Numerous Supreme Court watchers have said that having the justices choose not to rule on Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California and allowing the debate to continue democratically state by state would be the best outcome...

Question: "We're planning a dinner party next month when my partner's gay cousin comes to town. The two of them have had a lot of fun being "the lesbian cuzzes" in their very traditional family, but a recent email from her has me worried. She's gone all Tea Party on...

The first update on my Facebook page Friday morning read: "This American Life" contributor David Rakoff, dead of cancer, age 47." An attached link showed David, my first book editor, on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart explaining why...

Manners experts rarely visit the bedroom, much less the back room -- at least in print. When they do, it's a disaster. For instance, Letitia Baldrige posits in New Manners for New Times that having "multiple sex partners is the worst of all...

Question: "I'm a 22-year-old, gay, Afro-Caribbean man living in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and I'm at my wits' end in trying to find friendship and companionship. No visible community exists here, and I doubt an underground community exists, either. Online attempts to find...

Question: "My partner and I were in a quiet restaurant trying to have dinner near two straight guys, one of who was carrying on a very loud, endless cell phone conversation. We asked them to keep it down. Then one of them, drunk...

Question: "Last Saturday at a bar I had some guy hitting on me, but I wasn't interested. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but I didn't want to talk with him for one more second and he was NOT taking a hint....

Question: Our son, who has two moms and no dad, came home from school this week and said that his fourth-grade class will spend an hour making Father's Day cards. He didn't know what to say to the teacher. How can we help...

Question: My partner and I have been together for about five years, and now we're planning our wedding. I've always earned more than he does, and I also have some family money, a retirement fund, and some real estate that I...

Question: I know there's a lot of anger in the wake of the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina. For instance, one of my friends on Facebook posted this: "Gay people: Get out of the South. Boycott it. Don't give the people...

Question: The New York Times recently did a long article on a gay psychotherapist who committed suicide, ostensibly because he had trouble accepting his age as he approached 50. Ironically, he had just finished writing a book about smart strategies for aging in...

Question: I was having a hard week at work, and on top of that my girlfriend started making noises about our "slowing things down." I really needed to talk, and I called one of my (supposedly) best friends to vent. She didn't...

Question: Over the years I've gotten a number of tattoos, and they've really become a part of my identity. Most of them are not visible when I'm in work garb, but some of them are, especially when I roll up my sleeves. My boyfriend says I should cover them up...

This piece was written with Chuck Small

Washington, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire. So far this year, the bumpy road to marriage equality has played out in four states, with wins in three, and an unsurprising veto in the Garden State by Republican Governor Chris Christie.

Next up, North Carolina's...

Question: I don't know about you, but it drives me crazy that people in our community don't dress for the theater anymore. They're just as likely to jump on a plane in their shorts and a T-shirt. What gives with that? What really irks...

Question: I've been reading that the Girl Scouts are taking some big heat from "severe" conservatives like Bob Morris, the Indiana representative, who claims the group is a "radicalized organization" that "sexualizes" young girls and promotes homosexuality. It really got my goat when...

Question: My boyfriend and I live together in Delaware, which legalized same-sex civil unions earlier this year. For years we've been talking -- on and off -- about making our relationship legal when we could. Instead of some fancy chocolates or a bouquet...

Question: In a recent column, Miss Manners wrote that "etiquette considers wedding presents to be associated only with first weddings" and that it is "blatant avarice" when couples are "permitted to exploit their friends, relatives and colleagues." I'm curious to know what you...

Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, the philanthropist who died last week in Durham, N.C., at age 91, never cut the same high-profile swath as Doris Duke, her glamorous and frequently infamous first cousin (once removed). Nor was she as wealthy,...

Question: I know that just about everybody Googles their dates before going out with them the first time. Unfortunately, when you Google me, the first search result is a photo where I'm showing, how shall I put it, way too much skin. My...