This week, the man who is slowly creeping up the list of men the lesbians love (McIntire, Peduto, Dayvoe, Lamb and Norman) takes us down the rainbow brick road and shows us that things just might be a little better. Chris Potter of The City Paper writes ...

Pittsburgh will have a lot to celebrate when it holds its annual Pridefest march this weekend -- not least the fact that we helped remove a certain gay-bashing U.S. senator from office in last November's election. Now the Senator Who Shall Not Be Named is the Senator Whose Name We Can Try to Forget.

But in recent months, some of the most notable advances have been the least noticed. And that may be among the best things about them.

He points out a few:  the absence of hate-legislation in Harrisburg, Kennywood's revision of homophobic content, the primary victory of openly gay Bruce Kraus (with a saucy sidebar on the meaning of openly). 

As for our opponents, he has this to say:

[T]hose tactics are catching up with conservatives. Ocean levels and crime rates are rising, along with casualties in Iraq. And those families that conservatives were supposed to be protecting? They're being crushed by health-care costs, which have ruined more families than any number of gay couples down the street.

If there's an upside to the mess we're in, it's this: We no longer have the luxury of indulging in our petty hatreds as if they were all that mattered. George W. Bush and his cronies may have been uniters after all, it seems ... allowing us all to take a big step forward.

Well put, Mr. Potter. 

ps:  I'd like to see how many Pittsburghers can identify 5 openly gay people who aren't in entertainment or politics.