Guest columists
“On the Field” Guest Writer: Bishop Hartsel Clifton Shirley HUT ONE! HUT TWO! HUT THREE! HIKE! Whispers. Secrets. Conceal and hide! So goes life if you’re gay in football. And enthusiasts of one of America’s favorite pastimes rejecting homophobia appears to be as complicated and difficult as it is for bigots to reject racism. Roy Franklin Simmons was once [...]
“BLACKS DO READ: KUUMBA, KUJICHAGULIA, AND UJAMAA” Guest Writer: W.D. Foster-Graham When I embarked on my journey as a novelist, my first novel, Mark My Words, was 17 years in the making: five years to write it and another 12 to get it published. I was naïve, believing that traditional publishing was the only game in town. Tiffany [...]
“Turn the Beat Around” Guest Writer: R. L. Norman Honey Let Me Tell You Something: I’m lying here in the darkness of my bedroom. I’ve closed the shades to shut the world out. I’m feeling like I don’t have a care in the world as I let my troubles stay outside my door, and [...]
“Political Trailblazer” Guest Writer: Bishop Hartsel Clifton Shirley America's current political state has the country waiting with bated breath for the first Black Vice President, Kamala Harris. Very few people know or even remember that not too long ago, there was a Black Gay man who was nominated for that position as well. [...]
"Playing It Forward" Guest Writer: W.D. Foster-Graham As an African American gay man of a certain age, I find that my definition of success has changed over the years. The dream I had so long ago of being a published author, writing the books I wanted to read, having readers who love my books, has come true. With that dream realized, [...]
"Before Pose" Guest Writer: Bishop Hartsel Clifton Shirley Pose is the current television program that unapologetically displays the lives of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals. For some of us, it’s just short of sacred as it helps to reveal the hidden lives, pains, heartbreaks, and joys of a segment of the population all too often overlooked, ignored--and even worse--forgotten. Mainstream television has [...]
"Staying Sane in 2020" Guest Writer: W.D. Foster-Graham 2020, in many respects, has been a year of insanity. I won’t rehash that which we already know, but the negative energy from it is something we cannot allow ourselves to be inundated with. As a man of a certain age, I have learned much from my 90-year-old mother from [...]
“The Midas Touch” Guest Writer: R. L. Norman We were standing six feet apart from each other. Because of the coronavirus, it was the ritual. We’ve been dealing with this virus for the last seven months, and social distancing has become a part of life. So, here we stand. We’d just finished having lunch and walked to my car, which [...]
"A Devastating Truth" Guest Writer: Bishop Hartsel Clifton Shirley History’s gatekeepers often write it, omitting crucial characters and events. While they shine a more positive light on the misinformation, this does history an egregious disservice. The history of AIDS--particularly in the United States--is no different. A case in point is the ethnicity of the individual suggested to represent the earliest [...]
"The Right to Be" Guest Writer: W.D. Foster-Graham Indeed, it is exciting to have a new book launched. In writing Never Give Up: A Christopher Family Novel, I wondered in the beginning if I could write a whodunit, given that I love to watch movies and shows like Midsomer Murders, Forensic Files, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, Poirot, [...]
"Return of the Arc" Guest Writer: Bishop Hartsel Clifton Shirley The much-anticipated return of Noah’s Arc came and tantalized us just as the series did for two seasons on Logotv. This time with much more freedom and creative control, Patrik-Ian Polk--the groundbreaking program’s creator, writer, producer, and director--returned to whet our appetites with Noah’s Arc: The ‘Rona Chronicles. The ‘Rona Chronicles, [...]
"Flirting With 70" Guest Writer: W.D. Foster-Graham Yes, I said it. I haven’t consummated it yet, but I am in the flirting zone with 70. That was such an alien concept to my 21-year-old brain in the early 1970s, somewhere in the future far, far away, off in my grandmother’s territory. And to be gay and [...]
