Shaun David Hutchinson’s YA (Young Adult) novel “We Are the Ants” merges gay male teen love with alien abduction intrigue — As I’ve said before, intersectionality and diversity is important when exploring LGBT+ characters in novelized fiction. I’ve touched upon this in past reviews when writing about YA (Young Adult) genre protagonists such as Darius Kellner and Archie Ferguson. But author Shaun David Hutchinson takes this to an entirely new level…

I threw my primary vote his way, even after he dropped out and endorsed another candidate — As a matter of principle, I vote in primaries. I do this even if the race has already been all but decided. The main reason is that I feel it’s my only opportunity, as a voter, to have my say in opposition to what the establishment wants. In April 2000…

For how long could World War II have dragged on? Was the nuclear arms race a foregone conclusion? — So far in 2022, I’ve constructed two alternate history thought-experiments. Each of them speculates on how history might have unfolded differently had social media been widely available throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. Specifically, those ruminations addressed how a hypothetical existence of the World Wide Web might have influenced the…

Why 2022 could be the most important election of our lifetimes…and everyone’s afraid to say it out loud! — Dear Potential Voters Who Think Midterms Don’t Matter, First, let me say that I have no love for the Democratic Party. Too many of their most visible personalities tend to be mealy-mouthed, feckless, disingenuous, evasive, and prone to excessive pandering. Political correctness is a cult-like religion for some of these…

Why I exclude the “Q” (and a majority of other letters) from the “LGBT” abbreviation Most people who know me understand what passion I have for defending and protecting the LGBT+ community. Just read any of the pieces I’ve written about marriage equality, inclusive sex ed curriculums, or Queer unity: Should My Homosexuality Limit My Access to Male Spaces? “Locker room panic” is presumptuous, and, quite frankly, threatens to create more slippery slopesmedium.com

Another person’s identity-based similarity to me won’t increase the likelihood of them persuading me — Amidst the ongoing quest to achieve social justice, there has been an overriding assumption made by many well-meaning (and other not-so-well-meaning) leaders. …

The next time the CBS reality show does an all-returnees season, what might it look like? — With CBS’s Survivor showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon, many fans have wondered if a future “all-star” version of the franchise might incorporate a “Legends”-themed season. After all, if Survivor makes it to Season 50 (presumably filmed in the Summer of 2025; to air in the Spring of…

Well, yes, some are. But I’d be hard-pressed to generalize all of us in that way… — When I was attending film school, the professor from whom I learned the most was a former Hollywood TV writer named Tracy Friedman. She was neurotic, outspoken, candid, and damn phenomenal at her craft. But she was also understandably jaded, having escaped the boys’ club and dumpster fire that had…

Why it isn’t very easy for me to answer the question: “Are you religious?” — As a college student throughout the aughts, I was constantly triggered by how society normalized one-sided notions of religious piety. If you believed in the Christian God, you automatically had the moral upper hand. By extension, belief in the Hebrew or Muslim versions of this God also gave you privilege. …