"Out in Hollywood" will most certainly return to lighter topics but I did feel compelled to share some post-election thoughts. I woke up this morning, the day after a national election, and I don't feel like staying in bed!

I've spent the last six years increasingly dismayed, disgusted and depressed over the direction our country has been headed - especially since the U.S. began the war in Iraq. I mourn every U.S. life lost and every innocent Iraqi life lost.

Listening to NPR today, it was a different President Bush addressing the press, a humbled man with no "political capital" remaining. Why did it take this kind of "thumping" for the president to see things clearly or even to be open to any other path? I'm beyond disillusioned with him. I believe he has us failed on so many levels and the history books will not be kind.

Anyway, compared to two years ago, when so many of us felt kicked in the stomach with 11 anti-marriage amendments on the Nov. 2004 ballot, this election day had some positives for gays. For the first time, a proposed constitutional amendment to ban any form of legal recognition for same-sex couples was defeated (in Arizona) and even though similar bans did unfortunately pass in seven other states, it was by much slimmer margins than two years ago with 37 percent of voters opposing the bans overall. In 2004, 31 percent opposed such ballot measures.

Other reasons for gays to cheer: sent packing were two of the most anti-gay members of Congress: Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate who compared same-sex marriage to "man on child, man on dog" sex, lost his seat to Democrat challenger Bob Casey (left), and in Indiana, Democratic challenger Brad Ellsworth defeated Republican Rep. John Hostettler, one of the House’s anti-gay leaders. Hostettler, who was elected in the GOP sweep of 1994, worked to slash funding for AIDS programs and drafted the Marriage Protection Act, designed to prevent federal courts from ordering states to recognize same-sex marriages permitted in other states.

In Ohio, Democrat Ted Strickland (right) beat Republican Ken Blackwell by a wide margin. Blackwell is one of the most virulently anti-gay elected officials in the nation, a chief advocate of Ohio’s 2004 anti-marriage constitutional amendment and an outspoken opponent of Cincinnati’s recent nondiscrimination law. Strickland, on the other hand, voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment as a member of Congress and opposed the 2004 Ohio state constitutional amendment banning same-sex partner recognition of any kind.

In Massachusetts and New York, pro-marriage equality gubernatorial candidates Deval Patrick and Eliot Spitzer were elected by landslides. This is the first time pro-marriage equality candidates have been elected governor of any state.

Hooray! God bless America!