I would appreciate some (hopefully unbiased) suggestions or opinions on my "short list":
FJR1300
ST1300
HD Softail
HD Road Glide
Valkyrie
Star Raider
You're all over the map with these choices, and all are good bikes... not necessarily good first bikes. Can they be first bikes? Of course! Just buy one and it'll be your first bike. Tada! You wouldn't be the first person to start out on a bike that is fast / heavy / expensive / whatever. Did I go this same route? Yup. Would I go back and do it differently? Sure, but more for financial reasons than anything else - theres no substitue for riding experience to learn your style and what bike fits you, and unless you're independently wealthy.... well, that and 600+ pounds is heavy even without a banged up shoulder (which it was)... and then there's all the #*%#} that got broken, dented or simply sheared off... and the six months it took to get the shoulder back to full health... all at a low speed too! Ok, ok... there's more to it than just money.
My advice is to take the classes and get a bike. Any one. Cheap, expensive, whatever. Your view on riding will be drastically different after just a few days, and even more so after a season or two of dealing with the spine jarring jolts on a cruiser, fighting stop and go traffic in your shiny, blinged out top heavy tank-o-cycle (that some godless engineer gave a dry clutch), or waking up in cold sweats because your two wheeled cruise missile came into a corner hot, you rolled on hard and for just a split second swore you could see your house before skipping out of the ionosphere and into high earth orbit. Hell, you can get whacked by a Hummer on a "good" starter bike that doesn't have the dookie-dropping torque needed to immediately get you out of one bad scenario and into another (thus ensuring both Fruit of the Loom and Hanes remain profitable).
Weight and power add risk, independent of skill. Road, weather and traffic conditions, fatigue, hydration all modify risk... so reduce whatever risk you can, because you have no choice but to manage the rest. And then there's the unlearning of "bad" natural instincts while learning something entirely foreign...
Oh, and if money is an issue... skimp on the bike, not the gear! Ambulance / medivac will always set you back more than your gear, regardless of how sweet your ride just recently used to be.