Michael Angelakos came out as gay. He also loved his wife. That says a lot about human sexuality.

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'I'm gay, and that's it,' Michael Angelakos said. 'It just has to happen.'

Michael Angelakos came out as gay. He also loved his wife. That says a lot about human sexuality.

Michael Angelakos, lead vocalist of the band Passion Pit, made a life-changing announcement on Nov. 9, 2015.

"I'm gay," he said. "And that's it. It just has to happen."

Photo by Cory Schwartz/Getty Images.

The news spread rapidly among fans of the group, made famous for indie-electronic hits like "The Reeling," "Sleepyhead," and "Take A Walk."

He opened up about his sexuality while chatting with Bret Easton Ellis on the author's podcast.

"It's always been about putting it off in my head — not consciously," he explained, noting that up until the day before the interview, "very few people" knew about his sexual orientation.

"When you're teetering on the edge of heterosexuality or homosexuality and you don't know what's going on, it's just so comfortable to keep coming back to what you know."

A big reason why Angelakos stayed in the closet? He desperately wanted to make his marriage work.

The Passion Pit frontman announced he was getting divorced from stylist Kristina Mucci in August 2015. And it hadn't been an easy decision.

Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images.

"I just wanted so badly to be straight because I love her so much," Angelakos said. "I think that was one of the most painful things, when we decided to separate."

But the singer also noted Mucci's support had, in a certain way, been the inspiration behind his decision to come out.

“She said, 'You need to figure out what's going on with your sexuality because you can't hate yourself anymore,'" he said, as Us Magazine reported, explaining how Mucci had "spearheaded" his coming out process.

This isn't the first time Angelakos has made headlines for opening up about his personal life.

The musician was diagnosed as bipolar as a teen and began discussing his mental health publicly back in 2012, when it became more and more difficult to hide from fans.

Photo by Alli Harvey/Getty Images for Spotify.

"I just didn't believe in lying about cancellations," he told NPR. "And I remember having to cancel a number of shows because I was hospitalized for I think about the fourth time. And I was like, 'This is what I deal with, and you can't lie.'"

Angelakos' mental health and sexuality are personal matters, yes. But it's important when they make headlines, too.

There is still significant stigma surrounding mental health, which makes asking for help a way more difficult task than it should be. And while acceptance of LGBTQ people is on the rise, we still live in an era where being queer means, in more ways than one, you're treated less than equal.

Passion Pit's Jeff Apruzzese (left), Michael Angelakos (center), and Ian Hultquist (right). Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for MINI USA.

For Angelakos to speak candidly about how he both loved his wife and knew that he was gay speaks volumes about the complexity of sexuality and societal norms — a big gray area many people are trying to find their way through.

Although we live in a world that largely categorizes human sexuality into convenient boxes — man, woman, gay, straight — both gender identity and sexual orientation aren't so simple, as YouTuber Hank Green explains perfectly in one of his videos.

That's why it matters when people like Angelakos speak out about their own experiences: because it helps countless others who don't fit squarely into a box.

Support from fans poured in immediately.

After news broke about his sexuality, the musician assured his Twitter followers there was been a whole lot of love being thrown his way.

From the sounds of it, things are looking up for Angelakos.

Tory Burch

Tory Burch Empowered Women

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This woman found out shelters in LA don't accept women with teen boys. So she made sure hers did.

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Judy Vaughan has spent most of her life helping other women, first as the director of House of Ruth, a safe haven for homeless families in East Los Angeles, and later as the Project Coordinator for Women for Guatemala, a solidarity organization committed to raising awareness about human rights abuses.

But in 1996, she decided to take things a step further. A house became available in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles and she was offered the opportunity to use it to help other women and children. So, in partnership with a group of 13 people who she knew from her years of activism, she decided to make it a transitional residence program for homeless women and their children. They called the program Alexandria House.

"I had learned from House of Ruth that families who are homeless are often isolated from the surrounding community," Judy says. "So we decided that as part of our mission, we would also be a neighborhood center and offer a number of resources and programs, including an after-school program and ESL classes."

She also decided that, unlike many other shelters in Los Angeles, she would accept mothers with their teenage boys.

"There are very few in Los Angeles [that do] due to what are considered liability issues," Judy explains. "Given the fact that there are (conservatively) 56,000 homeless people and only about 11,000 shelter beds on any one night, agencies can be selective on who they take."

Their Board of Directors had already determined that they should take families that would have difficulties finding a place. Some of these challenges include families with more than two children, immigrant families without legal documents, moms who are pregnant with other small children, families with a member who has a disability [and] families with service dogs.

"Being separated from your son or sons, especially in the early teen years, just adds to the stress that moms who are unhoused are already experiencing," Judy says.

"We were determined to offer women with teenage boys another choice."

Courtesy of Judy Vaughan

Alexandria House also doesn't kick boys out when they turn 18. For example, Judy says they currently have a mom with two daughters (21 and 2) and a son who just turned 18. The family had struggled to find a shelter that would take them all together, and once they found Alexandria House, they worried the boy would be kicked out on his 18th birthday. But, says Judy, "we were not going to ask him to leave because of his age."

Homelessness is a big issue in Los Angeles. "[It] is considered the homeless capital of the United States," Judy says. "The numbers have not changed significantly since 1984 when I was working at the House of Ruth." The COVID-19 pandemic has only compounded the problem. According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), over 66,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area were experiencing homelessness in 2020, representing a rise of 12.7% compared with the year before.

Each woman who comes to Alexandria House has her own unique story, but some common reasons for ending up homeless include fleeing from a domestic violence or human trafficking situation, aging out of foster care and having no place to go, being priced out of an apartment, losing a job, or experiencing a family emergency with no 'cushion' to pay the rent.

"Homelessness is not a definition; it is a situation that a person finds themselves in, and in fact, it can happen to almost anyone. There are many practices and policies that make it almost impossible to break out of poverty and move out of homelessness."

And that's why Alexandria House exists: to help them move out of it. How long that takes depends on the woman, but according to Judy, families stay an average of 10 months. During that time, the women meet with support staff to identify needs and goals and put a plan of action in place.

A number of services are provided, including free childcare, programs and mentoring for school-age children, free mental health counseling, financial literacy classes and a savings program. They have also started Step Up Sisterhood LA, an entrepreneurial program to support women's dreams of starting their own businesses. "We serve as a support system for as long as a family would like," Judy says, even after they have moved on.

And so far, the program is a resounding success.

92 percent of the 200 families who stayed at Alexandria House have found financial stability and permanent housing — not becoming homeless again.

Since founding Alexandria House 25 years ago, Judy has never lost sight of her mission to join with others and create a vision of a more just society and community. That is why she is one of Tory Burch's Empowered Women this year — and the donation she receives as a nominee will go to Alexandria House and will help grow the new Start-up Sisterhood LA program.

"Alexandria House is such an important part of my life," says Judy. "It has been amazing to watch the children grow up and the moms recreate their lives for themselves and for their families. I have witnessed resiliency, courage, and heroic acts of generosity."

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We asked three people about how vaccines have impacted their lives. Here’s what they said.

Images courtesy of John Scully, Walden University, Ingrid Scully

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Since March of 2020, over 29 million Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the CDC. Over 540,000 have died in the United States as this unprecedented pandemic has swept the globe. And yet, by the end of 2020, it looked like science was winning: vaccines had been developed.

In celebration of the power of science we spoke to three people: an individual, a medical provider, and a vaccine scientist about how vaccines have impacted them throughout their lives. Here are their answers:

John Scully, 79, resident of Florida

Photo courtesy of John Scully

When John Scully was born, America was in the midst of an epidemic: tens of thousands of children in the United States were falling ill with paralytic poliomyelitis — otherwise known as polio, a disease that attacks the central nervous system and often leaves its victims partially or fully paralyzed.

"As kids, we were all afraid of getting polio," he says, "because if you got polio, you could end up in the dreaded iron lung and we were all terrified of those." Iron lungs were respirators that enclosed most of a person's body; people with severe cases often would end up in these respirators as they fought for their lives.

John remembers going to see matinee showings of cowboy movies on Saturdays and, before the movie, shorts would run. "Usually they showed the news," he says, "but I just remember seeing this one clip warning us about polio and it just showed all these kids in iron lungs." If kids survived the iron lung, they'd often come back to school on crutches, in leg braces, or in wheelchairs.

"We all tried to be really careful in the summer — or, as we called it back then, 'polio season,''" John says. This was because every year around Memorial Day, major outbreaks would begin to emerge and they'd spike sometime around August. People weren't really sure how the disease spread at the time, but many believed it traveled through the water. There was no cure — and every child was susceptible to getting sick with it.

"We couldn't swim in hot weather," he remembers, "and the municipal outdoor pool would close down in August."

Then, in 1954 clinical trials began for Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine against polio and within a year, his vaccine was announced safe. "I got that vaccine at school," John says. Within two years, U.S. polio cases had dropped 85-95 percent — even before a second vaccine was developed by Dr. Albert Sabin in the 1960s. "I remember how much better things got after the vaccines came out. They changed everything," John says.

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