Stories
A Stranger on the Bus
A light snow was falling and the streets were crowded with people. It was Munich in Nazi Germany. One of my rabbinic students, Shifra Penzias, told me her great-aunt, Sussie, had been riding a city bus home from work when SS storm troopers suddenly stopped the coach and began examining the identification papers of the passengers. Most were annoyed but a few were terrified. Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner. Continue reading…
Neighbors
Shortly after I had left my heterosexual marriage of 16 years and had come out as a Gay man in 1993, I found myself chatting with Julie, a colleague in the telecommunications documentation group in which I worked. I had been in touch with an Internet community of Gay fathers (my daughter was born in 1984) and had been impressed by one of the stories I had read there. One of the Gay dads, who, with his partner, had young sons, related how his straight neighbors, also parents, had been anxious about their own children spending time (including sleepovers and camp-outs) at a household headed by two Gay men. Continue reading…
Frank
When I was at Rutgers College back in the—ahem!—1980s, my sociology professor asked me if I’d like to be on a panel of gay and lesbian people for our class unit on sexuality. I was out on campus, and co-president of the gay campus group, but still I had just a little concern about one guy in particular. In class “Frank” made it fairly clear through comments during the semester that he wasn’t too keen on “queers.” Continue reading…
