American Dream
The arc of the moral universe is long, But it bends toward justice. -Abolitionist Theodore Parker, c. 1850's I slept away the holiday visit to my spouse's family in Philadelphia . I managed to stay awake for Thanksgiving and the day afterward, but then I surrendered to the fierce cold I'd been battling and took to my bed. My hotel room bed, that is. It would have been surreal in the best of health, this visit to new "in-laws" who clearly aren't anywhere close to accepting this as true. Homophobia is as potent in its silences as it in its taunts. Spending two of the four days sleeping tipped it over into pure dream time. There was genius in the timing of the cold, as it excused me from half of the family get-togethers. I arose from my fever dreams just in time to participate in packing up and going home. My dreams in Philadelphia were full of phantoms of two United States of America . One is a place of doublespeak and lies, a nightmare in a ho...