The murder of Mark Carson, targeted for being gay, is the third, and most serious, in a recent string of attacks against gay men in New York City. The horrific act, under investigation as a hate crime, has brought appropriate condemnations from all quarters.

But what...

For gay men of a certain age, Peter Rauhofer's sound is instantly recognizable, and probably conjures up fond memories of circuit parties and nights at the Roxy. I am of that age - I came out in the New York nightlife scene of the 1990s and 2000s, which Rauhofer ruled....

The name of the Torah portion known as Chayei Sarah, "the Life of Sarah," is bitterly ironic. Sarah dies in the first verse, offstage, as it were, and the action quickly shifts to Abraham's bargaining for her burial place, and then...

Recently I visited Minnesota to meet folks involved in the same-sex marriage debate. I was inspired by the amount of energy that people were devoting to the cause, and to emphasizing dialogue and conversation instead of shouting and slogans.

One thing we've learned is that a lot of Minnesotans (and...

Still undecided? If all else fails, this short quiz will see how your views match up with those of the two presidential candidates. Circle the answers that you think are right. At the end, count up you're A's and B's. 8 or more A's, vote Obama. 8 or more B's,...

Here's some good news for Obama: a new Zogby poll released October 9 showed that 55 percent of voters oppose cuts in spending on public television. In other words, Big Bird is a winner.

Many of my liberal friends have groused about this situation. They want to go...

Like most Brooklynites, I didn't break out the champagne when Jay-Z officially opened the Barclays Center arena. Quite the contrary: This odious monstrosity represents the death of a vibrant, diverse culture at the hands of a corporate monolith.

North Park Slope, where I live, is now literally in the shadows...

With the news this week that two of the three Republicans who backed marriage equality have won their hotly contested primaries, LGBT folks and our allies have reason to be glad, or at least relieved. If we are serious about building a nonpartisan alliance for equality in states...

Nan Hayworth is presenting herself as a moderate Republican -- a good idea, since her district, where I live, is as purple as they come, voting for Democrats and Republicans alike.

But also a falsehood. Nan Hayworth is not a Hudson Valley Republican. She's a Tea Partier through and through....

There were many reasons veteran Burners like me -- this year was my 11th -- thought that Burning Man might suck this year.

There was a ticket fiasco, in which the event sold out and scalpers appeared online selling tickets at five times face value.

This summer, I've been blessed by numerous peak experiences. I traveled for three weeks to Israel, sat 10 days on a Buddhist silent meditation retreat, went to Burning Man again, taught at two weeklong personal growth seminars, and somewhere in there had time to relax with my partner, family and...

An open letter to Representative Joe Walsh

Dear Rep. Walsh:

I write to protest your antisemitic statements, which have no place in public discourse. I demand that you apologize and take them back.

The statements in question were, ironically, when you called the organization 'J Street' (of...

In this year's battles over same-sex marriage (there are referenda on the issue in Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, and Washington), opponents have tried to depict the issue as a choice between traditional religious values and some sinister homosexual agenda, between God and gay. In fact, a vote for same-sex marriage is...

Homophobia's newest poster child is Pastor Charles L. Worley, who, in a viral video, proposed (perhaps in jest) that LGBT people (his term was "lesbians and queers") should be rounded up and imprisoned until they "die out" because they "can't reproduce." Like a number of other such

Here's an odd juxtaposition: as I returned home from the movie Bully, I read the Washington Post story about Mitt Romney's high school bullying. There are some who say this 37-year-old story is irrelevant, but there are at least three reasons why that's not so, and why bully-gate does, indeed,...

I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed, monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those...

"It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

We've all heard the cliché, and we all know its meaning: that "male" and "female" are at the heart of God's plan for the world, and that heterosexuality is the only "natural" sexuality. Kirk Cameron, the former child TV star, made this...

We told you so.

Many longtime burners, shocked at the decision by the Burning Man Organization (or BORG) to hold a lottery for tickets to the increasingly popular countercultural community/ festival/happening in the Nevada desert, predicted that scalpers would flood the lottery system, overwhelming legitimate buyers....

Schadenfreude ("shaad-en-froid-uh") is one of those great German words. It's the feeling of pleasure in someone else's unhappiness, and, as fans of the musical Avenue Q know, it's among life's guilty pleasures. It's not noble, but hey, we all do it.

For liberals, especially LGBT folks, watching the Republican...

Our national conversation about equality for LGBT people can often be, well, nasty. Opponents of "gay rights" routinely compare us to perverts, accuse us of horrible things, and deny our very existence. Meanwhile, to many religious people, gay folks really do threaten their understanding of the proper relationship of religion...