Archives › 2006 › April
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 [...]
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?
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
WHO to Revise Infant Growth Charts
The World Health Organization is revising its 20-year-old guidelines for infant birth weights to take into account the increasing number of breast-fed children. Infants fed formula gain weight faster than those who are breast fed, so breast-fed infants would incorrectly appear underweight in the old charts. Of course, if you feed your child formula, for [...]
You Know You’re a Mom When . . .
Four signs you’re a mom taking a cruise without your preschooler: You sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” while applying sunscreen. You want to bring home the towel-origami elephant the steward left in your room. You use a photo of your child as a bookmark for your beach reading, and look at it yourself even [...]
The Lez Boat
I’m back from a week floating around the Caribbean with 1800 or so other lesbians. Olivia Travel, as always, knows how to do vacations right. I’ll spare you the “what I did on my (almost-) summer vacation” essay, though, and instead use the cruise as a jumping-off point for some posts this week on community, [...]
Evil Chai, and a Better Alternative
My folks were visiting a few weeks ago, and gave me the chance to escape the house child-free one afternoon. I went down to a local bookstore (a major chain, which shall remain nameless), selected a title of interest, and sat down at their café for a drink. Normally, I tend to order coffee drinks, [...]
Eggsclusion
Sometimes the reminders of invisibility leap up in unexpected places. My partner and I were dyeing Easter eggs the other day. We’d bought a kit with dye tablets, stickers, and shrink-on decorated wrappers. Yes, regular food coloring works, too, but we thought our two-year-old son would have fun putting stickers on the eggs. I pulled [...]
Whole-Wheat Bread
Cooking is my one claim to domesticity. Ever since I began staying home with my son, I’ve been a fan of baking bread while he naps. It’s a few minutes of effort with a big payoff—fresh, warm bread for dinner. Here’s one of my recent favorites, which mixes entirely in one bowl and produces moist, [...]
Bon Voyage
My partner and I and a gallon of SPF 50 are off to the Olivia Grand Carribean Cruise this week. I’ve written up some posts in advance, which my software will publish automatically every day, so you’ll still find new reading here. Breaking news coverage will be in short supply, though. I also won’t be [...]
Lesbian Soccer Mom Walking 500 Miles for Togetherness
Self-described “lesbian soccer mom” Jennifer Schumaker has begun a walk of 569 miles, from San Diego to San Francisco, to encourage dialogue among LGBT people and their families, friends and allies. “If we, as a part of the human family, can acknowledge our interconnectedness and common values,” Schumaker says, “we can work together to lift [...]
Weekly Political Roundup
This week, we’re reminded that same-sex marriage bans are also emboldening those who would ban any legal recognition of a same-sex relationship, including domestic partnerships, civil unions, and medical coverage. The California Supreme Court refused for the second time to hear an appeal challenging the state’s domestic partner law. Opponents of the law said it [...]
Love and Taxes
Yes, the tax deadline is upon us here in the U. S., one of the occasions when the bias against gay and lesbian couples stares me in the face most directly. How are we unequal? Let me count the ways.
Winnie the Pooh Gets Hollywood Star
Yes, the honey-loving bear now joins the ranks of Hollywood immortals. Pooh made his movie debut in 1966 in the Disney short “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.” Not coincidentally, today also marked the DVD release of Disney’s “Pooh’s Grand Adventure – The Search for Christopher Robin.” Fans of the original A. A. Milne [...]
Put Photos on a Cake
Want to try something different than the usual cartoon character on your child’s next birthday cake? Looking for a way to surprise your sweetie on your anniversary? Like the taste of a homemade cake but can’t decorate worth a darn? Icing Images will take a digital photo that you upload and send you a sheet [...]
Xena Is Bright
Her long-time fans have known that, of course, but now there’s proof. As I reported in February, scientists have named two distant objects in the solar system Xena and Gabrielle. The researchers recently refined their analysis, though, and concluded that while Xena might not be as big as previously thought, the smaller size means it [...]
New Treatments for Nonhormonal Breast Cancer
CNN today reports on a recent study of new chemotherapy treatments for nonhormonal breast cancer. Advances in chemo may give women with this tougher form of breast cancer almost the same odds for survival as those with easier-to-treat hormonal forms of the disease. In the same article, CNN also discusses a new study of hormone [...]
Lesbian Comics on the Loose
Lesbian comics are hitting the news these days. The New York Times has a review today of the new solo show by Marga Gomez, “Los Big Names.” Over on the West Coast, Kate Clinton is launching her 25th Anniversary Tour, “It’s Come to This,” which starts in Sacramento and traverses the country. Leave the kids [...]
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