Our previous installments of The Home Issue have revolved around design, interior and aesthetic.

We're shifting focus today with an interview between our editor and travel writer Mike Luongo. Luongo's longed to travel since childhood and has traveled around the globe documenting life in Afghanistan, Iraq and Argentina, among many, many others.

The New York-based journalist just edited and released Gay Travels In The Muslim World: an anthology of anecdotes and impressions from and of the Middle East. Though he and Belonsky definitely discuss the book, their conversation veers into religion, the parameters of democratization and the ever-troublesome "other".

Check it out, after the jump.

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• You really do learn something new everyday. Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, whose work we've never read, apparently likes ladies. She liked a woman so much, in fact, she married one! Cornwell opens up to UK's Telegraph about her wife, Dr. Staci Gruber:

I finally feel rooted somewhere. I feel a sense of responsibility and stability that I didn't have before.
…
I've never been a soapbox person for gay rights, but now I'm in a same-sex marriage I tend to be more open, because I am outraged that it should be illegal in other states.

Looking at this picture really puts things in perspective.

• Refinery 29 gets behind our imaginary main squeeze, Thom Browne.

• Barack, Babs, Oprah and Hillary get into a campaign menage-a-quatre.

• Legendary lobbyist Aubrey Sarvis goes after Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

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