GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The gloves are off and the masks have been removed in the United States as apparently it has become acceptable, even fashionable, to bully your fellow citizens — or better still, hang an effigy of your president, who happens to be black, with a noose, and in a part of the country where not too long ago, that in of itself was quietly approved.

Just last week, the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., hung an effigy of President Barack Obama from a gallows on its front lawn, accompanied by an upside-down rainbow Pride flag.

Traveling is a great occupation — for so many reasons, not the least of which is the differences between home and “there,” wherever there might be. In this case, it’s Spain.

In Spain, my normal breakfast of Weetabix with raisins and organic milk is replaced with hearty ham and goat cheese, fresh fruit and coffee with hot milk.

In Spain, our rampant consumerism is replaced with a two-hour midday siesta, when shops are shuttered and families and friends leisurely dine together.

While President Barack Obama's views was still "evolving" on marriage equality, it's apparent they were evolved for two of his top officials.

For Vice President Joe Biden the issue is a no-brainer.

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden said in a Sunday morning interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,”

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, likes to play it safe. Romney avoids controversy, by any means necessary — even if he has to lie, flip-flop for, or somersault.

When the news hit on the evening of April 19 that Richard Grenell, an openly gay Republican, was appointed to be Romney's national security and foreign policy spokesman, anti-gay GOP criticism erupted.

The elephant that sits neither quietly nor invisibly in the GOP’s room is that the Republican Party is just as gay as the Democratic Party — just more closeted.