2006 Daytime Emmys: All Things Lesbian and Mom

I’m not sure whether the 2006 Daytime Emmys last Friday delighted the lesbian or the mom parts of me more:

• Ellen DeGeneres won Best Talk Show and Best Talk Show Host for the second year in a row.
• The 38-year-old Sesame Street won for Preschool Children’s Series, a category it has won all twelve times the award has been given. Caroll Spinney, who plays Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, received a lifetime achievement award.

  Well deserved, I say. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Sesame Street. It began just after I was born, and was the first TV show I ever watched. It’s a thrill to be watching it with my son now. Occasionally, a song or skit airs that I haven’t thought about in 35 years, but to which I still, somehow, know the words.

• Finally, pulling the lesbian and mom themes together: ABC announced at the Emmys that Rosie O’Donnell will become a co-host on talk show The View. Fellow host Barbara Walters noted that the show’s morning timeslot means Rosie can “finish at noon and pick her kids up from school.” Here’s to working moms!

Gay Covenant Marriage: Marital Values for Everyone?

If same-sex couples could enter into covenant marriages, a conservative, ultra-binding form of marriage legal in some states, would this help promote the conservative vision of stronger marriages and fewer divorces? Read the rest of this post »

WNBA Warms Up for 10th Season

To kick off its 10th Anniversary season, the WNBA today opened up fan voting for its All-Decade Team. Superstar player—and out lesbian mom—Sheryl Swoopes is one of 30 candidates for the 10 final spots. Cast your vote for the players you feel have made the most “overall contribution to the WNBA.”

The first preseason game (not broadcast) is May 3, between the Charlotte Sting and Houston Comets. The first regular season game, between the Phoenix Mercury and Sacramento Monarchs, will air May 20. Expansion team Chicago Sky and several key rule changes promise to make this season as unpredictable as any we’ve seen.

Weekly Political Roundup

• The big news this week was unfortunately negative. A federal court in Massachusetts upheld the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on openly gay personnel. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of 12 service members, says it will likely appeal the ruling.
• About 50 senior religious leaders, including over a dozen Roman Catholic archbiships and cardinals, have signed a petition supporting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Organizers said aides to senators Bill Frist (R) of Tennessee, Rick Santorum (R) of Pennsylvania, and Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas were also involved.
• Proving that the same-sex marriage debate isn’t a matter of the religious vs. the godless, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, spoke at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and asserted “Gay Americans pose no threat to their friends, neighbors, or coworkers, and when two people make a lifelong commitment to each other, we believe it is wrong to deny them the legal guarantees that protect them and their children and benefit the broader society.” A brave effort to reach across factional lines.
• In a similar vein, in New York, nearly 200 religious organizations were among the many groups and individuals filing friend-of-the-court briefs in support of same-sex marriage in that state.
• And in a case bearing directly on lesbian moms, Lambda Legal filed a petition asking the California Supreme Court to reverse a lower-court decision upholding the right of doctors to deny infertility treatment to a lesbian patient on religious grounds.
• I’ll end on a positive note. A survey on behalf of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute found that 72% of Americans believe a politician’s sexual orientation is not as important as “getting things done for everyone in the community.”

Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day: Still Relevant

Today is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, a program sponsored by the Ms. Foundation for Women “to create an opportunity for girls and boys to share and communicate their expectations for the future.” The Foundation estimates that over 6.4 million boys and 10.1 million girls 8-12 years old will participate and “engage in guided, educational activities designed to encourage them to dream without gender limitations and think critically about a balanced work, home and community life.”

Courtney E. Martin, in the Christian Science Monitor, questions the relevance of a day like this at a time when young people are shunning corporate life for self-employment, consulting, and part-time work. She has a point, which I personally appreciate after having traded the corporate life for motherhood and freelancing. (My partner’s still with a Fortune 500 firm, though, so our family represents both sides of the picture.)

I believe, however, that there’s still room for a day to share our work experiences, whatever they are, with our children, even if it means taking then into our home studies instead of an office building. Many of us do a little of this as a matter of course, but why not make an extra effort on this day to explain current projects or take a child to a client meeting? Read the rest of this post »

Doubts Cast on Anti-Preeclampsia Vitamins

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine casts doubt on the efficacy of vitamins C and E in preventing preeclampsia. Researchers caution, however, that the study was of a limited population (1877 low-risk Australian women, pregnant for the first time), and further research should be done to confirm either benefits or risks of these vitamins.

Knitting for Penguins

Continuing my campaign to strengthen ties between penguins and the LGBT community, I’ll pass along this cry for help from the aforementioned fairy penguins of Queensland. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, penguins caught in oil spills lose the natural insulation of their feathers. The Phillip Island Nature Park, home of 60,000 fairy penguins, therefore put out a call for penguin sweaters to keep affected birds warm and dry. (Thanks to Blogging Baby for the link.) This is the same park that decided to call the fairy penguins “little penguins” for fear of offending the gay community (which in fact seems rather bemused by the act).

Apparently, most of the sweaters are knit by “little old ladies” who “continually push the fashion envelope with matching bride and groom outfits, AFL teams, and, from one elderly English woman, ‘the whole Manchester United soccer team.’”

This sounds like the perfect opportunity for GLBT knitters to step in. Isn’t the whole fashion thing gay people’s natural domain? (Well, for gay men, at least. Maybe the dykes could sew them some little flannel shirts. —That’s a joke, people; I know there are lots of lesbian knitters out there.) We could also make sure to create some groom-and-groom or bride-and-bride outfits for same-sex penguin pairs.

Here are knitting instructions and a mailing address, if you’re interested in making sweaters for our feathered friends.

Gail Ann Dorsey

Lesbian vacations and music festivals, in addition to giving us the chance to relax and be ourselves, serve as crucial exchanges of lesbian culture. (I assume the same holds true for gay men’s events, too, though I can’t comment firsthand.)

Gail Ann Dorsey is a recent discovery from the Olivia cruise I just took. Her rich, powerful voice is a welcome antidote to the many female singer-songwriters who can barely project across a coffeehouse stage. Dorsey is no novice, however, with a career covering twenty years, including nearly a decade as touring bassist/vocalist for David Bowie. She’s also performed or recorded with The Indigo Girls, Sophie B. Hawkins, Dar Williams, Tears For Fears, Toshi Reagon, Joan Osborne, and The B-52’s, among others.

Dorsey is an out lesbian, but I don’t want to call what she does “lesbian music.” Yes, it’s music played by a lesbian, but that doesn’t really describe anything (unless it conjures images of the stereotypical guitar-based folk-rock, which it most definitely is not). Her style is hard to pin down, since, as with many great musicians, it’s eclectic, encompassing rock, funk, country, pop, and the Philadelphia soul of her hometown. There’s a lot to like.

Her most recent two albums, I Used to Be and Rude Blue, will soon join my collection, and I’m looking forward to her new one, due out this fall. (That is, if I can get my son to take his Thomas the Tank Engine disk out of the CD player.)

Do Fairy Penguins Offend Gay Community?

I’m starting a movement to make penguins the official GLBT mascot. Stories about the dapper birds and the gay community just keep rolling in. In Queensland, Australia, Sea World theme park operators have decided to call the fairy penguins of Phillip Island by their alternate name of “little penguins” so as not to offend gay people. The popular colony of 60,000 penguins attracts 500,000 visitors a year. (Thanks to Queerty for the sighting.)

Members of Queensland’s gay community view the move as silly. Of course they would. If they were going to get upset about fairy penguins, they’d also be lobbying to change the name of their state to “Female-monarch-land” to avoid offending the drag queens.

I’m not sure which made me laugh more: this true story or the one on Fake Gay News about the penguin march on Washington. Either way, I want to see some big ol’ penguin floats in the Pride parades this June.

National Day of Silence

Tomorrow is the 10th national Day of Silence, “the largest single student-led action towards creating safer schools for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” Participating students will be silent for all or part of the day, to recognize the silencing of LGBT students and their allies. They will also be organizing various educational programs and activities.

The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which organized the event (in collaboration with the United States Student Association (USSA)), anticipates a record-breaking 500,000 students from approximately 4,000 schools will take part. Even so, events like this may not get the press coverage of marches on Washington or White House Easter Egg Rolls. They are no less vital to the outcome of our struggle for equal rights, however. The students of today will be the teachers, parents, legislators, judges, and presidents of tomorrow. Those brave enough to take a stand for equality deserve our thanks and our support. (Thanks to the Big Gay Picture for the heads up.)