“Is there any question of who the star is?” Browne asks proudly, watching the video today. For most real estate brokers, a third year as Corcoran’s top producer would have been stardom enough, but when Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman began planning the 2007 event, Browne thought he wouldn’t bother to attend. He’d had enough top-earner, $100-million-club years. He was turning sixty, and he was thinking about his life as a whole. Finally he said he would show up, but only if he could accept the award in drag. Browne’s beloved gay older brother, Roscoe Willett Browne, died of AIDS in 1985. He’d never forget the day when President George H. W. Bush said that dying of AIDS wasn’t as important as losing your job. “George H. W. Bush did not acknowledge the sacrifice of my brother and our love. My brother. He’s in his eighties and he still has his brothers and I don’t have any brothers,” says Browne. “And my brother was a Yalie and he was in Vietnam; Bush, how could he be more your person?” We exist, says Browne, looking at the video of his awards ceremony. “This show says we exist.”

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But some campaigners have argued that leaving it to Mickey Mouse to give his blessing to Koyuki Higashi and her partner, Hiroko Masuhara — in a strictly symbolic ceremony — is also a mark of how far Japan has to go before it affords the same rights to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community as it does to heterosexual couples.

Tokyo Disneyland condoned this and all future same-sex ceremonies after receiving an inquiry from Higashi. Cue a confused response from a subsidiary, Oriental Land Company, which licenses the name and characters from Disney in the United States.

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In March, Ravi was convicted of charges of bias and intimidation stemming from the death of Clementi, his Rutgers roommate, whom he had secretly filmed, in Ravi's words, "making out with a dude." It was a story that reverberated around the world, and helped invigorate the anti-bullying movement. As Judge Glenn Berman handed down the sentence Monday afternoon, calling Ravi's actions "offensive and unconscionable," he said that he would not recommend deportation. But the judge did pointedly tell Ravi, "I haven't heard you apologize once" for his callous behavior. And he said he made "no comment" regarding any further civil actions the Clementis might take.

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Then there's the subtler version. The kind where you look around one day and suddenly realize that gay people have been building families and creating homes together this whole time. They're your neighbors. They're your fellow parents on the PTA. And they are totally the couple building an amazing new deck this weekend. For 18 years now, HGTV has been a steadfast force for exactly that kind of tolerance, simply by advancing the radical notion that homosexuals are out there in the world obtaining mortgages and painting their interiors just like straight people.

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Let's get something straight, so to speak, right off the bat. There's no disputing that Manny Pacquiao is not the most enlightened guy to ever put on gloves and fight for a belt. In a story for Examiner.com this past weekend, blogger Granville Ampong wrote of how the boxing champ takes issue with Barack Obama's recent groundbreaking declaration of support for same-sex unions. "God's words first ... obey God's law first before considering the laws of man," Pacquiao told Ampong, in what the writer described as "an exclusive interview." Pacquiao was further quoted explaining that "God only expects man and woman to be together and to be legally married, only if they so are in love with each other… It should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of Old."

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It's no accident that the president's change of heart happened to make for a perfect sound bite. Nearly as fast as Barack Obama, leader of the free world, could utter the words "Same-sex couples should be able to get married," to ABC News correspondent Robin Roberts, @barackobama -- the president's not-nearly-as-popular-as@JustinBieber Twitter account -- was announcing "Same-sex couples should be able to get married." As of Thursday morning, it had been retweeted over 56,000 times and counting.

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Bishop Martin Amos alerted the Prince of Peace school staff last week that "We cannot allow any one or any organization which promotes a position that is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church to present at a diocesan institution." The Eychaner Foundation describes itself as "a non-profit organization committed to promoting tolerance and non-discrimination." Tell us, Bishop Amos, exactly how that conflicts with Christianity?

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Around the time that my teenaged mom-to-be was making googly eyes at my dad-to-be, L. Ron Hubbard — like my father — was in his early twenties. While my father was setting up a medical practice on the Jersey Shore, Ron Hubbard was reportedly off tramping through Asia, learning Eastern religions and customs. All of us in Scientology believed this about Ron. He was an explorer, an intrepid researcher into the darkest depths and starry heights of the human soul. He engineered and built the Bridge to Total Freedom.

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was a rugged guy, just like my dad.

He was born on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Nebraska. My dad was born just a few months later, on May 19. If you believe the authorized biography, Ron grew up out by a tribe of Blackfoot peoples. By the time he was four, he’d already learned all the Blackfoot lore there was to learn, so tribal elders made him a full-fledged blood brother. What’s more, at thirteen years old, Ron became the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of Scouting. So goes the authorized biography, and as Scientologists, we believed it.

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Many voters who go to the polls to support Amendment One will do so believing outright falsehoods about same-sex marriages and civil unions. In particular, they hold the belief that such partnerships are damaging to the health and well-being of the children raised in them. That is, after all, one of the chief justifications for the amendment.

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But, more quietly, "The Hunger Angel" is something else – a major addition to the tradition of gay literature, and a rare evocation of gay life in the war years and after. Leo, the narrator, is just a teenager when he’s deported from Romania to the Ukraine, but he has already had his first “strange, filthy, shameless and beautiful” assignations in the town park and the local bathhouse. At first he sees his deportation as a welcome escape from his Nazi-supporting father, and a mercy for the mother he truly loves, for in his own eyes he is a double disgrace: not just gay, but an ethnic German who sleeps with Romanians. In the camp, hunger becomes all-consuming, and he longs for home, but he also watches fellow skin-and-bones detainees sneak off to an industrial wreck for sex and knows, “If I’d been caught in the camp I’d be dead.” "The Hunger Angel" lets a gay man embody universal themes of suffering and endurance but also captures the unique contradictions of gay desire – a substantial accomplishment, and one that’s even more impressive because Herta Müller is a straight woman.

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On Thursday's "O'Reilly Factor," Bill O'Reilly grappled with the terrible, terrible paradox that while "Glee" may have some merits, it also sends the message "that alternative lifestyles for children may be positive." And then, oh no, he showed a clip of the character Unique performing a KC and the Sunshine Band song in a dress and heels. O'Reilly, who is terribly concerned that America's youth "might go out and experiment with this stuff," next welcomed Carlson, along with Judge Jeanine Pirro, for an old-fashioned round of pearl-clutching. "Here we go again," said Carlson, "pandering to .3 percent of the American population that consider themselves transgender. Now I get to explain this to my 8-year-old, if I just wanted to watch a nice family show with some nice music?"

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On Tuesday, the state moved closer to passing House Bill 229, better known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, which will prohibit "teaching of alternative lifestyles." The state already bans sex education for grades K-8, but that's not enough for some. The bill's Republican sponsor Rep. Joey Hensley explained this week that "I have two children — in the third and fourth-grade — and don't want them to be exposed to things I don't agree with ... Even though the state board disallows this now, I'm afraid it does happen and sex education is talked about in a way that it is acceptable."

Wow. Where to begin? First of all, just because you don't agree with things doesn't mean they shouldn't be acknowledged. A moral education is one that exists within reality. Kids are taught all the time about things we don't agree with. It's called history.

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Even down at the local LGBT center, it's still unusual to think of a young child as gay. Childhood is, after all, a fairly neutral time, one in which the concept of love is reserved largely for parents and ice cream. But just because a kid isn't yet engaged in the stream of romantic attachment, it doesn't follow that he isn't developing his sense of self. Who you are is not a single adolescent rite of passage like a bar mitzvah or quinceañera. Every gay adult was once a child. And in every classroom and playground in America right now are our future gay adults. So how do we raise those children – and all our children -- in a way that acknowledges and accepts that?

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“It wasn’t any struggle to get us on board,” Jackson says of his union, 1199, a local of the Service Employees International Union representing some 400,000 healthcare workers throughout the northeast. “We took a leadership role in putting together the coalition.”

Once the self-described guardian of “union power, soul power”—an ally of the Black Panthers and student New Leftists and an opponent of the Vietnam War—1199 is still a force for civil rights. This time, it joins a front of union confederates in the march for marriage equality. In fighting for “working families, not just certain families,” as Jackson put it in one campaign spot, labor is pushing the boundaries of queer politics while recharging its own power.

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“It’s more like ‘Daddy Day Care,’” I usually quip. And while that's meant to be a joke, there’s also some truth to it. I spend a good amount of my work time offering support and advice to men in their 30s and 40s who are just coming out of the closet. Surprised? I was too, at first. But then I thought, where else are these guys going to catch up on two decades of sexual and social experience? Until someone comes out with “Gay for Dummies,” the next best thing is a trained professional.

A few years ago, for example, a charming man from Vancouver hired me every night for a week while he was in Las Vegas for a conference. By the time he went home we'd checked off every item on his wish list, and he was finally comfortable lying naked with another man. It was strangely gratifying to help a guy learn the ropes.

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Lately gay and LGBT-friendly Republicans have taken a major role in bankrolling and organizing the marriage campaign nationwide, as part of a fairly sudden and welcome shift in public attitude toward same-sex marriage and full legal equality for gays and lesbians. Some of the conservatives donating to equality causes have also donated to and fundraised for Romney. They are attempting to justify this fact in a few ways.

First, that Romney and Obama both oppose gay marriage. Which is true!

“Mitt Romney is where President Obama is on this issue,” a Republican backer of the likely nominee said.

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Late last month, Miss Universe Canada contestant Jenna Talackova was disqualified on the grounds that she was, in its terms, "not a naturally born female." But last week Trump's organization said the 23-year-old, who underwent gender reassignment four years ago, would be permitted to return and compete. She is now back on the roster of this year's Canadian finalists.

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We sat together at our breakfast counter, she with a mug of Bengal spice tea, me with a glass of OJ. My mother was, and is, a very pretty woman, with bright blue eyes, skyscraper cheekbones, and an easy laugh. She sipped her tea and took a breath.

“Karen and I aren’t just friends, honey.” Her features tightened, but her eyes met mine, clear and steady. “We’re more than friends.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” I said.

“You did?”

“Of course!” I gulped. “Jessica and me aren’t just friends, either, you know.”

“I had a feeling about that.” She nodded with a faint smile.

Mine was the most amiable coming out story I knew. If only the experience of my early sex life were so breezy.

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Take, for instance, what happened after Utah blogger Dan Pearce wrote a frank and lovely essay on his Single Dad Laughing blog back in November, titled "I'm Christian. Unless you're gay." In it, he wrote about his friend he calls Jacob, a gay 27-year-old who lives in his conservative Christian community, and how "love, kindness, and friendship are three things that Jacob hasn’t felt in a long time."

Though his piece was largely a plea for Christians to butch up and start practicing acceptance toward gays, it was, in a much larger sense, a challenge for every one of his readers to refrain from putting conditions on their tolerance. "The more you put your arm around those that you might naturally look down on, the more you will love yourself," he wrote. "And the more you love yourself, the less need you’ll ever have to find fault or be better than others. And the less we all find fault or have a need to be better than others, the quicker this world becomes a far better place to live."

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