Nowhere is our community's diversity more evident than in San Francisco, the great gay city by the bay. The epitome of leftist radicalism for much of conservative America, San Francisco wrestles with issues that the rest of us can hardly imagine. (Public nudity?) At a time when, to most Americans, "LGBT rights" means the right to get married, have children, and serve in the military, queer San Franciscans still debate the institutions of marriage, parenthood, and the military. Gay political leaders are attacked as tools of the establishment, while former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a staunch liberal and now Lieutenant Governor of the State of California, is denounced by many radical San Franciscans for being in thrall to the City's corporate interests.

The latest issue to stir San Francisco's queer political pot is San Francisco Pride's choice of Bradley Manning to be this year's grand marshal. This choice, if any, was purely symbolic: The openly gay Manning is currently in military prison, charged with leaking classified material to the whistle blower website WikiLeaks, and cannot lead a Pride Parade even if he wanted to. But symbols can be controversial, though calling Manning a controversial figure would be a gross understatement. Many in the LGBT community believe that Manning is a traitor to his country while many others (myself included) think of him as a political prisoner and a victim of an Obama Administration which, in matters of warfare and civil liberties, is just as bad as the Bush Administration.

Before business partners Steve McCloud and Martin Ruddock bought the land, it served as a camp for wayward boys, among other things. Ruddock and McCloud named their park Vitambi, a Swahili word meaning "pride."

The partners, McCloud says, "set out several years ago to find a suitable camp/resort to better meet the needs of South Florida's gay population. The gay community should have a place with good food and good drink in a natural secluded location that allowed us to be us. We all need a nearby escape and a place to meet like-minded friends and make new friends. Traditional gay bars, restaurants and gathering spots are not always the best for meeting new people, quiet conversation, star gazing, long walks holding hands and the chance to cuddle in a cabin in the woods. We wanted to create a country club setting and an overnight option away from home."

McCloud describes Vitambi Springs as a "private members only, gated, 21 and over, all male, year-round resort camp set on 269 tropical forest acres below Florida's frostline."

In January 2013 Mark Adler became BMOW's Executive Director. The openly-gay Adler comes to BMOW with excellent credentials: "I have been in non-profit management for nearly 25 years, coming to Fort Lauderdale from San Diego after serving 2 years in the Peace Corps in Guyana. I spent 25 years with Planned Parenthood from California to Florida and was hired to start up SunServe as Executive Director here in Fort Lauderdale in 2003. During my time at Planned Parenthood and at SunServe, I worked on many projects in collaboration with the Pride Center (or what was then the GLCC). I worked with Ken Merrifield and other senior advocates from the LGBT community in forming the Tuesday morning Coffee and Conversation group with the GLCC's Senior Advisory Council back around 2008. I joined the BMOW team a year and a half ago as Associate Executive Director and upon the retirement of our ED, was chosen to lead the agency."

"Mark was unanimously chosen by our Board of Directors in January to lead the agency into its new chapter," says Amber VanBuren, BMOW's Public Relations and Marketing Coordinator. "We are thrilled he is here."

On January 8th, BMOW began offering free lunches at the Pride Center's Tuesday morning "Coffee and Conversation" meetings.

Pastor Kevin Swanson is Director of Generations with Vision, a ministry whose goal is to strengthen homeschool families like his own. Swanson also hosts a daily radio program, "Generations Radio," which his web site (generationswithvision.com) describes as "the world's largest homeschooling and Biblical worldview program".

In a recent edition of his program, Swanson denounced the bill that established civil unions for same-sex couples in his home State of Colorado. While doing so, the Pastor gave his own interpretation of gay history which, if anything, shows us how flawed the homeschool movement really is. Lamenting that

...this is not the first time society's had to deal with this kind of issue

...is probably more widespread than it has ever been in the history of the world.

So far so good. But then Swanson's rant gets weird. According to the radio preacher:

About 100 years ago, you had three homosexuals in the world as far as anybody really knew. There was a Canadian named Robert Ross, an Englishman [actually an Irishman] named Oscar Wilde, [and] an American named Walt Whitman.

They led the charge in the early 1900's [Whitman died in 1892 and Wilde died in 1900] and wound up in and out of the prison system and in court and so forth for a period of time. And again, there was only about three that anybody knew of and it was hardly anything that was mentioned among the established world at that time, that is in Europe, Canada and America. But you did have those three men, as far as history bears out. Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman were well-known for some level of homosexual activity, although they could not call themselves homosexuals at that time.

Swanson goes on to complain that

The homosexual lifestyle is [now] everywhere and we have a problem that's probably about 10,000 times if not 100,000 times worse than it was 100 years ago,

Swanson is not sure the world has "ever gone to homosexual marriage" before, though he thinks that "Nero tried it."

Swanson's radio rant is ridiculous even by Bible thumping standards, but it reminds us of an early pioneer who is remembered, if at all, for his relationship with others. Unlike Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde, whom everyone knows, few are acquainted with Robert Baldwin Ross (1869-1918), affectionately-known as "Robbie" Ross. Still, unlike Whitman or Wilde, Ross was openly gay for most of his life, which predictably caused him many problems.

The first Prime Timers meeting, held in Boston on August 15, 1987, attracted 42 men. Today Prime Timers has thousands of members and more than 50 chapters in North America, Europe and Australia. According to their web site, "Prime Timers are older gay or bisexual men (and younger men who admire mature men) who enrich their social lives, engage in diverse activities, and enjoy opportunities and friendships with other Prime Timers throughout the world."

Fort Lauderdale Prime Timers was organized in June of 2003. With 370 odd members, it is the second largest chapter, second only to the one in Palm Springs, California. Peter Gavigan, President of Fort Lauderdale Prime Timers, describes it as "a purely social group of gay men in the Fort Lauderdale area."

Unlike SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment), which is philanthropic and even political in its outlook, Prime Timers "is a purely social organization; just an opportunity for elderly men to get together to have a good time, to keep everybody active in the community and hopefully maintain your health that way." Another obvious difference between SAGE and Prime Timers is that while SAGE has both male and female members, Prime Timers is basically for men only.

According to the national mission statement, which can be found on their website

SAGE has pioneered programs and services for the aging LGBT community, provided technical assistance and training to expand opportunities for LGBT older people across the country, and provided a national voice on LGBT aging issues.

SAGE focuses on advocacy at both local and national levels, as well as activities, groups and programs that encourage LGBT older adults to stay connected with each other and with the community. Led by Executive Director Michael Adams, SAGE - now Services & Advocacy for GLBT [sic] Elders - works with LGBT adults and aging service providers to address and overcome the challenges of discrimination in elder adult service settings.

In other words, "if it bleeds it leads." Watching the morning news, one might think that people in our community are too busy killing, raping, robbing or cheating one another to do much of anything else.

There is no question that journalism accentuates the negative. But so does history, which tries to cover the past as thoroughly as journalism covers the present. Since the days of Herodotus, the 5th century B.C.E. Father of History, historians have dwelled upon such unsavory topics as crime, empire, genocide, violence or war. Voltaire and Edward Gibbons, the 18th century's greatest historians, defined their craft as "a collection [or register] of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes" of humanity. This is certainly true of political or economic history, which deal with the struggle between people, classes, groups or nations. However, when it comes to social or cultural history, the verdict is not quite so negative.

One of the historians who looked into this matter was Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (1912-1989). One of the last century's greatest historians, Tuchman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963 for The Guns of August [1914] and in 1972 for Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45. Though both books are historical classics, my favorite Tuchman tome is A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (1978), which won the National Book Award.

Covering a century which, like ours, was full of "plague, war, taxes, brigandage, bad government, insurrection, and schism in the Church," Tuchman realized that she had to dwell on the negative at the expense of the positive. After all, there are many people who lead humdrum lives, even in that awful century. This inspired Tuchman to come up with her own "Tuchman's Law."

It wasn't always this way. For the longest time, many a durable lesbian or gay couple collapsed because it did not have a legal leg to stand on. One of the horrors of the early AIDS epidemic was the spectacle of a surviving partner fighting a losing battle for his lover's person or property, against said lover's biological relatives who couldn't care less about their gay kinsman but who had the law on their side.

Many rights that straight married couples take for granted are not shared by legally unmarried, same-sex duos, thanks to the Defense Of Marriage Act and thirty-one state constitutions. For this reason, same-sex couples are encouraged to be legally prepared with long-term health care insurance and with durable powers of attorney, designation of health care surrogate and preneed guardian, and living wills drafted in addition to the standard wills that all of us should have. After all, we never know when adversity will strike.

Though those of us who are in committed relationships promise to love our partners through good times or bad times; when bad times strike we are caught totally unaware and, all too often, totally unprepared. This happened to me when Michael, my partner of 27 years, came down with a still-undiagnosed form of dementia.

On the other hand Gay Press, Gay Power left out the storied and sometimes controversial history of Florida's LGBT media. It would have made an interesting story.

Meanwhile, heterosexist society's often-hostile take on sexual and gender minorities also influenced the development of the common language. From Leviticus to Richard von Krafft-Ebing, to the punk in the street, homo-, bi- and trans-phobic words were coined, developed and used by the people who did not understand us and who therefore feared and hated us.

While heterosexuals "are weighed down by the practical imperatives of 'proper' match-making" gay men, "with relationships founded on nothing more than personal magnetics and pleasure, support a richer internal heterogeneity. Take that queer male lust for variety and throw in the democratization of travel and communications in the late 20th century, and the result is a gay worldwide web of friendship, affection, and sex."

Though The Guide's author exaggerated straight (and lesbian) monogamy, his depiction of gay male travel habits was spot on.

Though The Guide magazine is sadly gone, gay sex tourism remains vital in the 21st century. "What is Gay Sex Tourism?" asks one web site, which proceeds to answer its own question: "Sex tourism is the practice of traveling to a domestic or foreign city with the purpose of taking part in sexual activities. Gay sex tourism is simply sex tourism for gays! The types of activities that gay sex tourists participate in vary - some go with the sole intention of having sex with others whereas others only partially go with that intention."

The gay sex tourism industry, we are told, "is a niche tourism market that is starting to catch on more predominantly around the world. As homosexuality is becoming much more acceptable around the world, more and more people are openly taking part in gay sex tourism and it is expected to become a much larger and open industry with new specifically gay sex tour companies opening up all the time."

Putting together the results of 20 previous studies that involved more than 23,000 men and women, the scientists concluded that the odds of being left-handed are 39 per cent higher in homosexuals than in heterosexuals. Broken down by gender, they found that gay men are 34% more likely to be left-handed and lesbians are 91% more likely to be left-handed.

"This is one more piece of evidence that sexual orientation is at least partly determined in the womb," said Ray Blanchard, head of the Clinical Sexology Program at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toledo, one of the authors of the study that appeared in the July 2003 issue of Psychology Bulletin.

Blanchard et al. followed that with a 2006 study that suggested that left-handed men without older brothers are more likely to be gay than non-right-handed men who have older brothers. As Blanchard & Co. said in that report, "the odds of homosexuality is higher for men who have a non-right hand preference or who have older brothers, relative to men with neither of these features, but the odds for men with both features are similar to the odds for men with neither."

This was not the first time that scientists noted a connection between being queer and being left-handed.

Though self-appointed guardians of morality blamed the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community for Sandy, this "Frankenstorm" struck people and their property regardless of race, color, gender or sexual orientation. Some of the effects of Sandy were relatively trivial, like the cancellation of the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. More serious was the loss of power, property and lives experienced by too many people, LGBT or otherwise.

Fire Island, a barrier island that served as a LGBT resort and getaway for almost a century, suffered significant damage, though thankfully no one was hurt. In lower Manhattan's largely-gay Chelsea neighborhood, Sandy left floods, power outages, and chaos in its wake.

One of Hurricane Sandy's best-known Chelsea "casualties" was the Ali Forney Center for queer youth. Made famous by public service ads featuring "A-List" photographer Mike Ruiz, the Center was started in 2002 and named after a transgender youth who was murdered in 1997.

The Ali Forney Center's "mission is to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) youth from the harm of homelessness, and to support them in becoming safe and independent as they move from adolescence to adulthood." The Center provides short- and long-term housing, medical care, HIV testing, mental health services, showers, food, computer access and job training.

Miraglia himself has a lot of experience in this matter: "I started my law enforcement career as a police explorer at the Walnut Creek, California Police Department in 1978. At the time, being gay was a reason to deny someone employment, and of course, the explorers were part of the Boy Scouts of America who continues today to discriminate against gay people. I worked at Walnut Creek PD until 1988 and then moved to the Fairfield, CA Police Dept. until 1998."

He continues, "I started teaching at the police academy at Napa Valley College in 1986 and went their full time in 1999 as the academy director. During that time, I also served as the deputy chief of the Napa Valley Railroad Police Department until 2007. I'm now a dean at Napa Valley College and teach all of the diversity and human relations topics in the police academy as well as the LGBT Studies Program at the college."

Now semi-retired, Ricardo continues to write, as witnessed by his most recent novel, Last Dance at Studio 54. A self-styled "biographical novel," Last Dance at Studio 54 takes the reader back to New York City of the 1970s and to Studio 54, the legendary nightclub and disco that defined that era.

"I was raised in Smalltown, New Jersey during the 1950s and fell head over heels for Judy Garland's Vicky Lester and helped crown Elvis king while bopping to his 45s and styling my hair (badly) into a DA, and I saw the anguish of Jim Stark and Cal Trask in my mirror," Ricardo recalls.

"In the 1960s, I fell in love, not wisely, and returned to NYC as a foolish young adult, escaping into the tarnished silver screens of 42nd Street. During the 1970s, I fell in love again, and again not wisely, plus I manned the barricades as a gay activist, and dove into the deep end of the dope and disco pools and survived intact. The 1980s drew me to Florida where I wrote and sold mounds and pounds of porno. The 2000s still sees me in Florida, and both my epic saga Sam's Hill and my detective mystery Desperate Innocence are e-booked and awaiting discovery. I still dream of living happily ever after."