The digital display on my dashboard reads "7:41 PM, 67 degrees" as I leave the on-ramp and join the southbound traffic on the Garden State Parkway. I had planned on attending a PFLAG meeting in Toms River tonight but that will have to wait.

A dear friend of mine who is an airline pilot is a PFLAG volunteer. This group does awesome work to bridge the gap between parents and their LGBT kids. I wonder how many LGBT people of my generation would be alive today if PFLAG existed when we were kids.

I break free of a semi-hypnotic trance; I could, but won't drive the remaining 8 to 10 miles with my eyes closed, to the hospital intensive care unit where my 85 year old father lay close to death. Glancing up at the horizon above the highway as dusk drifts into darkness, the bottom of a large cloud formation glows yellowish gold from a setting sun directly above my destination. I'm not nervous. I'm at peace with myself.

This inner peace was unknown to me until these past four years after I had finally come out as a transgender lesbian woman. My father was certainly not at peace, forget comfortable, with my true nature as his eldest daughter; I was outed to him and my mother without my permission by a younger sibling who, in doing so, perpetrated a despicable, pernicious violation of my rights.

As expected during two or three phone conversations I had with dad after I was outed, he used all the bogus religious arguments in his arsenal to try to make me feel guilty, perverse and disgusting, but I was prepared for this by then. I knew better; I finally knew that his and all bigotry against LGBT people stems from ignorance.

So, now I'm driving to a hospital so my father can meet me, the real me, Pamela, in person, before he dies. We have two hours together, from 8 to 10 PM, to discuss the last 58 years of our shared time.

One Million Moms is a fundamentalist Christian organization whose goal is to eliminate the presence of gays and lesbians from the public eye. It also targets blasphemy in the media and double entendres about sex. I joined the organization because I wanted to see how a group like this carries out a campaign of intolerance.

Soon after I became a member of One Million Moms, I received a "call to action" email that implored me to threaten the management of JCPenney with a boycott unless they fired Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesperson. It seemed that Ms. DeGeneres has an agenda "that goes against Biblical values." So I sent an email to JCPenney telling them how impressed I was with their Ellen DeGeneres commercials.

Another "call to action" was over a single episode of the TV show Person of Interest. According to One Million Moms, the show "went way too far in an attempt to normalize homosexuality when creator and producer J.J. Abrams introduced a married lesbian couple"--a female heart surgeon and her female partner. They said, "The show treated this immoral relationship just like any other married couple. This is a way of promoting the homosexual agenda by making it appear absolutely normal."

So I sent an email to the producers of Person of Interest thanking them for portraying a lesbian couple just like any other married couple. I got their email address from One Million Moms.

In their call to action against Person of Interest, One Million Moms said that except for this one episode, they loved watching the show. They described it as being "fresh, intriguing, and extremely interesting." But as my wife pointed out, one of the main characters in Person of Interest is a bad cop named Fusco, who is part of a corrupt group of drug-running police officers. He attempted to execute the main character not once, but twice. By my count, Fusco has violated three of the Ten Commandments on many occasions, yet One Million Moms never asked us to boycott the show because of that. Thanks to One Million Moms, I now know that in God's eyes, being a lesbian is worse than lying, stealing and murder.

Twenty-one years after David Drake's The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me gave voice to an era's anger and passion, the blond, blue-eyed showman is still living with moxie.

The summer of 1992, a one-man show opened off-Broadway that boldly dramatized the anger and passion gay and AIDS activist groups ACT UP and Queer Nation had brought to the streets. Titled The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, it was the young, blond, blue-eyed gay actor David Drake's attempt to translate a pivotal encounter with Kramer, the godfather of AIDS activism, into a show that captured the breadth of being queer, angry and scared--and, yes, hopeful--in those dark years before effective HIV therapy or gay-rights progress. The show was a smash, attracting VIPs nightly and running a year before taking Drake around the world to perform it. (He released a movie version in 2000.)

On May 20 in New York City, the show will have a one-night, multi-actor revival to benefit Broadway Cares and The Sero Project, POZ founder Sean Strub's campaign to turn back HIV criminalization laws throughout the United States. POZ talked with Drake, who'll turn 50 in June, about the sudden fame he found with the show, the shame he felt around his own HIV infection in 1998, and how he has reclaimed his young, carefree spirit through a breezy new drag persona named Tawny.

On April 6, 2013, just about a month ago, at the New York Hilton in front of an audience of over 900 people, I had the pleasure and honor of giving remarks and sharing in the presentation of the Imperial Court of New York's Community Service Award to New Jersey's presumptive Democratic gubernatorial candidate , State Senator Barbara Buono. It was noted that she has been a consistent champion of equality, but one achievement sets Buono apart from the other champions of LGBT equality in the New Jersey legislature: she was the prime sponsor of the very first fully inclusive LGBT legislation, the Safer Schools Act (anti-bullying law) of 2002.

The improbable story of how little more than a handful of activists and citizen lobbyists representing the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey (GRAANJ), with no real treasury and representing a small misunderstood minority, worked with sometimes reluctant allies to add transgender-inclusive language to an existing pre-filed piece of legislation is worth telling. I hope that it can be a helpful example to other activists. What is remarkable is the fact that this small core group of people arguably represented the full spectrum of the transgender umbrella whether they considered themselves to be "transgender" or not. They understood the need to articulate in our culture and society that bullying of transgender and gender-variant children is harmful, wrong, and intolerable.

In what trans activist Donna Cartwright describes as "serendipity or fate," she learned about the New Jersey bill after speaking to a New York trans activist friend who was working with GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) on the Dignity for All Students Act, New York's anti-bullying bill. This friend mentioned that a similar bill was going into the New Jersey legislature but that it appeared that the New Jersey bill was not transgender-inclusive. Days later, toward the end of January 2002, she attended a convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark and visited GLSEN's table in the exhibitor area. She engaged one of the regional leaders, who told her that the legislation had already been introduced in both houses. She also obtained a copy of the bill and confirmed that the language was not transgender-inclusive. She opened the door with the GLSEN folks, who told us about an upcoming meeting of a new North Jersey chapter in the coming week.

One of our members who took a lead was Dr. Emanuel Fineberg. "Manny" was a retired school psychologist who actually had experience with bullying in schools and was articulate on the matter, and became our expert on the need to cover transgender and gender-variant children. Manny and I were able to follow through by attending the meeting of the new North Jersey GLSEN chapter and engaging with their members and leaders. Manny was the expert; I was there to learn and to be supportive.

We engaged GLSEN and asked if we could be part of the coalition of organizations that was advocating for the anti-bullying bill. We were welcomed. At the same time we contacted the national experts in transgender law and were told that to cover trans people the legislation needed to include the term "gender identity and expression." Once we agreed on the legal language we needed, we asked our new allies if they would be able to get the sponsors to change the language in the bill. They certainly seemed sympathetic, but they also appeared reluctant or unsure of a way to do this since the existing non-inclusive language was promoted by their national office.

In an interview with Face the Nation on CBS, Martina Navratilova made the claim that "In 29 states in this country you can still get fired for not just being gay, but if your employer thinks you are gay."

In response, PolitiFact rated the claim as being half true.

To justify their claim, PolitiFact points out that while 29 states do not have legislation at the state level to protect against discrimination, there are exceptions, such as those that exist for government employees, or in local municipalities that have passed anti-discrimination laws, in addition to specific employers may also have anti-discrimination protections in place.

PolitiFact also points out that according to Hayley Gorenberg, deputy director of Lambda Legal, a 1989 Supreme Court Case based around Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Price Waterhouse vs. Hopkins) *might* have set a precedent that could bar discrimination based upon an employer believing an employee is, uh... "gay." (More on the choice of this word later.)

So PolitiFact's arguments boil down to two main points. One is that exceptions exist within the 29 states that do not have legislation at the state level to offer protection against discrimination based upon sexual orientation. The second point revolves around the above possibility outlined by Gorenberg about employers with employees who may be, uh... "gay."

The first part of PolitiFact's argument holds some water. Even though Navratilova never said that "no protections exist" in 29 states, the fact that a certain number of protections do exist for certain, uh... "gays" might have justified rating Navratilova's claim as "Mostly True" rather than "True".

However, the second part is complete horseshit.

I am not a stereotypical parent. This is not to say that I never nagged my children to do their homework and brush their teeth, or that I wouldn't give anything to protect them from the evils of the world--I did and I would. It's also not to say that I don't miss them terribly now that they are grown with lives of their own--I do. Or that I'm not super excited about my first grandbaby, due later this year--I am.

No, where I fall out of the stereotype is in my own personal expression of gender. You see, I am a transgender woman. Despite being assigned male at birth, I live my life, legally and socially, as a woman. For the past two decades, since my children were 7, 9, and 11 years old, they have known me as a woman.

Our fight over same-sex marriage is a battle about relationships that is increasingly eroding relationships. Our diverse and entrenched beliefs about how to be together are driving us apart. What would be useful at this stage is a more relationship-centric approach to disagreement.

Judging from the volume and tone of the debate, our relationships matter a lot. Yet, ironically, the depth, duration and number of close relationships continue to decline. My Flight From Relationships index - which charts the rate of rate of exodus from relationships across home, work, politics and faith - shows an increase of 214% over the past five decades. How is something we believe in so strongly falling apart so badly?

I believe it starts with our beliefs about how relationships should be structured and function. Some look to their particular brand of denominational belief about obedience to religious law or tenants for treatment of humankind. Others look to secular values about fairness or inclusion. It seems the more we cling to and debate these beliefs and the tribes that espouse them, the worse shape our actual relationships devolve into.

What if we flipped things? What if we were to make our highest priority and greatest belief - our relationships? Regardless of the beliefs one holds, I think that this approach stands on a very solid foundation.

Once again, I am amazed at the continuing impact that one, young, gay man's life and death has had on me personally, and on our culture. Yesterday we learned that Jason Collins chose the number 98 for his NBA basketball jersey to commemorate Matthew Shepard's death in 1998, even as Collins remained in the closet concerning his own homosexuality. How many other people have chosen their own quiet way of remembering Matthew and the tragedy of his torture and death?

For me, it has been numerous visits to Matt's Fence, where he was left to die by the two young men who murdered him. Located in an isolated field on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming, for some inexplicable reason, Matt's Fence is still standing there after fifteen years, disturbed only by the few tokens of love left on the ground where he suffered, by pilgrims like myself. On my last visit, less than a year ago, when I got disoriented, and had just about given up on finding the fence, I was literally led to the fence by a buck antelope. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

At one point several years ago, I floated a trial balloon to a number of wealthy gays with the idea of buying the property where Matt's Fence is located, and building the Matthew Shepard Inter-Mountain Peace and Justice Center, as a memorial, not only to Matthew, but to all of those who have died because they were "other". At that time there were no takers, but I still think it is be a worthwhile cause, and would be willing to spearhead such an effort if the interest is there, or can be developed.

What a great place for Jason Collins to retire one of his "98" NBA jerseys. And how many other folks would come forward with their stories of how Matthew's death impacted their lives? Such a Center, located on Interstate Highway 80, would be a magnet for thousands of people crossing the country and it could help to change the consciousness of the Inter-Mountain West as it relates to sexuality, and "otherness."

Whether or not such a physical monument is ever built, the memory of Matthew Shepard will continue to live in the minds and hearts of literally millions of people. Perhaps, it is because Matthew personifies "every boy". Matthew grew up in Wyoming. I grew up in Idaho until age eleven, and then in rural Central Washington State. But it is more than that for me, and I suspect for others like Jason Collins.

There is some universal identity that crosses all barriers of age, race, sexuality, gender, and financial status. Maybe it is a very basic human identity. Matthew was no saint. Matthew went into that bar that night looking for friendship and hopefully, to get laid. The fact that it ended badly is something with which we can all identify. The fact that it ended tragically is a reminder that, "there but for the Grace of God, go I."

In 1992 in Tucson, Arizona, I ran for Congress as an openly gay Democrat against the then-closeted Republican congressman, Jim Kolbe. I did not win the election, but I did receive 77,000 votes; which at the time was the record number of votes ever received by a non-incumbent, openly gay, congressional candidate. My sexual orientation never became a major factor in the campaign, because Kolbe wanted to avoid the issue like the plague.

In 1996, Congressman Kolbe voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which prompted a decision by The Advocate to "out" Kolbe because of his hypocrisy. Kolbe was tipped off before the Advocate issue was published, and jumped the gun by issuing his own press release acknowledging that he is gay.

Almost immediately, Kolbe began experiencing the blessings of coming out of the closet in his personal life. No longer dealing with the stress of living a lie, Kolbe's health improved and his drinking diminished to acceptable social levels. His voting record also improved once he started being honest with himself and everyone else.

On several occasions in subsequent years, I telephoned or wrote his office to congratulate him on his willingness to speak out on issues of LGBT equality, and we established a friendly, speaking acquaintanceship. One night at IBT's, a local gay bar, Kolbe and I had the opportunity to speak personally. To my surprise, as we were saying goodbye, he kissed me and gave me a big hug. I believe that this was his way of thanking me for the role I played in helping him to accept - and embrace - his sexuality.

About eight years ago, Jim Kolbe met a Panamanian citizen, Hector Alfonso, and they fell in love. At some point in their relationship, Hector had to leave the USA for a year because his visa had expired. Hector is now back in the USA legally, but not on a permanent basis. Kolbe's personal experience with LGBT discriminatory immigration policy, led him to publicly testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Kolbe spoke in favor of an amendment to the immigration bill - one that would add protections for married LGBT spouses equal to that afforded heterosexual couples. Further, Kolbe announced that he and his fiance will be married soon in Washington, DC.

Jim Kolbe is an example of someone who has evolved from being a closeted politician to an advocate for himself, our community, and full legal LGBT equality in our lifetimes.

There are legions of other closeted brothers and sisters hiding out there in the shadows. We need to let them know by our words and our actions that we welcome them into our community with open hearts and open arms. It worked with Jim Kolbe.

Despair can come easy for queer folks in Louisiana. Portions of our state are literally falling into hell at an ever-increasing rate, almost every year some of us are in danger of being wiped off the face of the Earth by a hurricane, and some of our legislators aren't content to let nature take its course and instead try to use the law to get rid of us. The latest ridiculous attempt to do away with us comes from Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport), whose HB 402 this legislative session is almost an anti-ENDA.

HB 402 doesn't just allow, but *requires* discrimination suits to be dismissed as frivolous (which in Louisiana means you owe damages to the party you tried to sue) if they aren't filed for one of the reasons the state has already prohibited, like discrimination on the basis of race, age, sex, pregnancy status, and more. Apparently Rep. Seabaugh is privy to some information that the rest of us aren't about a flood of discrimination suits clogging up the state courts, and he's going to put his foot down! Those activist judges, you see, just keep on ignoring the Legislature's intent and allow all sorts of nonsense to go on in their courts, and Rep. Seabaugh is trying to save us all from their judicial incompetence.

Except, isn't it an odd coincidence how Louisiana has persistently refused to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression? Isn't it an even odder coincidence that Rep. Seabaugh, in his short legislative career, has referred to LGBT-inclusive bullying laws as "[promoting] an agenda and [teaching] alternative lifestyles to our children?" To be fair, Rep. Seabaugh is an expert bully himself, having told a constituent upset with his vote that homosexuality "is a sin plain and simple and it does not need to be taught in our schools," and concluded the exchange by calling her an "idiot." To the outside observer, it's almost as if Rep. Seabaugh thinks he has found a way to use the law to punish LGBT folks who stand up against unfair treatment at work, and is just hoping we won't catch it!

As a trans activist who is relatively new to the dance, I missed the years of bitter fighting by transgender activists merely to be included in the mission of the Human Rights Campaign. I became involved when HRC said we were included and the fight at that time (and arguably still today) is that HRC's actions do not meet and match their words. I suppose the slogan, "Trans rights are human rights!" was intended for the ears of HRC directors rather than right wing legislators as one might reasonably assume.

After observing the manner in which transgender people were excluded from "SONDA," the NY state gay employment non-discrimination legislation that was promoted in 2001, I was appalled, shocked, and angry. Was not the beginning, at least the symbolic beginning, of the modern "gay" rights movement in New York the Stonewall riots? Were not the acknowledged heroes of Stonewall the trans identified or openly gender variant icons, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson and Stormie Delarvarie?

What really riled me was that the big time "gay rights" groups like ESPA in NY and HRC would encourage trans identified people and drag queens to dress up and volunteer for their big fundraising galas, but did the legislation they were pushing cover transgender people or gender variant gays? Umm... Nope! there's a Yiddish term for this kind of behavior, it's called "chutzpah." It fits!

Meanwhile, in the fall of 2001, for me, personally, the unthinkable happened. My lover, my best friend, the mother of my children, the woman who gave me support with my transition - at first reluctantly, but later with enthusiasm - my wife of 34 years died suddenly of late stage cancer which had been diagnosed only a month before.

At some point in time, trying to focus and fight the murky clouds of my loss and grief while trying to make some sort of sense of everything and hold together a family and a business already under stress, I came to a stark realization. I was no longer a comfortable middle class married white man living a double life with a supportive wife, but now a single transwoman.

What was frightening was the realization that if gays and lesbians were "second class" - what was I? How was I now perceived? I was angry, frightened and insecure because the conclusion to that question was, to me, intolerable and unacceptable.

I was angry, but I saw an opening, maybe an opportunity to be part of the "gay establishment." After all, in my old life as a straight white man, I was used to have a little privilege - a little local stature.

I argue most emphatically that marriage rights in general, and more specifically legalization for same-sex couples, is indeed a federal issue, and that national legislation or a Supreme Court decision must enforce the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which mandates that "no state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Since different-sex couples, upon reaching legal age, are accorded the rights and benefits of marriage, the current 30 states with state constitutional amendments legitimizing marriage only "between a man and a woman" effectively deprive same-sex couples of "equal protection of the laws."

So then, should the civil and human rights of minoritized people be placed up for a vote or left to the discretion of state legislatures? In other words, should the majority determine the rights of minorities?

In a letter sent to monasteries in Buenos Aires about Argentina's now-approved marriage equality legislation, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote:

"Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God."

Like Pope Benedict, Pope Francis is a complicated figure with a mixed bag of histories, theologies, and practices that both set him apart and yet align him with past and present Catholic leaders. Aside from his very orthodox views on sexuality and same-sex parent adoption, there is a lot of controversy over his role and relationship to the military junta during The Dirty War in Argentina. Already Pope Francis' history is preceding him with allegations about not protecting two of his fellow priests who were kidnapped during this period. It is also rumored that he helped conceal political prisoners during the dictatorship. However, these charges were not substantiated, but we'll continue to hear more as the world becomes better acquainted with the new head of the Catholic Church.

A lot of attention has been brought to Pope Francis' intentional work with poverty and the AIDS community. For Jesuits, like many prelates of the Catholic Church, this work is notable and an important part of their ministry. Naturally, with a figure elected from Latin America, with an intentional focus on work with the poor, conversations around liberation theology have been foregrounded. A "preferential option for the poor" is at the heart of liberation theology and during many of the Latin American dictatorships, we saw liberation theology take an important and subversive role. However, not unlike his predecessor Benedict, Francis has openly criticized liberation theology, even as other Latin American religious leaders embraced this necessary move for social justice in the Americas and the developing world.

Editor's Note: Andreas Schwarz is executive assistant for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. He can be reached at aschwarz@iglhrc.org.

Each year, Women's History Month is celebrated in the United States. It is a month dedicated to recognizing the contributions and historical events by women that have shaped society as well as the ongoing challenges that women face. It seems appropriate that the Commission on the Status of Women - a hectic, dynamic, two weeks of high-end meetings, conferences, fora and panels at the United Nations - would fall in March this year, focusing on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls.

While the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) engaged at the conference, I grasped at the opportunity to explore how women's rights, or the lack thereof, affected the gay male community. Beyond espousing inclusiveness for protection from violence against lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, I was eager to understand how I, a gay male, warranted a presence at an event that ostensibly appeared exclusively for women and those fighting for women's rights. As the weeks progressed, my work took me closer to the preparation and planning for the conference: making arrangements for activists to travel from Asia - Japan, Philippines and Sri Lanka - to the U.S. and who would be speaking at IGLHRC-sponsored panels, organizing large group planning meetings at our office, tracking the events at which our staff would be speaking as well as the panels we were to attend and organizing the details of the staff and visiting human rights defenders' myriad conference-related activities.

As we moved toward the convening, and I absorbed the themes to be dealt with at the conference, my focus shifted from women to a broader examination of gender. It fueled memories of past events in my life that were supported by the panelists' discussions and ensuing challenges to the concept of gender binaries. Unquestionably we live in a deeply patriarchal society; but as a male, do I inadvertently enable this systemic foundation? Or do I suffer its effects as well?

My first recognition at the Commission on the Status of Women was the clear principle that to discuss women's rights, we need to dissect gender rights and inevitably, gender norms. While we can converse on how to advance the lives of women and deter all forms of violence, it's clear that economic disadvantages, religion and traditions are significant culprits in engendering violence and mistreatment of women. However, if we are able to grasp why through history and tradition women have been marginalized in the first place, we can create space to scrutinize and decipher these often times hypocritical - and sometimes lethal - ideas of gender.

When we investigate gender roles in society, we begin to see its impact on the gay community. For example, it's not uncommon for two male partners to emulate a husband and wife within their relationship. It seems to occur almost instinctively, and if unaware amongst the men in the relationship, it's certainly being discussed amongst peers and acquaintances. Gay men's speech, attitudes and manners are filled with these permissive gender-binary constructs that ultimately affect not only our relationships, but also our very being in society.

As you may have heard, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee of the Maryland Senate voted down Senate Bill 449, the "Fairness for all Marylanders Act of 2013", six votes to five on Thursday. I am deeply saddened that my own representative, Christopher Shank, was one of those who voted against it.

Reports are saying that everyone seemed to be okay with protections in employment and housing, but it was the public accommodations clause that caused the bill to die in committee.

Does it even bear mentioning that already such protections are afforded transgender people who live in Baltimore, Howard, and Montgomery Counties, as well as Baltimore City, but not to those who live elsewhere in the state? Is it worth noting that the representative from Baltimore County was one of the down votes?

That makes no sense to me at all; it's okay for transgender people to access public accommodations in Baltimore County, but not in the rest of the state?