Systemic racism is something that diminishes all of us. Of course its worst effects are for its victims, but our entire country is held back through the inequality and the mistrust that it creates.
I hope that teachings about inclusion and love win out over what I personally consider to be a handful of scriptures that reflect the moral expectations of the era in which they were recorded.
In 'Palaces for the People,' Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other, by looking at the social side of our physical spaces.
As a mayor, my instinct is to really think about how to get something done and not to make the promise unless you have some view of the pathway. You don't have to have it all figured out, but you have to have a pathway there.
You know, I do believe that China is emerging as a competitor, not just a competitor but, in many ways, an adversary. And, you know, the Chinese model is also being held up globally as an alternative power model, and I very much believe in our model versus theirs.
Experiences with friends or family members coming out have helped millions of Americans to see past stereotypes and better understand what being gay is - and is not.
I get the urge people will have after Trump. 'Look at the chaos and the exhaustion: Wouldn't it be better to go back to something more stable with somebody we know?' But there's no going back to a pre-Trump universe. We can't be saying the system will be fine again just like it was. Because that's not true; it wasn't fine.
Let's be under no illusions: There are attacks on, for example, transgender Americans from the Oval Office, picking on troops - people willing to lay down their lives for this country - not to mention teenagers in our high schools. So we've got to end the war on trans Americans.
The most moving responses I got to my coming out in the first place was people, like teenagers, letting me know that it made their lives easier in some way.
When I was fourteen, Mom and Dad sent me to St. Joseph High School, the Catholic school up the hill from our place, housed in a 1950s-era tan brick building sometimes confused for a light industrial structure due to the surprisingly high smokestack of its old incinerator.
If somebody is pointing out that there are advantages - many of them unfair - that go along with being male in our society and in our politics, then I completely agree.
My high school in South Bend had nearly a thousand students. Statistically, that means that several dozen were gay or lesbian. Yet, when I graduated in 2000, I had yet to encounter a single openly LGBT student there.
As we see dislocation and disruption in certain parts of the country, from rural areas to my home in the industrial Midwest, and in the economy, this leads to a kind of disorientation and loss of community and identity. That void can be filled through constructive and positive things, like community involvement or family.