I can already feel some gays rolling their eyes. We're not attracted to women! It's just playing around.

Unfortunately, that kind of dismissive approach was part of my own mindset that kept me from really seeing the problem. I recently caught a blog post by a gay man who had talked to women about how gay men take liberties with their bodies: grabbing, touching, offering unsolicited advice on their weight and fashion. I shared it out and quickly got both public and private responses from other women, some close friends, sharing their stories of grabby hands.

So, yes, it happens a lot more than you think.

Not wanting to spend money on therapy sessions to dig down to the roots of this particular mental issue, I chose the cheaper route: I bit the bullet and started getting naked.

It was during this period that I made my first trek out to Spa World, the Korean spa in Centreville renowned for offering the most relaxation you can find short of lounging on fluffy clouds held aloft by unicorns. It's also, to American eyes, stark raving naked. I'm not going to go into some long explanation of cultural differences, but I'll note that Spa World offers a corporate membership package for ''business owners who often entertain guests.''

While I'm sticking to lunch and happy hour to conduct my business entertainment needs, I found that Spa World's relaxing nature lived up to its reputation: lounging around the different stations of the bade pool, a body scrub so thorough it removes anything not attached directly to bone, a full-body massage that leaves you feeling melted.

So, yes, I was taken aback when I first saw word that Spa World had become the focus of a Better Business Bureau complaint for forcing a transgender woman to leave, a sudden reminder that even amid all the relaxation and smiling faces you're still in Virginia where it remains legal to discriminate against LGBT people.

Yet the moment that Obama linked three American struggles for equality -- ''the most evident of truths - that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall'' -- left me wishing that I'd been standing on the grounds with a bunch of my fellow LGBT people to savor the surprising and historic moment.

Brandon celebrates his first Inauguration (Photo courtesy of Diana Le)

Instead, I sat in my living room with my jaw a bit dropped at what had been said and how much further the president went in becoming the first president to say the word ''gay'' in an inaugural speech. But more important to me than saying the word was that linkage of civil rights movements.

It was humbling to hear it, because as a white gay man I know my own personal struggles have been very different than those faced by women and African-Americans. But while each movement differs in the particulars of its cause, at heart they share the same fundamental American values of liberty and equality.

Being more tolerant of crowds and cold than I, my cousins Brad and Diana took their 9-year-old son, Brandon, to see the inauguration speech and parade. She texted me a picture of Brandon standing near the White House holding an American flag: the son of a Vietnamese-American mother and a Midwestern Ohioan father, celebrating the second inauguration of the son of a Kansan mother and a Kenyan father.

In all, good story about how the overall military culture is changing and adapting in the wake of repeal of DADT. Here's the wrap-up graf at Instinct:

Lt. Dan Choi brought this story to our attention, and we have to say, we're impressed by the steps the US Military is taking to make it an LGBT friendly environment. It's great to see they're making an effort to weed out the bad apples. And how about those straight allies in uniform? Well done, Sirs.

So, here's the problem.

I am not alone in this. In my two decades in Washington I've worked closely with people who spew some pretty goddamned vulgar language every fucking minute of the day. I know bureaucrats, executive directors and elected officials -- fucking sons of bitches and pulsating assholes, every one of them -- famed for their profanity-laden tirades.

Blue language is a fucking way of life in D.C.

In a January newspaper profile Grand Slam legend Margaret Court said this about fellow tennis legends Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova:

"But my view is that it's a lifestyle they've chosen which they didn't have to. And I'll say this, if I had a child playing tennis today I wouldn't let that child go on her own on the circuit because I think there is a wrong spirit (on the women's tour]. Young people can get snared into that world. People go into homosexuality thinking they're like that and they're actually not. I'd want to keep them on the straight and narrow."

Short version: 2009 was the first year I got an invite to the White House holiday party for the Washington press corps -- surely a sign of at least some change in Washington -- and as part of it, my husband and I had our picture taken with President and Mrs. Obama. I would say that for old Washington press hounds this isn't a big deal, but they seemed just as eager and starry-eyed as anyone while waiting in line for six seconds with the Obamas. It was, I'll admit, a big deal for Cavin and me.

It was a big deal for Granny Ruth, as well. She had a print-out of the photo pinned to her bulletin board and exhibited the exuberant, buoyant pride that only grandparents can provide. At 42 and fairly comfortable with my accomplishments in life thus far, I still find comfort and validation in that. I don't think it makes me a super traditionalist to say that it's important to me to make my family proud -- even if it's something as ultimately minor as posing for a picture with a president.

Everyone has their own priority list for the LGBT "agenda" -- my personal priority list has long been headed by repeal of the odious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. So I was glad that Choi gave me an hour-and-a-half to talk with him about his own journey from being a soldier to being an activist, and his continued dream to have the right to be both. He's what you want in a community activist: earnest, focused and committed to changing and unjust policy. He's also, I think by dint of his being new on the activist scene, refreshingly open and honest about his life, his experiences and his beliefs.

Still, I was a little surprised to see that some blogs jumped on the implications in Choi's answer to my question about reactions to his being an "activist":

And, although I've lived in the D.C. area for two decades now, my trips to the nearest gay oceanic mecca, Rehoboth have been few, though enough to leave me with the feeling that the gay aspect of the town is more of an addendum than anything else -- pockets of queerdom carved out in fine style, but still separate in many ways.

P'town, on the other hand, feels like a fully woven fabric, a place where everything comes together in one big whole -- some bears over there, straight couples with kids over here, drag queens prancing down the street, lesbians laughing on restaurant patios, twinks giggling on their outdoor decks, and middle-aged gay guys like myself relaxing with the sudden effortlessness of simply being.

At 16, even a Motley Crue song can carry some impressive emotional weight -- I, for one, thought Nikki Sixx to be an exceptionally talented songwriter, even if Mick Mars was a fairly pedestrian guitarist. Those emotions carry forward. To this day, every time I hear The Cars I'm transported back to my best friend Roger's basement bedroom where I watched the still-new MTV, listened to Rush albums, silently tried to figure out why I couldn't like girls the same as he did, and plotted more than a few drunken weekend excursions.

My young life had a soundtrack, one that reflected and amplified all the feelings I had, whether suppressed or not. In high school it was Motley Crue, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and Kiss. In college I started out with Rush and Metallica, and ended up with with Depeche Mode and The Cure.

For a discriminatory anti-gay policy that every Democratic leader has publicly denounced and called for repealing, Don't Ask, Don't Tell has some impressive staying power. Just this week Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) introduced an amendment to the military appropriations bill that would have prohibited the use of those funds for implementation of DADT -- no dollars for discharges.

No dice, either, as unnamed folks from the White House and Hastings's congressional colleagues laid down the law that this was not to be done. So Hastings withdrew his amendment.

Meanwhile, over on the north side of Capitol Hill, the sizable Democratic majority showed once again that when it comes to actually moving forward on LGBT issues there aren't so many of them that they can't easily disappear. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)was prepared to introduce a bill that would suspend DADT implementation, but her colleagues weren't prepared to join her so the proposal was dropped. All this results from the Democratic conviction that anything more controversial than puppies has to be totally filibuster proof before moving forward.

The Democrats have become a political finger trap for the LGBT community -- the harder you work to elect them, the less you can actually get out of them.

Tennis made a huge difference in my young life, giving a quiet, bookworm-ish and sometimes sissy boy an entry into the realm of athleticism and acceptance. Not the same acceptance that would have come had I shown an aptitude for, say, basketball -- a sport in which I was horribly inept -- but acceptance nonetheless.

It's easy to say in retrospect that having an openly gay pro tennis player on the national sports scene would have made a difference in my young life. But I think it would have, though the difficulties of being out at the time would have made any idolization on my part furtive. I heard how rural America reacted to Renee Richards and it was ugly, the same as it was when they talked about Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King.

Under fire from a lot of LGBT corners, and with donors beginning to pull out of a big fundraiser for big-money gays, Reid today said in his statement:

While we do not have a Don't Ask Don't Tell bill introduced in the Senate yet, a number of Senators are working on an approach to get it repealed. We would welcome a legislative proposal from the White House on repeal so as to provide clear guidance on what the President would like to see and when.

Reid also said that if the House moves on its already-introduced DADT-repeal bill, the Senate would gladly take it up.

So, where do we stand? The House has a bill but won't move on it, with leaders from that side and the administration saying that DADT will come after Hate Crimes and ENDA - so no movement there. Senator Reid can't find a sponsor for a bill that would take action supported by 70-percent of Americans.

Meanwhile, President Obama continues to lay the burden on Congress to repeal the odious DADT legislation, and refuses to issue a stop-loss order to at least end discharges while we wait for someone to actually step up and exercise a little leadership and responsibility.

The more things change....

As you can imagine, high school was rather stressful for me.

But while I am, at heart, an introvert who would happily stay ensconced in my home office looking out at the world through my computer screen, I'm lucky enough to have a job and responsibilities that often take me out of my comfort zone and put me in front of people.

Lots and lots of people.

One of Tan's children started crying within seconds of the start of her testimony. ... For most people, the sight of a 12-year-old boy in tears at the prospect of his mother being deported halfway around the world would invoke some sympathy. Unmoved, however, was Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking minority member of the Committee and the only Republican to bother to attend the hearing. At the sight of the weeping boy, according to a Senate staffer who was at the hearing, Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, "Enough with the histrionics." Session's press secretary did not return a call seeking comment.

I suppose I should stop being surprised when some wingers keep proving they're even more crass and craven that we thought them to be. But it's certainly indicative of how some still feel about us and our families, and how important the UAFA legislation is.