lgbtSr will be attending this year’s National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in Philadelphia (August 25-28). They’ve just announced the 2011 recipients of their Excellence in Journalism Awards. You can read the entire list here.]]>

Finally . . . new fiction now available as an eBook! Next up: the Kyle Callahan mystery series (it’s time to have some sleuthing fun). First up – ‘Murder at Rainbow Lodge.’ Look for it in early 2012 (or sooner if I can help it).]]>

Wow, approximately half of lesbians and gay men are coupled. I don’t know why I find that surprising . . . In other news, San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX, has the highest percentage of couples with kids. They’re not just accessories anymore! From The Atlantic: With the passage of the New York Marriage Equality Act, the number of gay couples in the U.S. who are eligible to marry has now doubled, as my post yesterday noted. Approximately 9 million Americans are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) — slightly less than four percent of the population, according a recent study by Gary Gates of UCLA’s Williams Institute. Approximately half of lesbians and gay men are members of same-sex couples, including an estimated 160,000 who are married, according to Gates’ research. Nearly one in five same-sex couple households are raising children, compared to about 45 percent of heterosexual couple households, according to figures from the American Community Survey (ACS).]]>

I’m not sure why lgbt people are so invested in what Barack Obama says or does in support of us. Reading all the items out there about his reiteration that he thinks marriage equality is up to the states, I just keep wondering why he gets this kind of press about it when he’s clearly a political animal who is not going to change his position. And his idea that marriage is a state issue just makes me want to say three words to the man, “Loving v Virginia.” (If ‘v’ is considered a word.) From Think Progress: President Obama was asked if he believes that civil marriage is a constitutional right during his press conference this morning. Rather than answering that question, Obama reiterated his record on LGBT issues and argued that marriage is best left to the states. What happened in New York “was a good thing,” Obama said. “I think that’s exactly how things should work. I think it’s important for us to work through these issues because each state is going to be different and each community is going to be different”: OBAMA: What we’ve also done is we’ve said that DOMA — the Defense of Marriage Act — is unconstitutional and so we’ve said that we cannot defend the federal government poking its nose into what states are doing and putting our thumb on the scale against same-sex couples. What I’ve seen happen over the last several years and what happened in New York last week, I think was a good thing. Because what you saw was the people of New York having a debate, talking through these issues. It was contentious, it was emotional, but ultimately they made a decision to recognize civil marriages and I think that’s exactly how things should work. I think it’s important for us to work through these issues because each state is going to be different and each community is going to be different.
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Marriage is a very serious business. Frank and I both know we’ll be together until one of us dies, and if we’re lucky that will be at the same time (though I know those odds are slim). We have a registered domestic partnership for New York City, framed in a glass cabinet in the living room. I’d suggested several times we drive to Greenwich, CT, and just get married. No, he said, he wanted to wait until we could get married where we live, here in New York. And now it’s happened. It’s interesting, funny, and challenging to have to suddenly think about the realities of being married. It’s something that would never have even entered the minds of me and my partner Jim, who died in 1991. Same-sex marriage (or, for the sake of search engines, gay marriage), was a preposterous idea to just about everyone. Not because we didn’t want it, but because we never thought it would happen in our lifetimes. Rather than deal with that depressing reality, I told myself that marriage was for people with too little imagination. That it was passé, bourgeois. But there remained in me that 10 year old gay boy who used to sit on my parents’ bed watching soap operas and fantasizing that one day it would be me greeting my husband at the end of a work day. Now that boy is back. Frank seems a little nervous, wondering how marriage might change our relationship. I told him the domestic partnership certificate on the shelf didn’t change our relationship. It made it just a little more legally solid, but we knew we were in this for the long haul. And marriage won’t change it either, at least not for the worse. People worry that they’ll stop being friends if they get married, or they’ll fall out of love, or the life they’ve decided to spend together will now be based on obligation – that it will somehow stop being a choice. That’s a nice way to think if you could get married in the first place. It’s great for straight couples for whom the option was always there to reject. We, on the other hand, are gazing into history . This is something most of us never seriously considered because it was a pipe dream, a fool’s errand. Not anymore. It’s okay to be nervous. It’s okay to ask yourself if it’s the right thing to do . . . because you know it is. I’ll let you see the photos from City Hall, hopefully soon.]]>

I was on my way into lgbtSr headquarters (okay, so it’s just a regular 9-5 job for a global media company, but I’m all about living our dreams), and who should be causing a Times Square stir but Alicia Keys! That’s her in the second shot, waving to all our lgbtSr readers!]]>

Jean Harris, center Another icon leaves us to carry on. From LGBT POV: (UPDATED with bio at 2:10pm Pacific) Late Sunday night, June 26, open lesbian Palm Springs City Councilmember Ginny Foat sent an email to friends announcing the death of longtime lesbian politico Jean Harris: Hi Friends, First I must apologize for contacting you in this manner but there are so many people to contact that I could not call all of you.
It is with great sadness and grief that I let you know that our friend Jean Harris passed away yesterday. Many of you have not seen Jean in awhile since she retired to her condo in Palm Springs. After leaving her job with the State Senate she tried relaxing around the pool of her condo but did not give up politics. She was very active in my last campaign, Steve Pougnet’s congressional run for the 45thCD, several races in Long Beach and other parts of the State. And of course always in local and state Democratic party business. She was considering a possible position with the Democratic Party when her health took a bad turn. She has been very quiet about her physical condition. In Jean’s own inimitable way she was always in charge and tried to do that with her health. Unfortunately she was not in charge and rather suddenly lost that battle. We are not sure if her heart or her liver failed but what does it matter. Jean herself never failed. We have lost another icon in the LGBT movement. And from a press release: (Palm Springs) LGBT Community leader Jean Harris died at home in Palm Springs last week from complications due to several health issues. She was 66. Jean Harris has been on the cutting edge of LGBT politics for over three decades and has built state-wide nonpartisan LGBT political advocacy organizations in both Oregon and California. In Oregon, she brought together and organized LGBT activists to defeat a statewide discrimination measure (No on 13) and was the first Executive Director of “Basic Rights Oregon,” founded in 1996. Harris moved back to California, bringing her skills to The California Alliance for Pride and Equality (CAPE) which was to become the present-day Equality California (EQCA). As the Executive Director, she transformed CAPE from a fledging grass-roots organization to a powerful lobbying organization with a database of close to one million registered voters.]]>

This shouldn’t come as any surprise, but for me Palm Springs is just too damn hot! From MyDesert.com: Palm Springs has the highest concentration of same-sex couples living together in California, new findings from the 2010 Census show. With about 115 same-sex couples for every 1,000 households, Palm Springs ranks ahead of other notably gay-friendly cities like San Francisco and West Hollywood, according to an analysis of census data by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. Several other Coachella Valley cities ranked at the top of the list, including Rancho Mirage at No. 4, Cathedral City at No. 5 and Desert Hot Springs at No. 10.]]>

I posted about this last week – the Arkansas newspaper that omitted a surviving same-sex spouse in an obituary, then defended the decision by saying they don’t list pets, either.

From Reuters: (Reuters) – A battle between gay rights groups and an Arkansas newspaper over an obituary is picking up steam after a near-truce fell apart. After saying they would review their policy banning the inclusion of life partners in free obits, the Batesville Daily Guard’s newspaper executives published an editorial defending the policy. Now the protests are going forward, and the central figure in the controversy, the gay life partner of a man who died from spinal meningitis, is threatening legal action from a hospital bed. “I want a hundred times more now than I did at the beginning of all of this, which was just to have my name listed,” Terence James told Reuters on Monday. James has been diagnosed with the same illness that killed his partner, John Millican, on June 11. Oscar Jones, the newspaper’s attorney, told Reuters on Monday that the policy was still being reviewed and that it was “a process,” not something they could do overnight.
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