We can’t afford to be passive in response to the march toward authoritarianism — The American public needs to recognize that if your community doesn’t demonstrate tolerance for homosexuality, it puts EVERYBODY at risk. The recent wave of anti-gay legislation put forth by Republican politicians is terrifying. Unfortunately, the passive centrists/moderates always behave as if the positions of radical fascists are legitimate talking points.

There’s no way an algorithm made this choice — Today is March 21st. The boost was announced on February 21st. Like most of the writers on this platform, I was excited to see what would happen when something of mine was chosen. As I write this, I’m sitting at 7,500 followers. I also do a weekly column for The…

The debate is often directed onto inconsequential concerns, while issues of murder and suicide are ignored — I recently wrote an article about how my daughter played basketball against a transgender girl. It was a wonderful experience. Everybody had fun. The only people present who made anyone uncomfortable were the always hostile, conservative white men. I had a few people respond to my article with statements like…

You can’t fall into the trap of assuming ignorant people don’t have influence — Most of the people I shared my childhood with grew up to be rabid, right-wing apologists. I’ve had more experience with that philosophy than I ever wished for. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that some things don’t change. It doesn’t matter if I’m a powerless child, or an adult with multiple degrees…

Take a moment to consider your “writing mission statement” — You become much more effective when you know what your audience expects of you “You’re a writer?” “Yes.” “Well, why should I support you?” “Umm — .” This is a question that writers need to prepare for. You might not realize it, but writers get “interviewed” every day. It represents…

Oversimplifications of complex topics are used to manipulate and deceive people — Whether you recognize it or not, you’ve been trained to think in a way that makes you easy to control. That training severely inhibits your ability to make an impact on the world. We often use models to create a simplified representation of reality that is easy to understand. However…

This form of betrayal is more common than you might think. — As I wrote that title, I found myself shaking my head. Our society is pretty indifferent to the idea of divorce. I would go as far as to say we’re irresponsible. Our society is irresponsible about a lot of things. I think one of the reasons people don’t spend too…

Passive racism is every bit as evil as overt and deliberate oppression — I skimmed over an article this morning that contained language about how “a healed black person works hard and doesn’t blame white people for his problems.” Let me make it clear: those are not MY words. I didn’t click on the article because I didn’t want to inadvertently send that…

When content is king, you don’t have time to revise — or do you? — The other day I gave myself a big pat on the back. I felt enormously smug because I’d cranked out an article, copied the text into the destination platform, and hit submit. “Ha, ha,” I chortled. “Yet another first draft that’s ready to publish without going through a tedious revision…