Dumping Lesbians for men!
Queen of Burlesque Dita Von Teese, who recently launched her new ‘Wonderbra’ collection, has insisted that she’s done having lesbian relationships and now prefers men.
The model has revealed that her experimental fling with a girl during her twenties made her realise that she preferred the opposite sex better.
“That was for a real brief period of my life, it was really like a month,” Contactmusic quoted her as saying.
“I realised quickly that I really prefer men. That was an experimental stage in my early twenties,” she added.
The 36-year-old claimed to be a heterosexual and has sworn against same-sex dating.
She said: “I just know that I really love men and the way I feel with a man.”
Courtesy: indiatimes.com
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TV showing more gays, lesbians
NEW YORK (AP) — Broadcast television will have 16 gay and bisexual regular characters in prime-time series this fall, more than double the seven of a year ago, a new study has found.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said it was a positive sign of networks making their shows more representative, although more work needed to be done. These characters accounted for 2.6 percent of all the regular characters in TV series, up from 1.1 percent last year and 1.3 percent in 2006, according to the study, released Monday.
GLAAD President Neil Giuliano singled out Fox for having five such regular characters this fall, considering there were none a year earlier. The character Thirteen on “House” is bisexual, while the new “Do Not Disturb” has a gay man.
None of the 126 regular characters on CBS shows are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, GLAAD said, and only one recurring character — Brad on “Rules of Engagement — is gay.
ABC will have seven characters that are either gay men or bisexual women this fall, NBC will have three and the CW will have one, according to GLAAD.
A total of 19 recurring characters, those who appear only time to time, fit the category, GLAAD said. That’s up from 13 a year ago. Between regular and recurring characters, that’s the most GLAAD has counted during its 13 years of monitoring networks for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender representation.
The number of regular characters fitting the definition fell from 40 to 32 on mainstream cable networks, a count that doesn’t include the gay-oriented networks Logo and here!
There were no lesbians among the regular characters, according to GLAAD. But there are five bisexual women, including the characters of Callie Torres and Erica Hahn on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”
“As the networks gradually add characters from all backgrounds and all walks of life to prime-time programming, more and more Americans are seeing their LGBT friends and neighbors reflected on the small screen,” Giuliano said.
Courtesy: ap.google.com
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Lesbian Health Initiative
The crowds who turn out Oct. 12 for the Atlanta Lesbian Health Initiative’s annual Fall Garden Party will get more than an afternoon of fun and fundraising. They will also be treated to the first glimpse of an online health assessment and networking tool that leaders of two of the city’s top lesbian organizations hope will revolutionize their thinking about not only physical health, but how to build healthy communities.
The web-based health survey was developed with help from volunteers with the CDC, and if successful, it could become a model for gay organizations around the country. It will allow participants — not limited just to lesbians, but with a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender focus — to answer basic questions about themselves and then receive a personalized health assessment.
By providing their zip code, participants will also have the chance to link to social networking groups, and eventually find gay-friendly physicians in their own areas.
“The experience of health is intimately tied to social support networks,” said Linda Ellis, executive director of the Health Initiative. “We know that you can’t sustain health without support.”
NEW LESBIAN ‘ALLIANCE’
The link between online information and nearby social and support opportunities comes through a new venture between ALHI and Fourth Tuesday, which has provided networking for local lesbians for more than two decades.
At ALHI, “they have a health focus, while we have always been a social and networking group,” said Shirley Adams, who co-chairs Fourth Tuesday with Jo Giraudo. “To pull all of that together, we want to recognize that part of health is fun — it’s being connected to this wonderful world we are in.”
Dubbed an “alliance” by leaders of both groups, the relationship will allow the organizations to keep their individual identities, while sharing information, website links, and other resources.
More specifically, it means women who participate in ALHI’s online health assessment can be linked with Fourth Tuesday’s growing network of chapters “outside the Perimeter” — a new way of thinking for gay organizations that once assumed their audience was entirely in-town.
“Where we are heading is that when you call in and let us know that you or your partner have been diagnosed with something, we will be able to link you with a network of women who actually live in your area,” ALHI’s Ellis said. “It makes more sense than when you call from north of Atlanta needing a ride to the doctor, and me working from [our office in] Candler Park to try to do that.”
It also means that the more than 500 women who have already joined Fourth Tuesday’s outlying chapters, and the more than 1,000 members of their Yahoo group, will have a more organized way to access health information that speaks directly to them as lesbians.
“We feel that the mind and the spirit are enriched and healthier by having a support structure,” said Giraudo, the other Fourth Tuesday co-chair. “We want to help people get connected, which will help you through the good times and the bad times.”
BEYOND THE PERIMETER
The alliance between the Health Initiative and Fourth Tuesday officially got underway this month. With the help of a grant from the Lloyd Russell Foundation, Adams joined ALHI’s staff as the part-time ALHI-Fourth Tuesday transition coordinator. And on Sept. 15, Giraudo and Fourth Tuesday Northwest chapter leader Mary Helen Martin officially joined ALHI’s board of directors.
The decision to work together came as both organizations grappled with how to be more effective during a period of rapid change for lesbians and gay men in Atlanta.
At the same time that the internet has revolutionized how people find support and make connections, the area’s gay population has spread out from “inside the Perimeter” locations like Midtown and Decatur as people feel more comfortable outside the city.
“We knew that whatever we did next would have to involve a strong and more active web presence,” Ellis said. “We also realized that rather than try to create programs in our office and convince women to come there, what we wanted to do is look at how we can take our programming and support to where the community actually lives now.”
Fourth Tuesday leaders were having the same conversations on their own.
“We really were not using the internet well,” Adams said. “It was a great way to connect women, and it caught on so beautifully that we decided to strengthen our social network through the internet — to keep our in-town connections strong, as well as give women who live outside the Perimeter the same opportunities to get together.”
Courtesy:
fourthtuesday.org
sovo.com/2008/9-26/news/localnews
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Stopping same-sex unions protects no one
A recent Times Op-Ed article supporting Prop. 8 claims to advocate for children. In reality, denying equal marriage rights harms everyone.
By James Overturf
September 26, 2008
David Blankenhorn, who heads up a think tank in New York, writes in his Sept. 19 Times Op-Ed article that because marriage is historically a means to provide children with legitimacy, it must so always remain. I do not agree that this is the sole reason for the modern institution of marriage. Nonetheless, applying Blankenhorn’s argument further, should we not — in addition to eliminating the right to marry for gays and lesbians — also deny heterosexual couples who choose not to have children the right to wed? What about heterosexual couples who are past their childbearing years? Blankenhorn presents his self-identification as a liberal democrat as his credentials to make this argument. More likely, his argument is simply a smoke screen to strip gays and lesbians in California of their rights.
One can argue about the merits of children being raised in a gay or lesbian household as compared to those reared in a heterosexual household. However, it is an established fact that gays and lesbians are raising children, biological or adopted. About 27% of all same-sex couples identified in the 2000 U.S. Census have at least one child under 18 living with them. Do these children not deserve the protections that marriage would afford their families? Is it not better for these children to be living with married parents instead of two co-habitating adults? Isn’t society’s interest served by seeing more stable gay and lesbian families?
Eliminating the right to marry for gays and lesbians would not solve the problems surrounding the state of heterosexual marriage and children in the United States today. Currently, more than 22 million children — about one-third of all kids in the U.S. — do not live with two married parents. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the percentage of children living in single-parent families in 2006 ranged from 18% in Utah to 45% in Mississippi. Over the last 30 years, there has been a decrease in the proportion of Americans who are married — and nearly 60% of new marriages will end in divorce.
The decline in marriage has been accompanied by an increase in children being born outside marriage. Increasing co-habitation — two people living together outside marriage — is a main reason in the rise of extramarital births. More than 4 million children lived in co-habitating couple households in 2003, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Blankenhorn goes on to say that children deserve to be raised by their biological fathers and mothers. In an ideal world, all children would be brought into the world by caring, responsible parents. Unfortunately, too many gays and lesbians such as my husband and myself are picking up the pieces left behind by irresponsible, neglectful and, much too often, abusive heterosexual parents. These children deserve better than the parents to whom they were born — and gay and lesbian parents are providing better homes. If Blankenhorn were truly concerned about the state of marriage and children in this country, he would support social policies that would really help protect children. He could also adopt one of the tens of thousands of children who languish in foster care waiting for new parents.
Blankenhorn says that he rejects homophobia. But his Op-Ed piece is just a smoke screen to support the continuation of the broader second-class status of gay and lesbian families. The biggest threat to our society is not my marriage or any other marriage between two loving, consenting adults. In fact, heterosexual couples are doing a pretty good job themselves of bringing down the institution of marriage.
Fully including gay and lesbian families into the social framework of American society can only strengthen the institution of marriage. As my grandmother wrote in a card congratulating my husband and me on our recent marriage, “Now you are all truly a family.”
James Overturf, an employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District, lives in Glendora with his husband and their two children.
