Oldies But Goodies

Queer Like Us

Out Magazine, November 2001
I reported on the history of the then-new identity “transgender” – and argued that the “T” belonged in the rainbow community, which was controversial at the time.

The M/F Boxes
The Nation, November 2001

A 15-year-old girl is kept in a Chicago mental hospital for three years because she won’t wear a dress. A truck driver is fired from his job of twenty years when his boss learns that he wears women’s clothes at home….

When Biomoms Get Mad

Out Magazine, July 2001

We were just winning second-parent adoption, state by state. I wrote about three crazy child custody battles in state supreme courts, in which biomoms trying to deauthorize the other mom, potentially setting terrible precedent for the rest of us.

Never Say ‘Never Again’
Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2005

Heda Kovaly wrote a heartbreakingly beautiful — and hopeful — book about life in Prague during the brutal 20th century: first escaping Auschwitz and then surviving Stalin’s show trials.

For CJR, I wrote a profound appreciation of the book that taught me to be skeptical of idealism, and to prefer everyday compassion to heroic greatness.