For 50 years, Bob Jones University, in Greenville, South Carolina, prohibited interracial dating and Bob Jones Jr. once claimed that Catholicism was a “satanic counterfeit” of fundamentalist Christianity.

Manicure? Check. Blowout? Check. Maxed out AmEx from charging new dress? Check. Fresh waxing even though he won’t see my treasure trove for another three dates? Check. I am a firm believer in the idea that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I wasn’t much [...]

There are many forces at work in our world today – climate change, Arab Spring, population growth, and mass migrations to name a few. Some of these forces may come to impact our lives in the coming year while others may not be perceptible for decades. Our concern here is [...]

A small business owner friend of mine was greeted by a letter this week from a mega-bank creditor demanding full payment of a loan within one month despite the fact that he’s never missed or been late on a payment in nine years.

Each time I visit my parents in South Florida I am amazed by the evolution of the gay scene. It was an exhilarating, yet terrifying, time when I first came out of the closet in Fort Lauderdale in 1988. The majority of LGBT people weren’t out and those who were [...]

It’s cold. Here I stand, in the midst of a winter rainstorm, proudly letting the raindrops trickle off my eyelashes. I stare straight ahead blankly, the kind of early morning blank everyone knows and dreads. Although I’m at the beginning of another performance in front of millions of bleary-eyed early [...]

It was unthinkable in my high school years that I, a gay person, could be a successful politician.

It is time-worn, but very true, that you cannot know who your friends really are until a crisis hits and people are challenged with having to set aside their own issues for awhile to put their shoulders to helping you. (Sometimes this is a good mental exercise to sort out [...]

The ongoing conflict in Syria has wrecked the lives of many innocent people. So far, the best efforts of the United States and our allies have been ineffective in ending it. Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s repressive and bloody dictator, is losing, but it is clear he retains the military capacity to [...]

Twenty-twelve started innocently enough.