A golden retriever in Virginia has stepped in to mother a stray kitten, and even began producing milk for the tiny feline when she refused the bottles her human rescuers offered. Love makes a family indeed.

Virginia. The state where alternative animal families make the news, but where “courts have routinely discriminated against gays and lesbians by finding that the parent’s status as gay or lesbian is not in the ‘best interests’ of the child.” (Thanks, Equality Virginia.)

As we all know, it’s a slippery slope. If you legalize marriage for same-sex couples, then marriage between humans and robots is soon to follow.

Well, not exactly. Human-robot love is inevitable, however, and could first become legal in Massachusetts, according to Dr. David Levy of the University of Maastricht. In his Ph.D thesis, as MSNBC.com reports:

Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them. . . .

Levy predicts Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize human-robot marriage. “Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage,” Levy said. “There’s also a lot of high-tech research there at places like MIT.”

Given that I’m married to an engineer, I’ll avoid the obvious line about engineers who can’t get human dates. The comedic possibilities are endless, though. Brides would wear something old, something new, something borrowed, something Bluetooth. Wedding vows would begin, “I, Robot, take you . . . .”

Geeky references aside, the question is, of course, whether a governor who once played a cyborg would veto a bill for human-robot nuptials. Or whether jurisdictions that have banned the sale of sex toys would permit the sale of sexually functioning robots if said sex was going to occur within the institution of marriage.

Children of such marriages, of course, would truly be chips off the old block . . . .

(Thanks to Slashdot for the tip.)

First penguins, then swans and flamingos—now peacocks. A headline-making British baronet, Sir Benjamin Slade, claims his pet peacock is gay, causing the bird to claw a visitor’s Lexus in a fit of passion:

“It started when he fell in love with this Lexus, which was in a very distinct peacock blue and looked like another peacock boy,” he said.

“He couldn’t control his urges and tried to shag it. He attacked the panels so hard that the car needs a total respray.”

Is this love or simply a male bird being territorial? As most of us know, just because a guy is a flashy dresser and likes to display his tail doesn’t make him gay. Besides, if the bird was in love, wouldn’t he have invited the Lexus in for a romantic evening watching La Cage aux Folles before making his move? (If things worked out, the peacock could apply to Lexus’ corporation, Toyota, for domesticated partner benefits.)

Still, I’m happy to welcome the flamboyant fowl into the ranks of queer avians (”gayvians”—you heard it here first), if only as an honorary member. Of course, it would be more fun if we had evidence of lesbian boobies.

Now there’s a headline I never thought I’d be writing on this site. I wanted to note, however, that George Takei, aka Star Trek’s Hikaru Sulu, now has an asteroid named after him. This makes him perhaps the first out gay man (or out LGBT person, for that matter) to be given such an honor (though I’m happy to be proven wrong here).

The asteroid 1994 GT9 has been renamed 7307 Takei, an official designation approved by the International Astronomical Union (not just some dubious commercial star-naming service). An astronomy professor at Mount Holyoke College nominated Takei “in part out of appreciation for his work with the Japanese American Citizens League and with leading gay rights group Human Rights Campaign.”

(Thanks to April for the tip. Image modified from one © Diane Krauss under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.)

[Update, 10/3: John Marble of the National Stonewall Democrats, wrote to me in an e-mail:

I would love to see a heavenly body named after Dr. Frank Kameny. He is the astronomer who gave up his career after being fired by the U.S. government in 1957 for being gay. Dr. Kameny then began his activism in LGBT equality and became a founding pillar in our movement. . . .

Last month, Dr. Kameny's memorabilia from his activism was initiated into the Smithsonian Institution (his papers are housed at the Library of Congress). At the dedication ceremony, a biographer noted how - if he had not been fired in 1957 for being gay - there would most likely be a star named after him.

I've attached a photo taken last week at an event by our D.C. Chapter (the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club) of Dr. Kameny and our new Executive Director Jon Hoadley. We both are extremely grateful for - and still a bit in awe of - the work of Dr. Kameny.

Excellent point, and especially appropriate during LGBT History Month. Bob Witeck of LGBT marketing firm Witeck-Combs adds in another e-mail:

John, I cannot resist adding 2 footnotes as well about Dr. Kameny.

For more about Frank, send folks to www.kamenypapers.org and you also will see the video of his civil rights protest signs and buttons on display at the Smithsonian.

The second footnote is more breathtaking, at least to me.

As many of you may know, Frank was fired from his federal employment at the U.S. Army Map Service for being a homosexual in the 1950's. Ironically, last Friday, at the Out & Equal Workplace Summit, by chance I sat down to enjoy a sandwich with two women who handle diversity recruitment and retention at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (yes, the 21st century name for the archaic U.S. Army Map Service).

They were attending Out & Equal to grow their skills and knowledge about the fair and equal treatment of their own LGBT employees. Fifty years later, what a wonderful closure on a terrible chapter.

Indeed.]

Is it just me, or have Hillary Clinton and Mary Cheney been sporting some rather similar hairdos over the years?

What could it all mean? Do they share some strange bond? Does this explain Hillary’s initial hawkishness on the war? Or Mary’s support for marriage equality in the face of her party’s opposition? Dorothy Snarker has said of Mary’s ‘do: “This is the kind of hair that barks orders to sweaty yet nubile basketball players from the sidelines at Virginia Tech.” I can see Hillary barking orders, but I somehow can’t imagine her cabinet filled with tall, athletic women. (More’s the pity.) Is she just getting in touch with her inner lesbian? Is Mary considering a run for the presidency? Or do they just use the same hairstylist? Your opinions welcome.

To forestall any questions or confusion: I was in no way the inspiration for the character Dana in Logo’s upcoming new series The Happiest Gay Couple in the World, despite the storyline involving Dana and her partner trying to become parents. Curly hair like mine just can’t do a mullet like that.

(For that matter, I had nothing to do with The L Word’s dearly departed Dana Fairbanks. Love to watch tennis; not much of a player. Wouldn’t have minded a few of those scenes with Leisha Hailey, though. (Sorry, hon. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t say the same.))

Happiest Gay Couple looks like what would happen if the creators of South Park and Queer as Folk underwent a mind meld at a Lego factory. Not for the easily offended. Since there’s an LGBT-parenting storyline, however, I’ll bring you recaps and thoughts from a lesbian-mom perspective as I did for Season Four of The L Word. (I won’t post about Episode One, premiering July 10, until I return from the cruise, though.) I’ll start (warning—spoiler alert!) by commending the show’s creators for Read more »

Given the discovery of five-foot-tall penguins that lived in prehistoric Peru, coupled with the knowledge that some penguins exhibit a certain “biological exuberance” towards members of the same sex, one can only conclude that 36 million years ago, free of today’s social mores, the giant birds once frolicked free and proud.

That seems an appropriate note on which to end this year’s Pride Month. Hope yours was festive and gay.

Boys with ring fingers longer than their index fingers tend to do better in math, according to a new study by psychologists at the University of Bath. (Thanks, Slashdot.) This would be nothing more than an interesting tidbit that might make me check my son’s hands next time I cut his nails, except that it follows other research indicating that women with longer relative ring fingers are more likely to have high athletic ability and to be lesbians. Gay men follow this pattern as well, but somehow only when they have several older brothers. The Bath study also concluded that shorter ring fingers on girls predict better verbal skills. Higher testosterone levels in the womb appear to be the cause of longer ring fingers and their attendant traits.

Having passed my genes on to someone, I consider myself now fully qualified to speculate wildly on any and all aspects of genetics. Does this mean that lesbians are inarticulate jocks? Or softball-playing mathematicians? Would it follow that boys with shorter ring fingers are more likely to be gay and have better verbal skills, thus accounting for the preponderance of gay male poets?

Well, no—or at least not categorically. There are lesbian poets aplenty (not to mention all of us dyke bloggers), and the father of computer science, Alan Turing, is proof that one can be a gay man, a mathematical genius, and a world-class athlete. This just goes to show that when it comes to some of her secrets, Mother Nature is still giving all of us the finger.

I was driving home from Boston the other day, reflecting that if I got hit by the semi in the next lane, at least I had a legal spouse who would be able to visit me in the hospital. I began then to ponder the advances in same-sex relationship recognition over the last several weeks. New Hampshire, Massachusetts’ northern neighbor, will institute same-sex civil unions with all the rights of marriage but the name. Washington will offer domestic partnerships with a limited number of medical and inheritance rights. Its neighbor, Oregon, will also begin domestic partnerships, but with all the rights of marriage, identical to a New Hampshire civil union or a Massachusetts marriage (except, again, in name).

As I negotiated the spaghetti-like interchange between Route 93 and the Mass Pike, it suddenly struck me—not the semi—but rather the parallel between Boston’s road system and same-sex relationship recognition:

• Both are a morass of interconnected and sometimes conflicting rights (-of-way).
• Both are, however, better than they used to be, after their architects burned through outrageous amounts of money.
• There’s always some idiot in the next lane flipping you off.
• Both are easier to navigate when there are friends along for the ride.

More from the Department of Strained Analogies in another post.

While we’re on the subject of April observances, I’ll note that today is the traditional (though perhaps incorrect) celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday.

In honor of the Bard, therefore, yet in keeping with the theme of this site, I give you two quotes. The first is from his gender-mix-up comedy Twelfth Night. Viola, disguised as a man, comments upon the Countess Olivia:

She made good view of me; indeed, so much
That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.
She loves me, sure . . . .

Next, from his little-known Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music:

Were kisses all the joys in bed,
One woman would another wed.

(Don’t respond to that one too explicitly in the comments, please.)

Since some of my best friends are Actual Shakespeare Scholars, I hasten to add that all this proves is that Shakespeare is quotable enough to be used for any purpose, however anachronistic or out of context. Shakespeare himself played fast and loose with history, though, so I don’t feel too much remorse.

Think I’ll catch a repeat of this week’s The Tudors later so I can wallow in the drama of history and the history of drama all day.