Yes, we all know it’s a Hallmark holiday, but nonetheless you can reasonably assume you will be in trouble if you do not show up on Valentine’s Day with a meaningful and thoughtful gift. It might also be smart to remember that, by and large, thoughtful gifts are not bought at the grocery store on your way home or off to see your significant other. The right present for your partner is one that they will love, and one that will show your love for them. This might be as lavish as a vacation together or expensive watch or jewelry or as meaningful yet inexpensive as a love letter or poem. Know your budget and your girlfriend or boyfriend’s preferences to choose a gift that your lover will cherish, whether it is expensive or not.

Sometimes nothing other than an expensive gift will do. A meaningful piece of jewelry or an inscribed watch may be the right present for the special person in your life. If you were pondering popping the big question, perhaps you are engagement ring shopping this year. There is something to be said for a gift that your partner can wear each day as a tangible reminder of your love.

Time together is another option when you are planning your romantic holiday together. In today’s busy world, spending time together can be one of the best gifts you can give your partner. Whether you plan a vacation together or simply a night out, taking time out of your lives to devote to one another is both a great option for romance and relationship building. Planning a day together doing something your partner loves, whether it’s a ball game or an outing to the art museum is sure to be a much treasured memory of Valentine’s Day 2008.

Some of the best romantic gifts are the ones that cost next to nothing. Write your partner a love letter, make a mix CD or play list with songs that matter to the two of you, or if you are creatively inclined, write a song or poem for your partner. While gifts from the heart may seem a bit cliche, they can be the most meaningful in any relationship. Even if you plan a day out or give an expensive gift, adding something handmade and from the heart can make this the best Valentine’s Day of your relationship.

Traditionally, flowers and Valentine Roses(possibly organic) present a sweet gift but then again there is always more room for something more romantic or something more creative.

What do you want your partner to get you on Valentines Day? A Romantic, Candle-Lit Date?

Aging is a fact of life, but aging in the LGBTQ community, especially when your single may be another matter entirely. While there are certainly serious concerns to worry about, dating and socializing can be more of one than most of us care to admit. In many areas, especially if you don’t live in the big city, gay life revolves around that beloved institution, the gay bar. While this might have worked great when you were young and didn’t really care if you showed up at work hungover the next day, it’s a bit less appropriate when you have a mortgage, aging parents, and two dogs who really don’t like to be left home alone most of the night. While many people pair off as they get older and meet that Mr. Right, maybe you’re newly out of the closet, newly broken up, or just haven’t been that lucky yet. How can you maintain a social life, have fun and still make it to work in the morning?

If you have been single all along, you can probably stop reading right now. You likely have the social life you want, simply because it’s never been significantly changed in one way or the other and has evolved to meet your interests and lifestyle. There is nothing at all wrong with being happily single and living a full life on your own.

More of us, however, are single due to being either newly out or newly broken up. While you might have meandered into your local gay bar and found yourself either ignored or fresh meat, depending on your community, perhaps this is not what you’re looking for at all. You can meet people, find friends and develop relationships within the gay and lesbian community without setting foot in a drag show, drinking shots out of test tubes or otherwise potentially embarrassing yourself in a drunken stupor.

What can you do? Even in smaller cities, you do have many options to meet people outside of the bar subculture. First, become involved in things you love that matter. It does not matter if that is the local animal shelter or the local arts scene. Consider volunteering your time with gay, lesbian and other queer causes. Many of those who volunteer are in a place in their lives that is also incompatible with weekends drinking in the bars. Be open and honest about who you are, whenever you feel safe and comfortable doing so. You might be surprised who you can meet. Moreover, making the most of your life and your time will make for a happy and full life, whether you are alone or not. Once you feel comfortable in your own skin and your own life, if you want to actively pursue finding a relationship, consider on line dating options, social networking sites, and even just putting the word out to friends that you’re looking. Many great relationships have been made by matchmaking friends.

Every relationship, gay or straight, hits rough times. Unfortunately, many of the relationship resources out there, including workshops, counseling and self help books are geared toward heterosexual couples. While some of the ideas and information is relevant to any couple, the stresses and concerns of GLBTQ couples can be somewhat different. How can you find a counselor to help with your relationship struggles? Are there books out there that you can actually read without ignoring much of the irrelevant information and which address the specific stressors and concerns of a queer relationship? Making things a bit harder is the lack of research into gay and lesbian relationships. For an overview of what is known about communication styles in gay and lesbian relationships, see this article at Time Magazine.

Many people read self help books now and again, and some of the most popular concern relationships. Keeping a long term relationship happy, passionate and loving can be a challenge regardless of the gender of your partner. Fortunately, there are a number of books on the market specifically dedicated to gay and lesbian relationships. Consider taking a look at Mackey, O’Brien, and Mackey’s Gay and Lesbian Couples: Voices from Lasting Relationships, Betty Berzon’s Permanent Partners: Building Gay and Lesbian Relationships that Last, and Tina Tessina’s Gay Relationships as a starting point if you have concerns or questions about your relationship. You may also find it helpful to read resources intended for straight couples, including the well regarded The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. Do keep in mind that some of the information in resources aimed at heterosexual couples may not be useful to you, and that research does show that gay and lesbian couples often communicate quite differently due to the lack of gender roles typically present.

Some of the time our relationships do need more help than old fashioned open communication and self help books can offer. Consider relationship counseling if you and your partner are struggling. If you are part of an inclusive faith community, you may find that pastoral counseling or even relationship workshops are an option for you and your partner. If this is not an option for you, your local gay and lesbian center may be the best starting point when looking for relationship help. Mental health referrals, including those for relationship counseling, are commonplace at gay and lesbian resource centers and you can be sure that your counselor is comfortable and experienced in assisting with the issues specific to GLBTQ couples.

The same basics are true for any relationship. In order to have a healthy relationship with your partner, you need love, passion, and open communication. You also need shared interests, goals, hopes and dreams. With these in place, many of the minor challenges and struggles can be overcome to allow you and your partner to share many happy years together.

We spoke a few weeks ago about a few changes we thought were needed with gay.com network and some magazines such as XY.  We noticed that Gay.com has been advertising they are doing something big in the next few weeks and we are eager to see if and how their network will improve.  Hopefully, they have integrated some easier chatting that takes up less computer memory and space on our monitors.  Their current chat was annoying and it was hard to discretely do any socializing on gay.com from work which is where most online activity takes place.

Gay.com has so much potential to be a good place to chat and hook up and could keep us from having to log into adam4adam, manhunt, dlist, romeo, myspace, facebook, craigslist, and all the other social networking and gay and lesbian hookup sites.  Let this be the change that is needed!!

You will not be able to log into your chat today or check on personals or even view the site while they are upgrading the system.  Although, they claim they will be back shortly there is no real time of when they will return.  This could leave lots of lonely gays and lesbians stranded on a Sunday with nothing to do =)

Dear GAY.COM, PlanetOut.com, and PlanetOutInc.com visitors,

We have a brand new gay.com coming this fall! We’re upgrading chat, adding new features and giving everything a sleek new look.

In order to get there, we’re busy performing a system upgrade right now. We expect to be online shortly. Please check back soon!

In the meantime please visit mr gay.com 2008 and our blogs: Gay TV Blog, Gay Sports Blog, and Behind the WebSite: The GAY.COM Blog.

Premium members: If you have any questions or need to reach our customer care team during this time, please email us at premiumservices@gay.com.

Thanks and we look forward to bringing you a new GAY.COM very soon!

Your friends at GAY.COM, PlanetOut.com and PlanetOutInc.com

Gay Romeo is a meeting place that is run by and run for Gay guys. You may be thinking that there are enough of these kinds of sites out there already so what is different about this one? Well, to start with they offer you quite a lot of functions for free. Some other dating sites only let you register a basic profile for free and then ask for a sign up fee before you can see the kind of content you actually want to see.

When you start the registration process at GayRomeo.com you actually get four options. You can register as a user (I’ll come back to that in a moment) or you can register as a club. Doing that will let you set up a different kind of profile and create your own on-line community; a great way to find other folk with the same interests as you. If you are a business you can register to be in the guide and if you are an escort you can also set up a professional profile and, as far as I could see, all of these options were free.

I tried out the basic, personal registration process and found it quite a long one. There are certain things you have to fill out before you can proceed but the site will tell you if anything is missing. It’s always best to be thorough with these things anyway as you only want to attract the right guys. There’s no point saying you are hung like a horse and have the body of a porn star if you don’t – you’ll only disappoint people and get a bad name. Also, take a moment to work out your ‘handle’ or profile name. Things like S2***drt7 are not only hard to remember but meaningless.

Once you get your log in details and your registration is confirmed you can start to upload images. The users console in quite neat and easy to use but there are lots of different options to experiment with. Across the top you have links to shops, the info zone where there is all kinds of useful info including tips on how to design your profile and safe sex information too. There are really friendly help and support pages plus the ‘about’ page where you are introduced to the team behind the site. Then you come to the users search engine and I guess this is where you’ll want to start. There are seven kinds of search already picked out for you and these include your area under their headings, so for example you can see who in your area has images, you can find recently registered users from your area and so on. Of course you can search for other locations too and even by name, age and the usual dating site options apply here.

At the bottom of your screen the options continue and you can check messages, view clubs, change your profile and update any number of settings to aid your viewing. It looks like Gay Romeo has thought of just about everything and, when you register, you really do get the feeling that you are joining something special. The design is cool with neat images and clear text and you can even instantly change the language of the site into one of six European languages.

I have seen quite a few of what I call dating sites recently and they each have their own style of presentation but, so far, Gay Romeo is my favorite for Europe. There really is too much on it to tell you about here so I can only suggest you pop over and have a look. It’s free to register and use so you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s new and fresh and offers a good hook-up, chat and general on-line community for you to become a part of.

Not that many years ago it would have been an unheard of thing to write or read: ‘Gay Marriages’ but I do have friends who have been married for over twenty five years so it has been possible (the maybe not legal) in certain countries for over a quarter of a century, which may surprise you.

These days you’ll find marriage between two people of the same sex called many things: Same Sex Partnerships, Civil Unions, and Equal Marriages. Whatever terms are used it is the same thing. Two people in a loving relationship formalise that relationship legally and publicly. And of course in recent years, as equality has become more of a mainstream issue, so has gay marriage and it has not been without controversy. You will probably have read the battles in the papers between the Church and activists, politicians on one side against ones on the other and so on but the fact remains that gay marriages are now legal in at least seven countries including: Demark (the first to allow them in 1989), The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, South Africa and a couple of US states. But other countries also recognise Civil Unions now, opting to allow a union rather than a marriage for whatever reason. There are some surprising countries on this list including Colombia, Israel and the United Kingdom. Some of the more Roman Catholic countries like Brazil and Argentina allow it in certain places only.

There are arguments for and against the allowing of Civil Unions or gay marriages or call them what you will. Activists for argue that it is a civil right for a couple of people to be equal in the eyes of the government of their country and to be able to have the same tax and other benefits as opposite sex couples. The arguments go on and go deeper of course but gay folk contribute just as much to their country in terms of taxes and so on so why should they be treated any differently?

Opponents of gay marriages counter this by arguing that the allowing of gay marriages reduces the status of ‘marriage’ generally to little more than a test of social or welfare benefits. There are some as well who simply think that same sex relationships are wrong because they do not produce children and that’s enough for them.

I couldn’t even start to examine the religious opposition here but needless to say many religions oppose same sex marriages for many reasons. The main one (as far as I can make out from the Christian church at least) is that it is against Biblical teaching and various chapters of the Bible are quoted, including Genesis and Leviticus. But these are also countered by activists as being out of date references to things which are not relevant to today’s society. And so the row rumbles on and drags into it children, tradition, divorce and equality.

I was trying to find a lighter side to this subject but without success, even looking for the count of how many gay marriages had taken place since 1989 was nigh on impossible. The subject is a serious one and one that will not be going away anytime soon. And if you were wondering, my two friends were married in San Francisco in 1979!

And as an after thought, here is a fun thing I found when searching the web:

http://www.cafepress.com/buy/gay+marriage Café Press have a variety of logos and labels you have put on T Shirts and caps etc. Including, for girls, ‘I love my wife’ and ‘Adam and Steve not Adam and Eve’.

I’ve looked at a few personals sites in my time and even joined some and let’s face it there are plenty of them out three these days to join. If you are looking for a new partner or just for some on-line chat then these sites are a good and safe place to start. Of course when it comes to actually meeting someone in the flesh you should always be careful and a good personals site will give you guidelines on the safest way to meet a stranger. After all, that is what you are doing and, even though you could chat to someone for weeks and even exchange pictures, you never really know they are who they say they are until you meet face to face.
O.k., warning over with, what are the most popular lesbian personals sites out there at the moment? After a quick search I came up with four alternatives for you:

lesbianpersonals.com

Lesbian Personals claims to have over 3,750,000 members and when you click to the home page you’ll be told how many of these members are in your country. There is a tour you can take which will tell you what to expect, or you can browse the membership by country and USA state. Again it is easy and free to create a basic profile but there is a fee for premium use. The site also has a magazine and chat room associated with it.

lesbianpersonalsonline.com

With its simple, white and purple design this site is nice and easy to use and look at. You can explore it by running a quick search to see if there is anyone near you already registered. Select the state, if in the USA, or country, the persons age, what they/you are looking for and away you go. The site caters for bisexual as well as lesbian women and you can opt to see face pics or not. You can also see who is on line and read the short profile that each girl has put up. I found this site really quick to search and load results and there were over 250 members on line when I was there. You can create a basic membership for free and there is a non-recurring fee for a premium membership.

thepinksofa.com

The Pink Sofa claims to be the world’s biggest lesbian meeting place and how are we to know any different? There were 463 members on line with 17 chatting when I was there. You can carry out a search by country to see if there is anyone here you’re going to want to meet and you also get access to the forum and classified adverts. There is a travel section so you can see who’s traveling in your area, a business directory and a message board. This site seems to have more extras than the others and looks like a more interactive personals site. You have three free days and then there is a monthly charge of $20 which reduces if you buy in for a longer period of time.

lesbotronic.com

Finally Lesbotronic. This site had a completely different feel to it from the others; it was darker and more jazzy in its design. The page to create your profile was huge and very detailed and thats because the site matches you with your perfect partner for you. There is also a detailed help and information page to check out if you’re not sure that this is the place for you.

With any dating or personals site it’s best to be honest, to fill out as much information about yourself as possible and, if uploading pictures, put recent ones. There’s no point in finding your perfect date only to discover that you are not actually hers now is there?