to live our lives.
Parting Glances: A visitor from my Past
It’s been 65 years since I last saw the young man who now sits across from me. He has at age 19 what a friend calls “the lyric poetry of youth:” a freshness of look that’s a joy to see.
This Is What’s Wrong: NASSAR and MSU Are Not Alone
I am a Michigan State University alum. Currently, I am a faculty member at Central Michigan University, where I and my colleagues are entrusted with thousands of young adults beginning to negotiate the world on their own. I am a former female college athlete, I am a social worker whose clients who include young victims of sexual abuse and women who have experienced violence at the hands of men, I am personally connected to many young adults who have experienced sexual assault and, finally, I am the adoptive mom to four kids — including a daughter — who all went to college. From these many perspectives, I keep trying to untangle the MSU/Nassar scandal.
Creep of the Week: Donald Trump
If we have to wait until every American gets to know a trans person before full equality is achieved we are never going to get there. Which is why cisgender people need to advocate for trans folks. As anyone who isn’t a cisgender heterosexual white male knows, having to fight for your most basic rights and constantly advocate for your own humanity is exhausting.
Here’s Your Sign
Being transgender in the late 2010s means you talk about restrooms. Indeed, it's a topic you end up having to revisit over and over again, with what has been years now of attacks on public [...]
Parting Glances: Dreams Wet and Otherwise
The mind-boggling possibility of recording dreams may soon be a reality predicts "How It’s Made," a British monthly science magazine. The nanotechnology/brain scanning techniques are now such that translating neural impulses from brain neurons and [...]
Creep of the Week: Matt Walsh
It should be obvious by now that the Creep of the Week every week is Donald Trump. He is a cancerous tumor on the U.S, and as a nation we desperately need a Trumpectomy. But, [...]
Creep of the Week: MassResistance
As I write this it is April 9, 2018, my birthday. It’s also the day John Bolton starts as Trump’s National Security Advisor. Bolton, who was ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, really wants to go to war with North Korea and Iran. Like, bad. And now we’ve got him whispering into the ear of the dangerously impulsive and ignorant man we have as a leader. Which should make all of us fear that we won’t make it to our next birthdays.
Parting Glances: Gay Life, Circa 1955
At 19, I went to my first gay bar, The Silver Slipper, a dyke bar on Grand River, near downtown Detroit. I used borrowed ID, was escorted authoritatively by two lesbian regulars, Speedy and Draino.
Step Therapy: A Problem for All Patient Communities
Members of the LGBTQ community face many unique health care challenges. They suffer from higher rates of smoking, depression, anxiety, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Compounding these challenges is the fact that LGBTQ individuals are more likely than others to experience difficulty accessing health care, due to a long history of anti-LGBTQ bias.
VP Mike Pence is on my Radar, Wonder Why?
Is Vice President Mike Pence a closeted, deep-in-self-hate raging homo? Is that self-hate so intolerable for him that he’s become the commander in chief at the White House in pushing the most homophobic agenda since [...]
Parting Glances: 9,135 days later!
This week’s issue of Between The Lines marks the kickoff of our celebration of 25 years of our dedicated, meaningful, challenging, rainbow-community outreach publication. Whew! Who would have thought it possible? (Did you?)
Creep of the Week: Laura Ingraham
That’s something she has a knack for, apparently. Doing or saying totally reprehensible things that no decent human would do and then offering a weak apology. Case in point her recent Twitter tantrum in which she made fun of Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg because he didn’t get accepted by colleges he applied to.
Striking gold
To be transgender in 2018 is to deal with challenging, difficult times. We face attacks from all sides, and the specter of death itself lays heavy upon our community. As a result, I find I often have to spend a lot of time ringing the alarm bells, and warning of dire times.
Rollback
The Trump Administration has once again attempted to ban transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. This time out, the ban was secretly drafted by Vice President Mike Pence, with assistance from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) and Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation.
Parting Glances: Memories of a Detroit Gay Past
For five dynamic years — 1940 to 1945 — Detroit was America's Arsenal of Democracy, a vital source of war materials and weapons. First, for England's defense, later, for our own.
Creep of the Week: Donald Trump
Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, took to the streets on March 24 to protest the despicable fact that the U.S. allows its children to be gunned down at school on the regular.
Parting Glances: Tidbits from Tan-Tam Tammy
In 1987 some 165,000 people pledged $1,000 to Muskegon-born Jim Bakker’s Heritage USA, a Bible-themed vacation and so-called recreation village. For their ready cash, each attendee was promised a four-day stay and a [...]
Emotional Support Animals: Real or Fake?
Once I encountered a goat on an airplane. I had one short flight left to reach my destination from Nigeria to Ghana, and the old workhorse plane was overstuffed with luggage, squawking chickens and smelly, [...]
Creep of the Week: Peter Thiel
There’s a serial bomber at large in Austin, Texas. Two people have been killed and at least three injured in four separate bombing incidents. The target of these bombs appear to be black and brown [...]
Parting Glances: Keys! Wallet! iPhone! (Amen.)
After five years of faithful, heavy-duty service the battery in my expensive gift Shinola wrist watch expired. I should have known it was going to happen, because, for the past several weeks, its second hand hesitated, stopping completely for milli-seconds, before lunging forward by five-minute notches at a time. In spite of this, its time was impeccably accurate, so I ignored the warning signal.
Unanimous Vote in Favor of Michigan Transgender Woman is Groundbreaking
A landmark legal decision for transgender rights was issued last week. A unanimous three-judge panel of the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals — covering Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee — ruled that Michigan RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes violated federal civil rights laws when they fired Aimee Stephens for a being a transgender woman.
Creep of the Week: Betsy DeVos
On Twitter the thing I probably write most often is “Betsy DeVos is a monster” in reply to stories about her. Now, if you don’t know much about DeVos you might be thinking, “Okay, I get that you don’t agree with her policies, but she’s not an actual monster.”
Parting Glances: My 10 Minutes in Heaven (Pt. 3)
My out-of-body guide, Archangel Diva Deluxe tapped me three times with her magical wand of LGBTQ truth and saving grace circumstance on my D&G-designed choir robe. It was coupled with my leased-for-10-minutes, no-charge angel wings. [...]
Creep of the Week: Mike Huckabee
I don’t listen to a lot of country music. In fact, since Trump’s “election” I haven’t listened to anything other than heavy metal (it’s honestly the only music that makes sense right now). Still, I [...]
Trump Attacks Transgender Students Through Title IX
By Anurima Bhargava and Adele Kimmel The Trump Administration’s attacks on the transgender community come with real consequences. Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Department of Justice no longer considers it problematic [...]
Parting Glances Ten in Seventh Heaven (Pt.2 of 3)
It’s 12:01 a.m. according to my now celestial iPhone. I have been just 60 seconds in Heaven — the result of a Michigan Republican-sponsored pothole tripping mishap, courtesy of Gov. Snyder — but it seems like an eternity to me.
Creep of the Week: William Ligon
While the nation has been grappling with the fact that we have too many guns, another thing we have too many of that gets less attention: children in the foster care system.
Parting Glances: Ten in Seventh Heaven (Pt. 1)
MODEST DISCLAIMER: There are several books about afterlife experiences on the New York Times Best Seller list, including one by a 5-year-old kid (with a little grammar and spelling help from his word-savvy dad). Another [...]
Creep of the Week: Brian Brown
When I was a kid I knew of Bermuda only from songs, specifically “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys (“Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama”) and “Bermuda Triangle” by Barry Manilow, a mysterious love story of [...]
BTL Endorses Dana Nessel for Michigan Attorney General
The role of the Michigan Attorney General is a powerful, important position in the state. The office represents the people of Michigan in criminal and civil actions. They are supposed to be the hero that [...]
