Nixon didn’t like gay kissing

Celebrities Champion State’s Same-Sex Marriage Bill

State Senator Shirley L. Huntley, a brassy, big-haired Democrat from Queens who opposes same-sex marriage, received a call on Wednesday that left her momentarily stunned.

Maya Angelou was on the line, and she wanted to know if the senator might reconsider her position. Ms. Huntley, hardly the type to be played for a fool, at first thought her staff might be pulling a fast one.

“I said, ‘What?’ ” Ms. Huntley recalled on Thursday, adding that she was not convinced that it was Ms. Angelou until she heard her deep timbre. “I heard the voice, and I said: ‘My God. It is her.’ And that was that.”

Ms. Angelou’s call — one of three the poet and author placed to state senators this week — was part of an effort by prominent supporters of gay rights to persuade reluctant senators to vote for the same-sex marriage bill before the Legislature. Cynthia Nixon, co-star of HBO‘s “Sex and the City,” who is a lesbian, and Paul Tagliabue, the former commissioner of the National Football League, who has a gay son, are among the other high-profile people who have lent their celebrity to the cause.

The Assembly passed the bill, promoted by Gov. David A. Paterson, on May 12, but gay rights groups remain short of the support they need in the Senate. With just four weeks left before the Legislature adjourns, those groups have been increasing their efforts to reach out to senators.

See Celebrities Champion State’s Same-Sex Marriage Bill
New York Times

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Why women are leaving men for other women

Lately, a new kind of sisterly love seems to be in the air. In the past few years, Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon left a boyfriend after a decade and a half and started dating a woman (and talked openly about it).

Actress Lindsay Lohan and DJ Samantha Ronson flaunted their relationship from New York to Dubai. Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl” topped the charts. “The L Word,” “Work Out,” and “Top Chef” are featuring gay women on TV, and there’s even talk of a lesbian reality show in the works.

Certainly nothing is new about women having sex with women, but we’ve arrived at a moment in the popular culture when it all suddenly seems almost fashionable — or at least, acceptable.

Statistics on how many women have traded boyfriends and husbands for girlfriends are hard to come by. Although the U.S. Census Bureau keeps track of married, divorced, single, and even same-sex partners living together, it doesn’t look for the stories behind those numbers.

But experts like Binnie Klein, a Connecticut-based psychotherapist and lecturer in Yale’s department of psychiatry, agree that alternative relationships are on the rise.

“It’s clear that a change in sexual orientation is imaginable to more people than ever before, and there’s more opportunity — and acceptance — to cross over the line,” says Klein, noting that a half-dozen of her married female patients in the past few years have fallen in love with women. “Most are afraid that if they don’t go for it, they’ll end up with regrets.” http://CNN.com

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WATCH: Stewart And Huckabee Clash Over Homosexuality

Jon Stewart has had Frost/Nixon on his mind a lot lately, so it’s not at all surprising to see the Daily Show host channeling those old interviews in his sit-down with Mike Huckabee. The two men devoted an entire segment of a two-part interview to a debate over gay marriage. Commendations all around, to both parties, for having a civil and even-tempered talk about the issue, though I’ll personally confess: I have no idea what needs to be done to… WATCH: Stewart And Huckabee Clash Over Homosexuality