Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (November 7, 2008)

When I penned my first BEST.GAY.WEEK.EVER column back in July of 2005 it was one page long, Queer as Folk, Will & Grace and Six Feet Under were on the air, the word "nuke" still referred to an atomic weapon, not to As the World Turns' super gay couple, Kevin Walker had yet to meet Scotty Wandell much less kiss him because Brothers & Sisters didn't even exist, ditto Captain Jack and Ianto on Torchwood, and Brokeback Mountain was still several months away from opening to a wave of press, enthusiam and criticism unprecedented for a gay film.

I was the only full-time employee, the AfterElton.com Hot 100, the Fifty Greatest Gay Movies, and the Reader's Choice Top 25 Gay TV Characters weren't even gleams in my editorial eyes.

It's now three and a half years later and AfterElton.com has grown to be one of the most successful gay male sites online, the BEST.GAY.WEEK.EVER is usually nine pages long, and our amazing staff consists of Associate Editors Brian Juergens and Dennis Ayers, and contributing writer Brent Hartinger, we've won a GLAAD Award, I was accepted into the Television Critics Association, and we routinely have our articles and commentary picked up around the world. Not bad, eh?

When I wrote that first column we hadn't yet started our blog which was designed to bring you the latest gay and bisexual news as it happened along with our recaps, fun blog lists and generally snarky commentary. But once we had the blog, we found that it kind of competed with the BGWE and that sometimes we held back interesting items until the column went up on Friday. Additionally, the blog has grown over the years growing from five or six posts to more than a dozen a day. That's a lot of content for you to keep up on!

So starting today, we've decided to make some changes to the BGWE that we believe will make for a better user experience for you. Going forward, this column will be a "round-up" column taking the posts (and articles) from the previous week and presenting them here for you in one handy compilation. We know many of you don't have time to read every single item on AfterElton.com every single day and you probably miss many items of interest. We believe doing the BGWE column this way will let you read more of our great commentary in an easier fashion.

"But what's in it for me?" our most regular and devoted readers might ask? Making this change will allow for us to provide a more active and even more topical blog than we already do. Each of our great BGWE columnists including Brian, Dennis, Brent, and Steven Frank will be able to contribute to the blog more frequently and in a more timely manner.

We hope you enjoy! And now on with the BEST.GAY.WEEK.EVER!

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES. IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES.
While it wasn't exactly entertainment related, the blog posts that drew the most comments this week had to do with election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States and, on a much, much sadder note, California's passage of the anti-gay Proposition 8 which generated a great deal of feedback.

That about sums it up.