Fall-ing
Despite the 72 degrees here in Manhattan, there’s a crispness in the air. It’s fall, the season that is supposed to represent the beginning of dormancy, a shortening of summer’s long days and fun times, a letting-go of play and a return to the seriousness of work.
And yet, I don’t think America had a fun summer.
We had the attack of the birthers and deathers. We had play-cowboys with real guns attend presidential speeches and congressional town halls. For all our focus on health care this summer, few have realized the tremendous irony shooting us in the face: America is a country in the midst of a nervous breakdown.
Bob Herbert reminded me of this, yesterday morning when he wrote,
“Looking back at the past few months, it’s fair to wonder if the country isn’t going through a nervous breakdown… We need therapy… The first step, of course, is to recognize that we have a problem.”
A problem, indeed.
I often write about “the gay community.” Truth be told, there isn’t one. Like the “straight community,” there are many. Both have many different ideas, ideals, morals, goals, and behaviors. And yet, some within “the gay community” spent a good part of the spring trying to get what the “straight community” already has: civil marriage.
Legal recognition of our equality is what a great many of us are trying to obtain. But there are a few things, perhaps more important, that we need to achieve first: an across-the-board recognition within the gay community that we actually want and deserve equality, and that we have the willingness to fight for it. And the one pre-requisite that has to happen before any of this: we have to start acting like it.
Herbert wonders if America is going through a nervous breakdown. I think the gay community is.
Despite our marriage equality wins this spring, despite our collective temper-tantrum that led to the Hate Crimes Bill making its way through Congress and talk of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the gay community is too silent on matters that affect us just as much if not more deeply than those the rest of the country is confronting.
Yes, there are bright spots. Grass-roots organizations and individuals are making a difference every day. My fellow gay writers and bloggers work long days, often without any compensation, to help move the ball forward. And we’re having some success.
But the straight community, in the form of conservatives, gay marriage opponents, and the religious right, have enslaved us for far too long. And its taken its toll.
Because most of us can’t get married, we approach relationships differently. Our opponents like to say we have all the rights we need (and deserve.) What they don’t talk about is the security they have that comes in the form of societal recognition. We know that the bond of marriage is not only a goal, but an aid to maintaining a relationship through troubled times. It’s a lot easier to walk away when there are no legal issues, common property, children, or even the reaction of family, friends, and neighbors to stop you.
And because we don’t have this responsibility, we often don’t act with the same level of responsibility that straights purport to have. Much to our detriment, and, dare I say, much to the secret delight of our foes, we are still acting as teenagers, more interested in fun and sex for today than taking a healthy interest in achieving equality tomorrow.
While there are a great many long-term same-sex relationships, gay relationships aren’t necessarily long-lasting – not because we’re not capable or desirous of long-term relationships, but because society has not put the same focus on same-sex marriage that it has on “traditional” marriage.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
