With this issue the Chicago Free Press begins our 10th year of publication.

Every week—save at Christmas—for the past nine years, this newspaper has provided GLBT Chicagoans with local, national and international news, opinions by award-winning writers, arts, entertainment and dining interviews and reviews and features on homes, cars and travel.

No other GLBT weekly newspaper in the Midwest has provided that level of coverage every week over the past nine years—it’s a record we’re proud to claim.

As CFP was born in 1999 the nation moved toward the end of a tumultuous presidency, one that brought our community a few highs—notably opening up federal service and appointments to out gays—and some demoralizing lows, such as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

And as CFP began its first full calendar year in 2000 the country was dominated by the race to see who would be the next president. Unfortunately for GLBTs that race was won by a man who showed little understanding or sympathy for GLBT rights, a president who moved even further to the right in his first term and made anti-gay sentiment a cornerstone of his reelection effort for a second term.

Despite all that our community has made enormous progress since 1999. It’s doubtful that anyone who started this newspaper thought we’d have marriage equality in parts of the United States nine years later or that the Illinois Legislature would be just a few votes shy by now from passing a civil unions bill.

There’s been even more progress in other parts of the world—large parts of Europe and all of Canada and South Africa now have marriage equality, and gays and lesbians in parts of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and other countries can now get civil unions.

Gays and lesbians also serve openly now in the armed forces of many of our country’s allies and no one doubts that U.S. policy is headed that way sooner rather than later.

In fact, on virtually every civil rights front, from family and partner rights to visibility, GLBTs live in a far better United States than was the case nine years ago. Imagine what we could have done if we’d had a president and Congress who actually backed equality.

As CFP enters its 10th year we face another presidential election, one with broad ramifications for our community. Both major parties want our votes and this newspaper plans to examine how they support or don’t support us in the coming months. We’ve heard promises before—our job is to look past the rhetoric and try to leave our readers informed about the substance of each candidate’s pitch to us.

Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama supports full equality for GLBTs, but we suspect that those positions won’t stop our community from making tremendous strides toward that goal in the next decade. As we make that progress as a community we at this newspaper plan to keep documenting our successes and failures, posing questions and highlighting the people with potential answers, as well as keeping you up to date on what’s going on in and around one of the greatest cities in the world.

In short, we hope to enjoy bringing you news and information during the next year as much as we’ve enjoyed bringing it to you for the past nine. It’s a privilege we take very seriously.