-- By Tom Phillips
 |
| Portrait of Thoreau attributed to his sister |
Most men, wrote Henry David Thoreau, "lead lives of quiet desperation." I read these words as a teenager, and immediately resolved not to be one of those men. I was desperate, haunted, frustrated, insecure, confused, irrational and contradictory. But quiet? Not while I could draw a breath. The world soon began to hear my complaints against injustices large and small, personal and political, real and imagined.
There was just one subject that cowed me: sex and gender. I participated gingerly in what was called the sexual revolution, but couldn't bring myself to speak out for sexual freedom. Quickly and prematurely, I slid into a lifestyle of a heterosexual, cis-gendered, homophobic husband and father. I opposed same-sex marriage on linguistic grounds, telling my children that you couldn't just change the meaning of a word that goes back to biblical times. But of course, you can.
