National
A husband’s story: Michael Carroll reflects on life with Edmund White
Iconic author died this week; ‘no sunnier human in the world’
Unlike most gay men of my generation, I’ve only been to Fire Island twice. Even so, the memory of my first visit has never left me. The scenery was lovely, and the boys were sublime — but what stood out wasn’t the beach or the parties. It was a quiet afternoon spent sipping gin and tonics in a mid-century modern cottage tucked away from the sand and sun.
Despite Fire Island’s reputation for hedonism, our meeting was more accident than escapade. Michael Carroll — a Facebook friend I’d chatted with but never met — mentioned that he and his husband, Ed, would be there that weekend, too. We agreed to meet for a drink. On a whim, I checked his profile and froze. Ed was author Edmund White.
I packed a signed copy of Carroll’s “Little Reef” and a dog-eared hardback of “A Boy’s Own Story,” its spine nearly broken from rereads. I was excited to meet both men and talk about writing, even briefly.
Yesterday, I woke to the news that Ed had passed away. Ironically, my first thought was of Michael.
This week, tributes to Edmund White are everywhere — rightly celebrating his towering legacy as a novelist, essayist, and cultural icon. I’ve read all of his books, and I could never do justice to the scope of a career that defined and chronicled queer life for more than half a century. I’ll leave that to better-prepared journalists.
But in those many memorials, I’ve noticed something missing. When Michael Carroll is mentioned, it’s usually just a passing reference: “White’s partner of thirty years, twenty-five years his junior.” And yet, in the brief time I spent with this couple on Fire Island, it was clear to me that Michael was more than a footnote — he was Ed’s anchor, editor, companion, and champion. He was the one who knew his husband best.
They met in 1995 after Michael wrote Ed a fan letter to tell him he was coming to Paris. “He’d lost the great love of his life a year before,” Michael told me. “In one way, I filled a space. Understand, I worshiped this man and still do.”
When I asked whether there was a version of Ed only he knew, Michael answered without hesitation: “No sunnier human in the world, obvious to us and to people who’ve only just or never met him. No dark side. Psychology had helped erase that, I think, or buffed it smooth.”
Despite the age difference and divergent career arcs, their relationship was intellectually and emotionally symbiotic. “He made me want to be elegant and brainy; I didn’t quite reach that, so it led me to a slightly pastel minimalism,” Michael said. “He made me question my received ideas. He set me free to have sex with whoever I wanted. He vouchsafed my moods when they didn’t wobble off axis. Ultimately, I encouraged him to write more minimalistically, keep up the emotional complexity, and sleep with anyone he wanted to — partly because I wanted to do that too.”
Fully open, it was a committed relationship that defied conventional categories. Ed once described it as “probably like an 18th-century marriage in France.” Michael elaborated: “It means marriage with strong emotion — or at least a tolerance for one another — but no sex; sex with others. I think.”
That freedom, though, was always anchored in deep devotion and care — and a mutual understanding that went far beyond art, philosophy, or sex. “He believed in freedom and desire,” Michael said, “and the two’s relationship.”
When I asked what all the essays and articles hadn’t yet captured, Michael paused. “Maybe that his writing was tightly knotted, but that his true personality was vulnerable, and that he had the defense mechanisms of cheer and optimism to conceal that vulnerability. But it was in his eyes.”
The moment that captured who Ed was to him came at the end. “When he was dying, his second-to-last sentence (garbled then repeated) was, ‘Don’t forget to pay Merci,’ the cleaning lady coming the next day. We had had a rough day, and I was popping off like a coach or dad about getting angry at his weakness and pushing through it. He took it almost like a pack mule.”
Edmund White’s work shaped generations — it gave us language for desire, shame, wit, and liberation. But what lingers just as powerfully is the extraordinary life Ed lived with a man who saw him not only as a literary giant but as a real person: sunny, complex, vulnerable, generous.
In the end, Ed’s final words to his husband weren’t about his books or his legacy. They were about care, decency, and love. “You’re good,” he told Michael—a benediction, a farewell, maybe even a thank-you.
And now, as the world celebrates the prolific writer and cultural icon Edmund White, it feels just as important to remember the man and the person who knew him best. Not just the story but the characters who stayed to see it through to the end.
Federal Government
White House finds Calif. violated Title IX by allowing trans athletes in school sports
Education Department threatens ‘imminent enforcement action’
The Trump-Vance administration announced on Wednesday that California’s Interscholastic Federation and Department of Education violated federal Title IX rules for allowing transgender girls to compete in school sports.
In a press release, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights threatened “imminent enforcement action” including “referral to the U.S. Department of Justice” and the withholding of federal education funding for the state if the parties do not “agree to change these unlawful practices within 10 days.”
The agency specified that to come into compliance; California must enforce a ban excluding transgender student athletes and reclaim any titles, records, and awards they had won.
Federal investigations of the California Interscholastic Federation and the state’s Department of Education were begun in February and April, respectively. The Justice Department sued Maine in April for allowing trans athletes to compete and refusing a similar proposal to certify compliance within 10 days.
Broadly, the Trump-Vance administration’s position is that girls who are made to compete against trans opponents or alongside trans teammates are unfairly disadvantaged, robbed of opportunities like athletics scholarships, and faced with increased risk of injury — constituting actionable claims of unlawful sex discrimination under Title IX.
This marks a major departure from how the previous administration enforced the law. For example, the Department of Education issued new Title IX guidelines in April 2024 that instructed schools and educational institutions covered by the statute to not enforce categorical bans against trans athletes, instead allowing for limited restrictions on eligibility if necessary to ensure fairness or safety at the high school or college level.
Sports aside, under former President Joe Biden the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.
Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.
A number of high profile Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have recently questioned or challenged the party’s position on transgender athletes, as noted in a statement by Education Secretary Linda McMahon included in Wednesday’s announcement.
“Although Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted months ago it was ‘deeply unfair’ to allow men to compete in women’s sports, both the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation continued as recently as a few weeks ago to allow men to steal female athletes’ well-deserved accolades and to subject them to the indignity of unfair and unsafe competitions.”
Federal Government
Trump’s dismantling of US foreign aid derails HIV prevention effort in Africa
FDA approved breakthrough preventative drug lenacapavir earlier this month
On June 18, the Food and Drug Administration approved a long-acting injectable for the prevention of HIV that could have a transformational impact on decades-long efforts to end the epidemic in the U.S. and abroad.
Offering robust protection with just two doses per year, lenacapavir has the potential to dramatically improve uptake and adherence compared to daily oral PrEP regimens like Truvada or Descovy, particularly for high risk populations living in places with poor health infrastructure or where stigma about HIV discourages frequent testing and clinic visits.
According to the New York Times, however, the rollout of lenacapavir for HIV prevention overseas has been stymied by the gutting of agencies, staff, programs, and funding dedicated to foreign aid and public health during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Among other moves, the administration has frozen or withdrawn nearly all U.S. foreign development assistance, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and reduced the size of its workforce by more than 95 percent, and shuttered key public health units housed under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FDA.
As a result, the Times reports, HIV programs across the African continent have been “scrambling to procure drugs that the United States once supplied, replace lost nurses and lab technicians, and restart shuttered programs to prevent new infections.”
Experts fear HIV infection rates are climbing in some of the hardest-hit countries, but since the U.S. pulled funding for data collection and monitoring, there is no way to know for sure.
Historically, the U.S. has provided about 75 percent of all global spending on efforts to fight the epidemic, a reflection of the extent to which there was broad bipartisan support for the allocation of resources for this purpose through programs like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Trump continued this legacy in his first term, launching the ambitious Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative that was continued under former President Joe Biden.
After returning to the White House, however, the president and his administration have justified their slash-and-burn cuts to the federal government’s work in international development and public health by arguing that funds and resources sent to overseas nations are too often pilfered by corrupt foreign state actors or wasted on ineffectual programs.
Trump and his allies also believe the U.S. should no longer be expected to shoulder such a disproportionate share of the responsibility for foreign aid, and that other countries are likelier to step up and contribute more in response to America’s retreat.
National
Evan Wolfson on the 10-year legacy of marriage equality
And the urgent need to fight now to protect Obergefell ruling
It was 10 years ago this week — on June 26 — when gay marriage became the law of the land with the landmark Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges. Both Jim Obergefell and Freedom to Marry founder Evan Wolfson contributed to the foreword of a new coffee table book, “LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality,” curated by photographer Frankie Frankeny and writer John Casey.
With the current political climate, many fear that marriage equality could be overturned. In my last interview with Evan Wolfson back in 2017, Trump had just started his first term. I asked him then, “Is gay marriage safe?”
Here’s what he said:
“Look, anything can happen. So I don’t think we should ever be complacent or give up or stop working. Even though the election was a catastrophe and our country is very much on the wrong path, I actually think there are other communities, values, and causes we care about that are more in danger. If we stand in solidarity with others and keep moving forward, we will also secure our own gains.
“I’m not really worried they’re going to take away the freedom to marry. That’s a very hard thing to do. Even former or current opponents are mostly focused on other things.
“We won the freedom to marry not just in court, but by shifting public opinion—growing support from 27% when I argued the first trial in Hawaii to 63% in 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled. That didn’t go away on Election Day. More than a million gay people have gotten legally married in the U.S.—and each of those marriages represents family, friends, and allies who support them. That didn’t go away either.
“We won over a hundred court rulings before the final one, and that legal foundation didn’t disappear. We built ‘facts on the ground,’ shifted opinion, mobilized allies. We have to keep doing that work.
“And Gallup just reported record-high support for marriage equality—up to 47% even among Republicans. So yes, we need vigilance, but I don’t think losing marriage equality is the biggest threat we face.”
I recently asked Wolfson if he still stands by that statement.
“So far, I stand by everything I said,” Wolfson responded. In our new conversation, Wolfson elaborated:
“There are other communities and values in more immediate danger. If we stand in solidarity and keep moving forward, we’ll secure our own rights too.
“I’m not worried they’re going to take away the freedom to marry. That’s extremely difficult to undo. Even our opponents have moved on to other battles.
“Let’s remember how we got here: by winning over public opinion through years—decades—of organizing, storytelling, and showing up. When we stood before the court in 2015, public support had climbed from 27% to 63%. That was no accident. And it hasn’t gone backward.
“Of course people are worried now. There’s a lot to worry about. But sitting around cataloging 100 possible future disasters won’t help. If you’re worried—about marriage, about immigrants, about anti-Semitism, the economy, women’s rights, trans rights, democracy—then the answer is to get to work. Worry doesn’t protect us. Action does.”
He added:
“It’s hard to undo a right. It can happen—look at Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade—but it’s rare. And even if the Supreme Court were to roll back Obergefell, we put a fallback in place: The Respect for Marriage Act.
“Thanks to that bipartisan legislation—signed by President Biden on the White House lawn—any marriage performed legally in one state must be recognized in all 50 states and by the federal government. Even if Obergefell fell, couples could still marry in states where it remains protected and be recognized nationally.
“That act passed with support from Republicans, including some who once voted for the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.
“So yes, I understand the fear. But fear alone won’t protect us. We all need to do the work—each in our own way.”
Wolfson also reflected on the broader threats to democracy:
“None of us is 100% safe from the assaults and corruption of this current regime. That’s why we must reclaim political power—by electing better lawmakers, reforming the courts, and reaffirming the rule of law, democracy, and pluralism.
That’s not just an LGBT issue—it affects everyone. But queer people, especially trans people, are among those most targeted. And we’ve seen how divide-and-conquer politics and demonization are weaponized to climb to power.
“The trans conversation is at an earlier stage than that for gay people, which makes it more vulnerable. Republicans are exploiting that. And yes, some missteps in our activism have made things harder. But we can course-correct.
“Books like Frankie’s remind us of what we’ve already overcome: the AIDS crisis, Reagan-era discrimination, legal persecution. We rose to those challenges, and we can rise to this one.”
As Wolfson puts it:
“This is our generation’s call to action. We have to respond. And if we do it together—with solidarity and purpose—we will protect the people and values we love.”
“LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality” includes more than 360 pages of wedding photos and stories that are inspiring to read. The book is available everywhere.
White House finds Calif. violated Title IX by allowing trans athletes in school sports
Man sentenced to 15 years in prison for drug deal that killed two DC gay men
Trump’s dismantling of US foreign aid derails HIV prevention effort in Africa
Senate parliamentarian orders removal of gender-affirming care ban from GOP reconciliation bill
Murkowski, Shaheen reintroduce Global Respect Act
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Activists fight to protect LGBTQ services in D.C. budget
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