(MY View) A Brand New Reason to Be Terrified of Homosexuals!

by Noah Michelson

In my relatively short time on this fair planet, I've learned that queer people are not only dangerous but incredibly powerful.

Hardly a week goes by without a politician, religious figure or breathless talking head having a public meltdown about the "gay agenda" and our plot to take over the world and douse it in glitter and lube.

Still, rather than use our dark, perverted magic to do something useful, like, say, secure equal employment protections or prevent hate crimes, we wily queers have instead spent our time scheming to find ways to destroy the holy sacrament of marriage (wait, aren't straight people doing a competent job on their own?) and cause meteorological mischief like Hurricane Katrina and superstorm Sandy.

(MY View) Is Gay Marriage Really a Conservative Cause?

by Nathaniel Frank

Ok I get it: Conservatives just love gay marriage. Ted Olson, the conservative super-lawyer who helped press George W. Bush into office, has co-led the legal challenge to California's gay marriage ban, now headed to the Supreme Court. Over 80 prominent conservatives have signed a legal brief that the media is billing as the "conservative case" for gay marriage. The effort was orchestrated by Ken Mehlman, former head of the Republican Party and top advisor to George W. Bush, who came out in 2010. The gay marriage cause was jump-started (but not actually started) by self-styled gay conservative, Andrew Sullivan, back in 1989 with an article making the conservative case for gay marriage. And 2012 GOP presidential candidate, John Huntsman, recently penned a piece in the American Conservative called "Marriage Equality is a Conservative Cause." Doesn't get any clearer than that.

(MY View) The Associated Press' Refusal to Treat Gay and Straight Marriages Equally!

by Michelangelo Signorile

I've been with my partner for 18 years. As residents of the state of New York, we could be legally married if we chose, given that New York passed a marriage equality law in 2011. My partner would then legally be my husband, and we'd have all the same rights of marriage that New York grants heterosexual couples. We could file a joint New York tax return. My husband could sue an entity for wrongful death if something terrible happened to me. If he died, I'd inherit his assets over his family or anyone else, even if there were no will, as would be the case with any heterosexual married couple.

But according to the Associated Press, that would not necessarily be a marriage, and my partner would not necessarily be my husband. The AP has decreed that he could be called my husband if I insisted on describing him as such in a quotation (i.e., "This is my husband"), or if the reporter knew that I'd called him my husband for some time, regardless of the existence of a legal contract that binds us in the state of New York -- a public record, which the reporter could obtain -- called a marriage certificate.

(MY View) Don't Tear This Septuagenarian Lesbian Couple Apart!

By Brynn Gelbard and Lavi Soloway

It’s August 3, 2012, and people are gathering for a wedding in the northern seaport town of Findhorn, Scotland. Propped up on a chair in the front row amid a slew of mingling guests is an iPad bearing the smiling faces of Mum 1 and Mom 2. It’s not because of an illness or the expense of overseas travel that they are attending their son and future daughter-in-law’s big day via Skype from their living room thousands of miles away in San Jose, Calif. It’s because if Mum 1 — Karin, a U.K. citizen — leaves the United States, she will be barred for at least a decade from reentering this country and returning to the home she shares with her American wife, Judy — a.k.a. Mom 2.

Karin is 73 years old, born in Germany during World War II (when birth certificates were still emblazoned with swastikas!). Being prohibited from going home for 10 years is not a risk she can take, even if it means missing her son’s wedding. If Judy could have successfully sponsored her for a green card, they would certainly be present to celebrate with family and friends, who each take turns visiting the iPad to say congratulations before taking their seats. But she can’t. The Defense of Marriage Act only recognizes opposite-sex marriages for all federal matters including immigration, so Judy and Karin are stuck in California, unable to travel internationally.

(MY View) Is It Time to Stop Covering Gay Youth Suicides?

by Rob Smith

When I was an 18-year-old, closeted Private in the United States Army, after dealing with seemingly endless torment from superiors and coworkers that was both homophobic and racist, I waited until all my roommates weren't home, took a bottle of vodka and pills into the restroom and closed the door behind me. I didn't expect to come out alive. I wanted to kill myself, because I felt isolated, alone and shunned by my coworkers as well as by my conservative Christian mother. For me, suicide was both an escape from my problems and a solution to them. Thankfully, I have an older sister who was there for me when I needed her, and her calming voice on the other end of the phone line stopped me from making a serious mistake.

I have traveled all across the country speaking about my own experiences with suicide, coming out and "don't ask, don't tell," and there is not a single place I visit where someone doesn't share with me his or her own story about a friend or family member who has been touched by these issues. Sometimes they just want a hug, and I can feel their bodies quake with the sobs as they remember their friends or loved ones who have been lost forever.

(MY VIEW) Words With Friends, Smut With Strangers!

by Jesse Archer

When a friend said he was cheating with the popular app Words With Friends, I didn't think much of it. Who hasn't cheated at online Scrabble? Then he clarified, saying he was using the app to cheat on his longterm boyfriend.

He met someone, and they are carrying on an inflagrante affair in the chat function behind each WWF game. Here they discuss scoring. Their chats then scroll up into the ether and vanish, leaving no history. For him, WWF operates as a speakeasy, a façade of innocently shuffled letters masking a backroom of outlaw lust.

Methods have changed, but infidelity transcends time. A mistress once employed a go-between to deliver lustful missives between her bodice and the hands of her steerage-class hunk. But the future is a foreign country; they do things differently here. Today's go-between isn't human and could be anywhere, at anytime.

(MY View) Why the NFL Must Suspend San Francisco 49er for His Anti-Gay Remarks!

by Michelangelo Signorile

San Francisco 49er Chris Culliver selfishly shot off his mouth yesterday, igniting a firestorm of controversy and creating a nightmare for his team and the National Football League as they head to the Super Bowl. For that alone the NFL should suspend him, his comments having put his entire team at the center of an unnecessary controversy as they're trying to focus on the game.

But for the horrendously bigoted, anti-gay content of his remarks, there is no question that Culliver must be suspended if the NFL is serious about its claims to be taking on homophobia in its ranks. Thanks to players like Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo and their pro-gay advocacy, we're seeing a shift among NFL players, but the leadership needs to take strong stand against Culliver's kind of bigotry if that shift is to continue.

(MY VIEW) Women in Combat: The Lessons of Progress!

by Nathaniel Frank

Seemingly out of nowhere, the Pentagon announced this week that it would lift its ban on women in combat. Just like that. No years-long Washington lobbying campaign, no protracted national culture-war debate, no threats by conservatives in Congress to do everything humanly possible to block progress -- in other words, nothing like the decades-long fight the nation saw over letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military.

The differences between the two political battles are stark, yet the substance of the two debates has great overlap. In both cases, advocates of equality pointed out that merit and ability to do the job should be more important than the cultural beliefs of one segment of society, and they showed that there was no research indicating that equal treatment harmed the military. Opponents of both open gays and women in combat cited concerns about military effectiveness, suggesting -- but never proving -- that reform carried great risk to the military and thus to national security.

(MY VIEW) Jodie Foster: It's Complicated!

by Mark O'Connell, L.C.S.W

Jodie Foster's reality show "would be so boring," she told the world at Sunday night's Golden Globes, where she was awarded for a lifetime in front of the camera. Foster's speech was hotter and colder than a Katy Perry song. Wearing a "coming-out gown," she seemed to reluctantly come out, and come out, while demanding privacy at one of the most public events on, well, the globe. These contradictions have ignited polarizing "blogofires" across the blogosphere, largely inflamed by Foster's latent declaration of her sexual orientation.

I am of two minds on the speech. As a gay person I'm frustrated, disappointed and nonplussed by a public figure drawing attention to her sexuality while simultaneously defending herself against identification with our community, but as a psychotherapist I'm openly and empathically curious about her, a compartmentalized person struggling for a cohesive sense of self, hoping to be recognized by us in all her authentic contradictions -- not unlike how I, and many in our community, hope to be recognized by her.

(MY View) Six Degrees of Savage!

by Dan Bucatinsky

I'm in the car, and my 7-year-old daughter is fighting with my 5-year-old son over a game on my iPhone called "Subway Surfer," which I made the mistake of surrendering to them in order to break up another fight that started when she told him that he's "not handsome, just cute" -- ironic given the fact that she'd spelled "cute" with a Q on her last spelling test before the holidays. His ego bruised, tears exploded from his eyes. Apologies were demanded and resisted.

"I didn't say a bad thing!" said my daughter.

"She hurt my feeleeengs," said my boy.

They were both right. And wrong. And hateful. And, OK, they're "qute." And this hideously interminable winter break from school -- like Richard III, I feel, this winter of our discontent -- is chugging way too slowly toward its end. The question pops into my head for the eleventy-millionth time: "Really? You had to have kids?" Why?

(MY View) The Private War That Killed Spencer Cox!

by Mark S. King


My most courageous self, the best man that I'll ever be, lived more than two decades ago during the first years of a horrific plague. ... I miss the man I was forced to become" (Me, in "Once, When We Were Heroes," 2007).

AIDS did not kill Spencer Cox in the first, bloodiest battles of the 1980s. It spared him that.

The reprieve allowed Spencer's brilliance as co-founder of the Treatment Action Group (TAG) to forge new FDA guidelines for drug approval and help make effective HIV medications a reality, saving an untold number of lives.

Such triumph by a man still in his 20s might have signaled even greater achievements ahead. Instead, Spencer found himself adrift in the same personal crisis as many of his contemporaries, who struggled for a meaningful existence after years of combating the most frightening public health crisis of modern times.

(MY View) Why Chuck Hagel's Gay Problem Is Getting Worse!

by Michelangelo Signorile

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) has a problem if his and the White House's goal is to quell criticism for his anti-gay past. And that problem is only getting worse.

Openly gay outgoing Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) slammed Hagel on New Year's Eve, saying he "strongly opposes" a Hagel nomination for secretary of defense. Other progressive LGBT critics have been speaking out in recent days, as well. Already under relentless attacks for weeks from neocons opposed to Hagel's views on Israel and Iran and determined to stop President Obama from nominating him to the Defense Department post, Hagel will have only himself to blame if the gay issue helps sink him.

(MY view) Best VIEWS of 2012!

In 2012, MY view, our weekly OP-ED series, expanded, thanks to the HUFFPost Gay Voices. There were hundreds of posts per day, but only one was picked as being the Best of the week.  The Best Posts that made it to MY view, were written by Michelangelo Signorile,  Mike Alvear, Derrick Shore, etc. Here are our Top 5 VIEWS, according to our Readers (Based on Page Views.)

Signorile

5. Santorum: The Indelible Stain on the GOP!  (4/15)

4. The New Gay Celebrity Coming Out: 'I've Never Been In'! (5/31)

3. How the Closet Corrupted Arizona Sheriff Babeu! (2/23)

2. Are Gay People More Prejudiced Than Straight People? (2/2)

(MY VIEW) My Brother Newt Evolves on Marriage: Finally, Something on Which We Can Agree!

by Candace Gingrich-Jones

For pretty much my whole adult life there have been very few political issues on which my brother and I agree. But in an interview that The Huffington Post did with my brother, there were actually multiple items that had me nodding my head when usually it would be shaking in exasperation. He stated that the Republicans could no longer ignore the shift in public opinion on marriage equality. Agreed! The percentage of Americans who support marriage equality is the highest it has ever been; in fact, support for marriage equality has increased by 21 percent in just the last eight years, and Gallup's recent poll showed 53 percent of Americans supporting marriage equality.

This support is a direct result of the second thing in the interview that I agree with: "It is in every family. It is in every community." HRC's Coming Out Project has stated for years that people who know someone LGBT are changed by it. Today, more people know same-sex couples, and that has helped them understand the need to legally recognize our relationships. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that of those opposing marriage equality, 60 percent said they didn't know (or didn't know they know!) a gay or lesbian person.

(MY VIEW) Homo for the Holidays?

by Joe Kort, Ph.D.

With the holidays approaching, I ask people in my therapy office what they are doing. They tell me about going to visit each other's families and friends together. However, my lesbian and gay couples often tell me how each goes to his or her own family gatherings and not to the other's. In other words, they do things separately. When I ask why, they tell me that one or both of the families don't fully accept their relationship, so it is just easier that way.

Though I understand that going solo to one's own home for the holidays might make it easier for the family and even for the lesbian or gay person who doesn't want conflict, it still betrays the relationship. Imagine straight couples going solo to their respective family holidays. Some of my straight clients have told me jokingly (and some seriously, even) that they would rather go separately if they could, because they don't enjoy their spouse's family, but they compromise with each other for the relationship. Some couples spend one year with one set of in-laws and the next with the other set, while others choose time limits so that they can visit both. Regardless, most straight couples navigate the holidays as a couple, not separately.

(MY VIEW) If Gays Are Boycotting Straights' Weddings, It Must Be the Mayan Apocalypse!

by Michelangelo Signorile

In almost 10 years of hosting a national radio program, few topics have engendered such passion as this one: Gays who've decided to boycott straights' weddings because they don't have the legal right to get married themselves. Gay men and lesbians appear to be badly split on the idea, and they're very outspoken on both sides, even strident. And the straight friends of gays are downright apoplectic, I tell you, horrified at the idea that their fun and fabulous gays, the delight of any social event, would not attend their day of joy. The straights want to know: Why is it that gays not being able to get married should ruin their own special affairs?

If you didn't know better, you'd think the end of the world were coming next week!

(MY VIEW) The Friendship Fallout!

by Jesse Archer

President Obama was victorious, but that's not to say his supporters didn't suffer casualties. How many friendships were lost in lead up to the 2012 presidential election?

As the election approached, several gays wrote eloquent Facebook posts stating their hope for equality and how Romney promised to crush this hope. These posts often instructed those voting Romney to delete themselves from their page, which felt passive and not productive. How do you learn or change minds if you surround yourself only with people who believe the exact same thing you do?

(MY VIEW) Marriage Equality in California... and Beyond!

by Renata Moreira

There my fiancée Lori and I were, feeling blessed and relaxed, watching the sun set into the ocean at my beautiful hometown in Brazil, after having exchanged engagement rings and promised to each other that we would spend the rest of our lives together. But suddenly a wave of fear and anxiety washed over me. I couldn't help but question whether we were ready to face the formidable odds ahead of us. Should we have taken more time to consider how we would respond to the criticism of some family members, colleagues and even strangers who still believe that two people of the same sex should not have the right to get married? Maybe we should have waited to share our cherished dreams of having a big wedding, as well as our desire to have children, with folks who might not be so thrilled about our commitment.

(MY VIEW) Where Have All the Mormons Gone In the Fight for Marriage Equality?

by Fred Karger

Tuesday, November 6, 2012 will go down in history in our political fight for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights. In Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington voters stood up to the usual campaigns of bigotry and hate and a majority in each state voted for the freedom to marry for the very first time. Before last Tuesday we had lost 33 marriage votes in a row and most by very lopsided margins.

Since the first gay marriage vote in Hawaii in 1998 we have always been vastly outspent by our opponents in every election until we finally evened the score in fundraising after 10 years and 29 losses on California's Proposition 8. We even outraised our opponents $44 million to $40 million. Our narrow defeat on Prop 8 was the turning point in our civil rights movement. Never again would we be outraised. Never again would we watch as the Mormon and Catholic Churches and some of their wealthiest members spent millions and millions of dollars to take our rights away. We were now beginning to fight back aggressively against our adversaries. My favorite sign from a post Prop 8 demonstration in Los Angeles was "No More Mr. Nice Gay."

(MY VIEW) 10 Reasons Why Marriage Equality Won This Year!

by Chad Griffin

This year, marriage equality won four unprecedented victories in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. For years, organizations like the so-called National Organization for Marriage have bragged that equality always loses at the ballot box. This year we took that talking point away once and for all. Here's how: