I grew up in Old Brooklyn, a low income neighborhood on the near west side of Cleveland, Ohio. My father committed suicide when I was just 7 years old leaving my mother, brother Andrew and me with very little means. My mother remarried in a few years and my step father quickly got Andrew and me heavily involved in the Boy Scouts and pushed me into playing football when I was just ten years old. My mother and step father somehow managed to get my brother and I through Catholic grade school and an all boy Catholic high school. Given this environment, my experience growing up was centered around a very specific set of beliefs influenced by my family, church, schools, friends and teammates. One might call those beliefs socially conservative, especially around subjects like abortion, sexual orientation, contraception, divorce, etc. 

My high school football team managed to win the state championship in Ohio which along with my strong academics, enabled me to be recruited by and attend Harvard University where I continued to play football and run track. I had not to that point been exposed to progressive ideas or understood what real liberalism was. My upbringing and environment through to that point engrained strong pro-life and anti homosexual perspectives. 

At Harvard I experienced a clash between two very different worlds. My beliefs and world views were often challenged in class and between my classmates.  One now embarrassing example of this was in my sophomore year when I attended a party at Adams House. At this party, a fellow male student hit on me. I lost control and wanted to physically hurt him. If it wasn’t for one of my college roommates who attended the party with me, I might have. I look back at that time with wonder, shame and regret.

In the coming years, a series of life experiences created an enormous opening for me. My cousin, who struggled for years with his sexual orientation moved to Cleveland and moved in with me for several years. During that time, he began dating men, he came out to me and his family and met the man he would eventually marry. Through this experience, I became friends, shared life experiences, grew to love and opened completely to people from the LGBT community. Their causes are mine now. This arc of experience and the resulting changes within me exemplify what I now call, an opening.

My wife and three children live in Austin, TX. They are what motivates and drives me to create positive change in the world. Through An Opening, my ability to do this will grow exponentially with each person's story I share with you.