In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. predicted America would elect a “negro president” within 25 years, while Robert Kennedy predicted 40. Well, it took 45 years, but the door has finally been opened for a future woman, Latino, Asian-American, Native-American or GLBT president!

Our entire community should be proud and sincerely thank the hard-working members of “Bridges for Pride: Marriage Equality” for its outstanding and positive impact it made at the 21st annual Martin Luther King All People’s Breakfast. The event drew more than 1,000 San Diego community leaders, activists, public officials and students from all walks of life. At last year’s breakfast, the “g” word was mentioned only once – but that wasn’t the case this year. Marriage equality as well as our GLBT youth and hate crimes were mentioned by speakers and in the printed program. The Bridges booth also had educational, informative displays that were outstanding! Bridges is looking at the upcoming 39th annual Barrio Station Dinner and the annual Cesar Chavez Commemorative Breakfast to bring continued, positive visibility and participation to other communities. By the way, the announcement of the upcoming Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast, May 22, has been very well received by San Diego’s civic and community leaders. I’d like to say a big thank you to Bridge members Dan Horan, Jose Letayf, Pat Washington, Ross Markowitz, Jim Walsh, Denise Serrano, David Miles, Leo Carrillo, Jess Jollett and Nancy Ramos. Bravo Bridges!

One thing about our popular Mayor Jerry Sanders: he is always blunt, honest and tells it like it is! (I and most people I know loved it when he said “F*** you!” to Steve Francis, who was viciously attacking him and lying about our city and mayor!)

Last week, Mayor Sanders informed all San Diegans that, not only are our nation and state in bad shape, our city is, too – largely because of those who came before this mayor and city council.

Mayor Sanders inherited a city in a financial mess and he has done and continues to do his best to turn our city around and make government work. The world is in a global financial crisis, which affects everyone – right down to our cities and towns. Mayor Sanders gave us tough love in his annual State of the City Address. He made it clear that “our state capitol is more likely to hurt us than to help us.” Mayor Sanders also said, “San Diego cannot be a city of strangers” and called upon all of us to do more volunteer work and become more involved in neighborhood and community service organizations. Interestingly, when the members of the city council were introduced, the top three applause recipients were Todd Gloria, Marti Emerald and Donna Frye.

This past week, GLBT community and business leaders gathered at the beautiful home of Bob Nelson (president of The San Diego LGBT Community Center’s board) and Dr. Murray Olson for a special reception in honor of Council members Todd Gloria and Carl DeMaio. While almost everyone in attendance knew Todd, most did not know Carl DeMaio, who said it best when he said he’s “never been a gay activist” and whose background and record have been in government reform. DeMaio also said how proud he was to be the first Italian-American to be elected to the City Council since 1930! DeMaio focused on issues and problems that affect all San Diegans in every council district. The ever-popular Todd Gloria said though he and DeMaio do not agree on many issues, he does see Carl as his “brother.” It was good to see many gay Republicans as well as Democrats in attendance.

The fourth largest city in America (Houston) also has a big GLBT community and Texas, like California, is home to a very large and growing Latino population. I was in Texas for a national board meeting and it was also good to meet with GLBT activists and fund-raisers from six cities in Texas. It was an honor for me to present popular City Controller Annise Parker with an award – and Ms. Parker informed me the rumors are true: she will be a candidate for mayor!

My hotel was a few minutes from the George Bush International Airport. With meetings starting in the early morning and going on for hours, I never got to get into the city the three days I was there. As usual, the Texan hosts treated us with such outstanding hospitality – and yes there were a lot of, “Howdy, ya’ll’s.”

Did you know the word Texas comes from the One Nation Indian word “Tejas,” which means “friend?” I am scheduled to return to this great state in coming months – and this time the beautiful city of San Antonio will be my destination.

The official 92103 Awards Nomination Night is coming up this Monday, Jan. 26, at The Flame at 7 p.m. For more information, call 619-692-1967.

It was great to get the “gay and lesbian chamber of commerce’s” business directory celebrating the 30th anniversary of our Greater San Diego Business Association. They are free, and they’re all over our businesses, bars and restaurants – and bravo to the designers, the one and only Cathy Paddock and Ana Jimenez (cover design), on an outstanding job and the best directory ever!

I urge all of you to check out all of the GSDBA’s history and timeline pages. It was so good to see the names of people who are no longer with us, but who made a difference in building our GLBT community. Among them: Ron Umbaugh, Tom Homann, Don Hauk, Bob Clark, Steve Desdier, Randy Spector, Barbara Crusberg, Meyers Jacobsen, John McCusker and many others who still remain in our thoughts and hearts.

I have always been proud to have worked with President Clinton’s administration and the U.S. Small Business Administration and with former deputy director Irma Munoz to help make history by getting our GSDBA to be the first gay chamber in America to sign an official memorandum of understanding with a presidential administration. Other GLBT chambers followed (I worked with then-GSDBA president Bryan Garrity to accomplish this). We should all be proud of the GSDBA, which is the best gay chamber in the nation under the hardworking leadership of Dr. Joyce Marieb.