Last week, however, Erskine and its two gay volleyball players bounced back into the news. On Feb. 20, Erskine issued a “Statement on Human Sexuality” that read, in part: “Sexual relations…between persons of the same sex are spoken of in scripture as sin and contrary to the will of the Creator.” The statement ended ominously: “Members of the Erskine community are expected to follow the teachings of scripture concerning matters of human sexuality and institutional decisions will be made in light of this position.
Read MoreHow LGBT Youths Survive the Streets
A groundbreaking report released Tuesday documents the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youths in New York City’s commercial sex trade. It delivers a portrait of youth sex work that’s more complicated than the popular narrative of “girls working under pimps.”
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Why It’s So Hard to Understand Male Sex Workers
Israel Oka was 22 years old when he started doing sex work—a mixture of professional domination, erotic massage, and escorting. He’d been “working a minimum wage job at a movie theater” at the height of the Great Recession. Eventually, a dominatrix friend inspired him to consider sex work as a way to make ends meet. “It started off as supplementary income,” about a $100 a week, Oka said. Sometimes, this gave him the financial resources to pursue other interests, like political activism. Other times, it was survival sex work, helping him get by when he was homeless.
Read MoreGreening the Great White Way: Broadway’s New Environmental Ethic
A few years ago, Susan Sampliner, the company manager of the Broadway show Wicked, was given an unusual task by her boss, producer David Stone: Take the next 18 months, he told her, and consider what we could do to make the show more environmentally sustainable.
Read MoreMore Than 300,000 March in Manhattan to Demand Action on Climate Change
Billed as the world’s biggest demonstration against global warming, the march stretched for more than 30 blocks, a solid mile and a half of nuns in vestments, old-school hippies wearing tie-dyed T-shirts, families with anti-fracking banners taped to strollers, marching bands, bird puppets, unions, mosque groups, school groups, socialists, Democrats, and Republicans.
Read MoreFor NYC Kids, First Day of School Comes One Year Earlier
Today 50,000 children began attending free preschool in New York City. That’s more kids than are in Seattle’s entire K-12 public school system.
One of them is Helen Poventud’s daughter, Christina. In a tiny orange shirt featuring a drawing of happy school kids, she made a beeline for Rena Early Learn Child Care in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood early this morning. It was important that she be on time, her mom said, so that shecould get to her job as a home health aid.
Read MoreCivil Rights Activists Gather for Freedom Summer 50th Anniversary
As the lights dimmed in New York City’s historic Ed Sullivan Theater, the faces of three young men—two white, one black—faded into view on the monitors. Fifty years ago this June, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were working in Neshoba County, Miss., as part of the Freedom Summer campaign to register African American voters. On the night of June 21, a lynch mob followed the three civil rights activists out of town, and members of the Ku Klux Klan shot them at close range.
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