Kenneth Felts spent his entire life in the closet. But at 90 years old, he felt ready to come out. Since the age of 12, when he first knew he was gay, Felts said, he had been living a double life, battling between dueling identities. There was Ken, his outward-facing straight self, and then there was his alter ego, whom he referred to internally as Larry, a gay man he spent nearly eight decades stifling. “I learned from the Bible not to be gay. I was planning to take this secret to the grave with me,” said Felts, who lives in Arvada, Colo., and grew up in a religious Christian family. “I could not reconcile these two parts of me,” Felts said. “For a long time, Ken did a pretty good job of keeping Larry at bay.”
Six years ago, three former Mossad agents launched an experimental Israeli Army program to recruit those on the autism spectrum, harnessing their unique aptitudes—their "superpowers," as one soldier puts it. The name of this big military success? Roim Rachok, Hebrew for "seeing into the future," and it may bring neurodiversity to the broader workforce. They’re part of an innovative military program called Roim Rachok, Hebrew for “seeing into the future.” The elite group consists entirely of members of a burgeoning but underserved and overlooked population with powers as special as their needs: autistic teens.
On April 26, 1896, in Chihuahua, Mexico, Marcelino Serna was born into a very poor family. He left home at the age of twenty, and crossed the border into the United States, traveling to El Paso, Texas to find a job and improve his life. Since he didn’t speak English, he had to take low-paying jobs and was soon working in Denver, Colorado on a sugar beet farm. When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Serna was in Denver working with a group of men who were picked up by federal officers checking the draft status of potential soldiers. To prevent his deportation to Mexico, Serna volunteered to join the Army.
The 'Dance of the 41' changed the way that Mexico interpreted gender and sexuality forever. The number 13 is commonly considered unlucky, but in Mexico, the number 41 has been seen as taboo and avoided—at one point the Army left the number out of battalions, hotel and hospital rooms didn’t use it and some even skipped their 41st birthday altogether. The reason has to do with a party held in a secret location in Mexico on November 17, 1901. On that night 41—possibly 42—men gathered under the cover of night to dance together. Though some may not consider this scandalous by today’s standards, fallout from “The Dance of the 41,” as it was called by the press, was controversial enough to change the landscape of sexuality in Mexico.
