It's a truism to say that my state, Texas, isn't a red state: It's a nonvoting state.

My husband and I were married in May 2007 on a sprawling rent-a-ranch in the Texas Hill Country. On the drive from Houston, we'd stopped off for our marriage license in the former produce aisle of a Winn Dixie-turned-courthouse in San Marcos and from there drove off the grid.

Wishy-washy equivocations - and not just on abortion, but on immigration, on civil rights, on income inequality - weaken all of us.

I believe that if Democrats - not any one Democrat, and certainly not just me - want to start winning races again, Lujan's statement that the DCCC would fund candidates who oppose abortion rights puts our country in danger and makes it all the more likely that the Republicans will continue to defeat us in election after election.

I don't claim any great experience or expertise.

In my career as a writer, I preferred to avoid current events: I wrote young adult novels and book reviews and lifestyle journalism about health and parenting and other such evergreens.