While the eyes of the LGBT nation are now focused on President Obama signing the federal hate crimes bill today, and on beating back the Religious Right Prop 8 sequel in Maine, same sex...

Former US Ambassador Jim Hormel is an ardent supporter of President Obama. But as an openly gay man who has long been active in the LGBT movement for equal rights and is in a committed relationship -- his frustration at the lack of progress is informed by urgency: "I am...

"God has no grandchildren," the evangelical ex-Marine father of my late friend Chip Howe said, explaining how he surrendered judgment and came to accept Chip's homosexuality. Chip, a Lieutenant in the Navy during the Vietnam War, was supposed to get married and provide his parents with grandchildren. Chip's father thought...

News organizations reported Friday morning that eight ArmorGroup contract guards identified in the sexually explicit photos by a US State Department investigator have been fired. Two others have resigned; other guards are still under investigation. We can only hope that the State Department will also now investigate how homosexuality is...

It was mid-December 2007 when longtime politico Steve Smith beseeched me to go hear fledgling presidential candidate Barack Obama speak at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal City. He's the real deal, Steve insisted.

To Baby Boomers like us, saying someone was the "real deal" meant something. And indeed, not...

Dateline, Christmas season, 1975. A cab left me off in front of Walter Cronkite's Upper Eastside townhouse. Fresh out of college, I had joined CBS News two years earlier as a desk assistant and had become a regular substitute for Jim McGlinchy, Cronkite's clerk on the CBS Evening News. And...

Let me be clear from the outset: no LGBT person I know wants President Obama to fail. There's just too much at stake. Nor does anyone think that the Obamas are in any way anti-gay or unsympathetic to the persistent and official discrimination we face everyday, as have been previous...

There's a fierce debate in the LGBT community over Barack Obama's signing the Presidential Memorandum on Federal Benefits and Non-Discrimination Wednesday. Some think the signing was "historic" and a sincere symbol of Obama's true commitment to equal rights for lesbian and gay Americans.

Others think that's bull and are...

With all due respect to Cleve Jones and David Mixner, who I've known and covered for many years, I think we seriously need to question the wisdom of convening a march on Washington this October.

Yes, LGBT people are angry and disappointed that President Barack Obama hasn't lived up to...

I didn't bother writing a story on President Obama's first 100 Days. Other than a few appointments, there wasn't much to write about from an LGBT perspective.

So my heart quickened when I heard him talk about picking a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Souter who was empathic to...

It's axiomatic that political consultants will do almost anything to win. So it was a little surprising to see that their professional association - the American Association of Political Consultants - has a significant and no doubt well-intentioned code of ethics.

Imagine if their members actually adhered to...

At a woman's rights convention in Akron, Ohio 158 years ago, a former slave named Sojourner Truth rose to speak, much to the consternation of many of the white participants.

Frances Dana Gage, the presiding officer, later described what happened:

The tumult subsided at once,...

There's a saying in the 12 Step programs about being sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It's at this point -- generally your own personal version of rock bottom -- that you surrender and admit something has been screwing up your life.

Well -- I guess...

Tipper Gore -- the woman many Democrats believe should have been the First Lady after her husband, Vice President Al Gore, won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election -- announced her opposition to Proposition 8 Saturday night during the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center's 37th Anniversary...

I've been having some very revealing discussions about Proposition 8 lately. Prop 8 -- that ballot measure that would change the California constitution to take away the fundamental right to marry for same sex couples -- the one the Religious Right has spent tens of millions of dollars to pass...

Corrected.

With just over three weeks until the elections, it seems a pretty certain bet that most of the LGBT community will vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden, though with curtailed enthusiasm after numerous missteps.

But electoral support does not mean surrendering the right to critique and hold...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is the not-so-unexpected "star" of the new Yes on 8 commercial designed to get voters to overturn marriage equality in California on Nov. 4.

In an extemporaneous speech before the LGBT Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club Sunday night aboard the Queen Mary, Newsom...

"A man of conscience." The phrase seems almost quaint today when most leaders talk largely about tactics, strategies, and short-term goals while not rocking the boat.

But some of us remember the agonizing efforts of conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War -- men and women of substance such as...

It's strange how someone's death can trigger the oddest of memories. When I heard that Paul Newman died, I suddenly flashed to the moment he walked into the house where I was babysitting and said, "Come on, kid - let's clean these fish."

Piercing blue-eyes. Brilliant smile. Easy-going, if somewhat...

The historic Democratic National Convention is over but one question remains: what the hell happened to the gays?

Like so many others around the world, LGBT people watched through excited tears as Barack Obama accepted the presidential nomination at Invesco Field last Thursday. But there was tremendous anxiety in LGBT...