iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 4h

The military cared a lot about pronouns in the 1990s. Under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” we changed the pronouns of the people we dated just to participate in ordinary conversations without exposing ourselves. I tell those stories in Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star ⭐ Kirkus starred review

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 19h

My childhood babysitter was the first person who made me feel okay about being gay. “We’re all God’s children. Who am I to judge?” I love you, Mama King. My memoir, Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, is available now.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

God needed money. Gay people were the fundraising pitch. I grew up at Bob Jones University, where preaching against people like me helped bring in donations—in God’s name. I tell that story in Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. The new edition is out tomorrow, October 6.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Tomorrow is the day. 📚 Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star and Trials of a Legal Junkie officially release October 6 — but copies are already showing up on doorsteps. Twenty years after Secrets first appeared, the new second edition arrives. Two books. One very long, very messy story. 😄

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

JD Vance is: anti-meek, anti-merciful, anti-peace, anti-pure in heart, anti-poor in spirit. Anti-Christ. That’s the case I make in this reel. JD might want to read the Bible sometime. From the Third Commandment to the Beatitudes, there’s a lot there he seems to have missed.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Can you recover without a home? The federal government is moving away from “Housing First” toward “Treatment First.” I understand the argument. But recovery requires willingness. Give somebody a safe place to live, then give them a real shot at getting well.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Introducing Revelations with Rich—my memoir, in my own voice. I’m reading the second edition of Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star on YouTube, beginning with the prologue, which is ready to watch now. In this excerpt, I address someone I left out of the original edition—and an apology long overdue.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

More than 760,000 people were kicked off ACA healthcare coverage. J.D. Vance calls it fighting fraud. He once called the president “America’s Hitler.” Now he calls him “the greatest president.” Were you lying then, or are you lying now? He climbed the ladder and kicked it down behind him. 🔗👇🏼

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

“We only restore things that have value.” In Trials of a Legal Junkie, a newly sober Rob hears that in a guided meditation he desperately wants to leave. Sometimes recovery begins with staying in the room.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

What is a human to do? Maybe just be. Big Law taught me to measure worth in output and billable hours. Recovery taught me something different: You’re a human being, not a human doing.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Blood, sweat, toil, tears… and testosterone? The Pentagon has rolled out testosterone-deficiency screening for male service members 30+ as part of annual health assessments. Treatment isn’t the issue. The question is why this became Pentagon-wide policy.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Project 2025 didn’t stay in America. A March report traced networks tied to the project promoting restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom and gender equality internationally. GPAHE The election may change the balance of power in Washington, but these networks are not going away.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Mike Johnson opposed censorship under Biden, then defended Trump’s press ban. Some principle. My memoir explores religious double standards: Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, Second Edition. 🔗👇🏼 ⭐ Kirkus Starred Review.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

UPDATE: Utah’s VPN rule just got blocked. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement while the case continues. The bigger issue remains: “protecting children” can become an excuse for controlling what consenting adults are allowed to access. 🔗👇🏼

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Overdose deaths are down 12.3%. That means more people lived long enough to get another morning, another meeting, another chance. Sometimes another chance is enough. Trials of a Legal Junkie — October 6.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

AA has played an important role in my sobriety. That doesn’t mean it should be immune from scrutiny. “That wasn’t really AA” isn’t good enough. Trials of a Legal Junkie is a novel. I write about both the good and the bad of recovery, drawing from my own complicated relationship with AA. Out Oct. 6

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Due process is the moment when the government has to stop and let you say: you’ve got this wrong. Government power is supposed to come with rules. And before it changes your life, you should get the chance to be heard. Trials of a Legal Junkie — October 6. 🔗👇🏼

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Powerful institutions have always tried to control which stories get told — and which disappear. I learned that in 1998, when The New York Times Magazine was preparing a story about gay service members. The Marine originally selected for the piece was removed after the magazine learned he was HIV+

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Addiction isolates. Recovery reconnects. Sometimes connection starts with something as small as realizing the guys giving you shit are actually inviting you in. I recount this and other stories from sober living in Trials of a Legal Junkie. Available for pre-order now on Amazon.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Snipers. Drones. Ammo. Oh my. Military force should serve a mission, not a spectacle. I write about that tension in Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, Second Edition. Out October 6. Available now on Amazon.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Sneaky Pete. The Pentagon wants another $67 billion while members of Congress say they’re still waiting for answers about the Iran operation. I write about what happens when institutions become obsessed with controlling information—and the people inside them—in Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star 🔗👇🏼

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The Pentagon publicly lists 18 U.S. military deaths. Officials tell The Washington Post the actual number is at least 22, possibly 23. The Washington Post You don’t leave people behind. You don’t leave them out of the count. Secrets — October 6. Pre order now

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

September is Recovery Month. The White House says stopping fentanyl is a national priority. But federal grant money can’t be used to give fentanyl test strips to people who use drugs. A test strip might keep someone alive long enough to recover. The only addict who can’t recover is a dead addict

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

25 years after law school, I was back in downtown LA for our reunion. When I started, I’d spent most of the previous 8 years in an all-male Marine combat unit and genuinely wondered whether I still knew how to relate to women. Looking at this photo now, that seems almost absurd.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

In one of the most memorable scenes in Uncultured, Daniella Mestyanek Young senses that something is wrong as her unit enters a village in Afghanistan. Then she realizes the children are missing. She trusts her instincts and speaks up. Her judgment saved lives. The Army would later turn against her.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Mike Johnson sent Congress home early as Thomas Massie pushed a Pete Hegseth impeachment vote — while AI safeguards and other unfinished business were left waiting. You don’t need conspiracy theories when power does things right out in the open. #MikeJohnson #PeteHegseth #ThomasMassie #Congress

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Reporting LIVE from the alternative timeline. Somehow, this is all real. If you need an instruction manual for waking up from absurdist theater, I wrote mine. ⭐ “Merritt is a gifted storyteller… there’s rarely a moment in which the narrative loses momentum.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Pete Hegseth is on a snitch hunt. Polygraphs. Leaks. Weapons stockpiles. Fear of who knows what—and who might talk. I’ve seen this kind of information control before. I wrote about it in Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star. Pre-order now. #GayMarine #LGBTQHistory #Memoir #Bookstagram #Military

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

There were two lawyers named Richard Merritt in the same Georgia county. One became a fugitive wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service. The other kept getting mistaken for him. Eventually, real life became fiction. Trials of a Legal Junkie — October 6.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

JD Vance sucks. Integrity shouldn’t be optional.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I still remember the book that first made me realize I was allowed to question what I’d been taught.  That’s what libraries can do.  One book. One question. A completely different way of seeing the world.  Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star is available for pre-order now.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I was a Marine captain with a secret that could have ended my career. Twenty years later, I rewrote the story. Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star — Second Edition comes out October 6. Kirkus gave it a starred review. Pre-order: richmerritt.com

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I recorded this in May. Since then, a judge denied SPLC’s vindictive-prosecution motion, prosecutors added an individual defendant, and trial is Feb. 1 That denial was not a ruling that the fraud charges are valid. what happens when the people tracking extremist organizations become the defendants?

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Lt. Col. Avery Trainor has filed a federal lawsuit after the government moved to force her out early and reduce the retirement pay she earned over more than 27 years of honorable service.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

A beautiful spring day on NYC’s High Line with fellow gay Marine and author Brett @brettedwardstout.com We talk about our initial reactions to Greg Cope White’s The Pink Marine, the memoir behind Netflix’s Boots—and what those reactions revealed about us. Please pardon the amateur camera work. 😂

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The Navy rescued a 19-year-old sailor from the sea. Now they’re charging him with malingering. But even if this ends in a criminal conviction, it still doesn’t answer the question that matters: Why was a 19-year-old sailor in the water in the first place?

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I grew up gay in upstate South Carolina in the 1970s, in that Appalachian part of the South. And there was always Dolly. I will always love you. ❤️

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Everybody talks about Jon Ossoff’s charisma. What impressed me was his senior staff calling public-interest lawyers like me and asking what was actually happening to low-income Georgians. Housing. Poverty. Slumlords. People getting left behind.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

What if the thing driving you crazy is also teaching you something? That’s one of the ideas at the heart of Trials of a Legal Junkie: sometimes surrender isn’t defeat. Sometimes it’s liberation. Who’s the gardener in your life? The harder question: whose gardener are you?

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The psychic change people talk about in recovery is not a personality upgrade. It is closer to ego death: the moment you realize the self you were defending was the thing keeping you sick.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Karoline Leavitt wore a cross to work. I know exactly what that is, because I wore one too. I grew up in fundamentalism. Matthew 6: Don’t make a public performance of your righteousness. Go into your room. Do it in secret.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

AI can take a photo you've already posted and put your likeness into a situation you've never been in. I learned decades ago what it feels like to see your own image used without your consent. The technology has changed. The question hasn't: Who owns your likeness?

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

"When institutions harm people, they count on silence, politeness, and time to protect them. I’m no longer offering any of those things. #BobJonesUniversity #ReligiousTrauma"

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

207 days at sea without a port call. I know what five weeks does to a crew. It was brutal. But we knew there was an end date. You can endure an awful lot when you know when it ends. Take that away, and something changes. Those sailors aren't weak. They're looking for leadership.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Critics called my past ""prurient."" That’s a cowardly, sanitized word used to avoid dealing with the reality of surviving a cult, surviving addiction, and surviving suicide attempts. I refuse to be dismissed

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

There are moments in life when something changes, and you know it immediately. For me, it was my dad forgetting an entire trip to San Francisco. I tried Coit Tower. Fisherman’s Wharf. Alcatraz. The Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing. “Son, I’ve never been to San Francisco.” He was 57.

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Rich Merritt @richmerrittauthor.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Jeanine Pirro is no hero. She indicted a 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist on a felony carrying up to 10 years in prison over damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

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