Todd Clayton

I started working at Starbucks three weeks after I graduated from college.

We cannot be timid about calling this what it was: a terrorist act of racially-motivated hate, perpetrated by a 21-year-old man who penned his white supremacist manifesto 150 years after the abolition of slavery.

Someone grabbed my arm while I was ordering a beer and told me I was just her friend’s type, and would I come meet him?

Today I present you, in Seussian verse/ A list, comprehensive–no lies interspersed.

Too many religious communities, the one in which I grew up included, prize–more than service to and advocacy for the oppressed–pre-marital virginity. To “lose your virginity” before your wedding day is to relegate yourself to the margins of the congregation–shame and self-loathing your near-constant companions.

Trans* voices are conspicuously absent, and too many uninformed and insensitive lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer persons are doing harm to the trans* community while simultaneously purporting to speak for them.

Mainstream gay culture privileges the white narrative, and it does so at the expense of its own legitimacy.

New York is Thai take-out, long nights in the library, and drinks in Greenwich. It’s Emily, Matt, Heather, and Toni.