Publisher’s Note: This unsigned SFGN editorial ran in our May 5 newspaper. I’ve decided to rerun it since Wilton Manors installed their permanent Pride flag last week. But this editorial is a reminder that pride is more than just a flag.

As the publisher of the South Florida Gay News, I have to say thank you this week to a number of people and groups. Bear with me. Thank you speeches can be boring. Today’s should not be.

For decades, the LGBT community of South Florida has had a contentious relationship with the Broward County Sheriff.

‘To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, that thou cannot be false to any man.” 

-Shakespeare’s Hamlet  

This week, as the Republicans carved out their presidential platform, they ‘softened’ their stand on gay marriage. They decided to leave it up to the states. How dumb can they be?

For months I have been meaning to write a column just featuring some of the stories and successes in our community.

The last-minute collapse of the OutGames in Miami is a disgrace that its Board and directors will never live down.

Welcome to the Mirror's Food and Wine Issue, the last one before the menu changes for every fine restaurant in Florida.

Florida is fortunate to have two political leaders on opposite extremes of the political spectrum team together as advocates for the rescheduling of marijuana.

I felt like a character from a Robert Heinlein novel. I was a stranger in a strange land.

'There's no there like being there.'

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, I thought I would share some personal thoughts.

Since the outset of his campaign, our newspaper has called upon Americans to 'dump Trump.'

If life teaches us any lessons, it is that too many of the lessons come too late. Actually, that may not be true, but it sounds very brilliant and incisive.

As the year comes to an end, and SFGN does its soft holiday issue, I have to reiterate that the most dangerous person in America is no immigrant.

No, you can’t have marijuana yet. But be patient, that joint you want to bogart is right around the corner.

He just can’t stand the heat.

They were mostly gay kids dancing in a nightclub, and their dreams, their futures, and their lives were snuffed out in an instant.

"There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies... and there was a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany... and it was the end of the world."

— Cliff Bradshaw, the young American writer in ‘The Cabaret’

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

-John Donne

I am sorry, but this is just not a week for petty things.

There is a picture of me above this column.

The calamity and catastrophe that is President Donald Trump impacts our country everyday. Last week, however, it impacted our community adversely not once, but twice.

If we let the very sick man who runs this country focus a debate today about who takes their knees during the national anthem, we will lose sight about the many Americans who have been brought to their knees in Houston, the Keys, and our territories, by hurricanes; who suffer every day by lame and limp federal relief efforts- and simply the massive natural devastation they encountered.

I went to the World Series last week in Los Angeles, but like I said in last week’s column, the Dodgers did not activate me for the game. You know, it’s tough to make a major league squad when you turn 65.

Last week, South Florida and Miami hosted Major League Baseball’s All Star Game, the annual affair that celebrates the best of the best.

One of my favorite stories is of a rabbinical scholar whose students believe they have him trapped in an intellectual crossfire.

He bullied, lied, and cheated his way to the presidency with a smear campaign based on ugliness and untruths.

Hamburger Mary’s returned to Wilton Manors on Monday night, June 14. Given its perceived rivalry with the burger joint across the street that used to be a Hamburger Mary’s, this is the most buzzed-about opening along The Drive in a long time.

On the Monday after the president of the United States conspired against the very government he took an oath to uphold, he is still a free man. He should not be.