Good News, Good News, Bad News.

Bad news first. I'm deeply disappointed that Florida, California, Arizona and Arkansas and other states voted to continue keeping gay people as second class citizens. Deeply, fiercely disappointed that people still don't understand that we are just folks, too. But the one good thing about it all is that younger people supported us. The new generation is not steeped in the homophobia of the old.

The world is changing and some day we will have the same equality before the law that straight people have. Jim and I will live the same lives now that we lived before, but with a new determination to help straight people understand that we do not threaten their marriages simply because we want inclusion.

Good news:
With all the election news and news coming from San Francisco about New World Waking! I neglected to mention that I had a follow-up PET/CT scan last Friday.

AND I AM TOTALLY CLEAN.

So, whatever set off the positive results the last time is now gone.

Best news:
Others more profound than I will celebrate and describe the elation almost everyone -- even Elizabeth Hasselback -- is feeling about the election of Barack Obama as president. It changes everything about how this country is perceived, not only by African American people who felt in their hearts that they would never see this moment, but by the rest of the world.

Having traveled a lot, I don't think Americans really appreciate how much the rest of the world actually pulls for us. How much they believe in the freedom, the rule of law and the idea of government of, by and for the people that the founders of this country all but invented. Our constitution changed the world from an monarchy-driven past into a people-driven future.

But it only started us on the road to full equality.

This election is the fulfillment of a dream. It also reminds us that we are, at our best, a melting pot of cultures, races, religions and faces from around the rest of the world. Barack Obama is us. America looked at him and said, "This is who we are. This is our face."

And now I have a prediction:

We will never again see another race for president where the candidates of choice are limited to four old white guys.

The doors are open and America is reborn. Maybe not to gay people yet, but that's not going to stop my enthusiasm or my love for this country.