“Would I be scared to say ‘gay?'" asks the very openly gay Harvey Fierstein, discussing the hit Broadway musical "Kinky Boots," which has garnered 13 Tony Award nominations, including one for him for Best Book. He’s referring to one of the lead characters, Lola (played by

Oh, Minnesota! With the the state senate passing marriage equality late yesterday, and Gov. Mark Dayton expected to sign the bill into law today, let's sit back for a minute and assess the history you've made.

Almost one-quarter of the states will now have marriage equality, with Minnesota...

Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a former Republican U.S. senator who became an independent after he left the Senate in 2006, slammed the GOP on the issues of gay marriage and immigration. Two weeks ago Chafee signed a bill into law making Rhode Island the 10th state...

On the eve of Minnesota possibly becoming the 12th state to offer marriage equality, former Minnesota Vikings punter and outspoken marriage equality supporter Chris Kluwe discussed being cut from the team and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s suggestion that Kluwe’s advocacy on gay rights played...

It was a rainy day in Central Park in the summer of '92 when we attempted to send Michael Santulli's ashes aloft over Strawberry Fields in white, helium-filled balloons. It was one of those requests that Michael hadn't thought through in those hazy, painful last days of his life, and...

Matt Moore, the so-called "ex-gay" Christian blogger who was exposed for being on the gay-dating app Grindr in February, says in a new interview that he wasn’t looking for sex on Grindr: He was looking to meet men in New Orleans to take him to gay bars. Moore...

The magnitude of NBA player Jason Collins' coming out today cannot be overestimated. He breaks a barrier that we've been waiting for someone to plunge through: a major league sports player saying "I'm gay" while still playing and at the height of his career. We've seen former major...

Pointing to the dramatically-changed political climate on marriage equality and LGBT issues, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) said yesterday that he’s been having talks with key Republicans in the Senate about supporting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and which...

Americans hold dear the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But for gay people trapped in the closet under fear of losing their jobs, life offers anything but liberty and happiness.

Jimmy is a 47-year-old man who lives in a rural area of a conservative...

The latest decision by the Boy Scouts of America, proposing to end its ban on gay scouts but not its ban on gay and lesbian scoutmasters and den mothers, is at once ridiculous and blatantly anti-gay. Sorry, but there's just no middle ground on bigotry. The idea that...

Patti Davis, the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan, made headlines two weeks ago when she said her father would have backed same-sex marriage. Now, in a new interview, she says that her mother, who rarely speaks on public policy issues, supports marriage...

A little over two weeks ago, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly marched into the mother of all battles against the forces of intolerance, and it hasn't nearly ended. He said that gays are winning the battle over marriage because they have "the compelling argument," and that those opposed...

My head is going to explode if I hear someone say one more time that a parent can unconditionally "love" his or her child while still not "accepting" the fact that the child is gay, and can even oppose rights for the child. Yesterday several callers to my radio program...

The Arizona state legislator who received national attention for promoting a harsh anti-transgender bill aimed at prosecuting transgender people for using a public restroom if their gender appearance didn't match the gender on their identification said yesterday that his effort is indeed “targeting” transgender people, but “only with...

One of the most idiotic and offensive statements to come out of the Supreme Court marriage equality arguments -- and there were a few -- was when Justice Alito claimed during the Prop 8 arguments that the Internet and cellphones are older than same-sex marriage:

Traditional marriage has been around for...

“When you’re in the closet, it’s hard to think about things in the same kind of, I would say, holistic and honest way you think about things when you’re honest with yourself,” reflected former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, who came out as gay in 2010 but...

Twenty years ago this July, I went to Hawaii to cover the lawsuit that launched the first salvo in the current war over marriage equality, ultimately leading to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Proposition 8 and, this week, arguments before the Supreme Court: Several gay and lesbian couples took...

So there I was a few weeks ago, making an argument for why we might expect the hypothetical new pope to be even more anti-gay than the old one. Now that there actually is a new pope, that would seem to have turned out to be true, at...

Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, who in 2012 became the first openly gay person elected to the U.S. Senate, says she spent a full day in meetings and conversation with GOP Senator Rob. Portman, who announced the following day that he now supports marriage equality....

Are GOP leaders secretly hoping that the Supreme Court, after it hears arguments on marriage equality next week, rules in favor of equality? That's certainly what a few were saying at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week, though not for attribution. Less than a week before...