I had many reasons to enjoy a successful and meaningful career as a gay diplomat with the United States government. I traveled widely and enjoyed the company of other diplomats, foreign professionals and international businesspeople. I had intestinal parasites, robberies and anti-American types who pointed guns at me and threatened me with knives. My worst and…
Critics of our community, even after decades of civil rights victories, still laugh at comparison of our struggle for civil rights with that of African Americans in the 1950s and ’60s. They see nothing similar to our struggle for justice as a minority group with that of our African American brothers and sisters. The signal…
With the June 26 U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage, the number of gay married men will increase and decrease. I was a gay married man in the sense that I was gay and married to a straight woman. The same applied to lesbians who were married to men. They were lesbian married women….
During the Fox News telecast of the first GOP Presidential candidates’ debate, I gasped as Ohio Governor John Kasich, a former U.S. Congressman and close political ally of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, admitted he had attended a same-sex marriage. Kasich, alone among his fellow candidates, actually admitted he didn’t hate LGBT people or the new tradition…
Late GOP U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, popularly known as “Senator No” because he opposed federal spending except for his precious tobacco program for North Carolina growers and manufacturers, was fearless when it came to demagoguing and humiliating the LGBT community over matters like marriage equality, now settled by GOP Associate Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy,…
With the Defense Department’s recent decision to begin a process to lift its ban on open service for transgender troops, important progress, though at a snail’s pace, is coming to military foxholes and latrines. It is an announcement certain to figure prominently among traditionally anti-LGBT politicians seeking the 2016 presidential nomination in the Republican Party….
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his historic June 26, 5-4 majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, used the word “dignity” nine times. The decision ended state same-sex marriage bans in favor of same-sex wedding bands. Media headlined “dignity” across the nation and the world, forever associating the word with the LGBT struggle…
As a former gay resident of Mexico City, I cannot be quiet after hearing the vicious and racist statement by billionaire gringo Donald Trump about the Mexican people. His comments, many believed designed to create publicity for his TV career and his laughable presidential campaign, are despicable and sickening. My years living in Mexico City,…
On the day GOP Senator Jesse Helms died, July 4, 2008, America celebrated with fireworks. As a longtime target of the senator’s hate tactics, I bought drinks for friends in San Francisco’s Castro. My hate mail from Helms’s followers has diminished some over the years. After more than 20 years, the anonymous letters and “No…
Baltimore is the latest city to prove to our nation and the world that something is terribly wrong in the United States. On a recent spring day, Baltimore African American Freddie Gray, 25, notices the police and runs from them. Why did he run? Perhaps Gray had read about police killings of Walter Scott in South…
