SEPTEMBER 27, 1996 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 27

ON THE AIROFF THE PRESS

Ellen DeGeneres' TV character may come out

by John Graves

In case you haven't heard it or read about it by now, there is a possibility that Ellen DeGeneres' character, Ellen Morgan, may come out of the closet as a lesbian this season on her ABC sitcom Ellen.

of the season to test audience and advertiser reaction. In one episode, Ellen steps out from a closet door and says, “Yeah, there's plenty of room, but it's not very comfortable."

DeGeneres herself has said on Enter. tainment Tonight and other shows that she plans to have her charac-

ter go through a long process of discovery about herself this season. DeGeneres said her character may tell her mother, "What if I told you that I have been living a lie all my life? What if I told you I was really lefthanded?"

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Ellen DeGeneres

TV Guide and wire reports say that DeGeneres and the show's producers have been lobbying for the character to come out of the closet and have included strong hints about the coming out in the first nine shows

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Disney, which produces Ellen and owns ABC, has had no comment so far. DeGeneres, whose own sexual orientation has been the subject of much discussion in both the gay and straight media, has not yet clarified the matter. If you know DeGeneres' work however, it would be just her style to come out coincidentally with her character. Ellen airs on ABC Wednesdays at 8 pm.

Time magazine, in its September 9 edition, reports that nearly 500 people responded to an opinion piece opposing same-sex marriages that Charles Krauthammer wrote for the magazine's Essay section. Time said that, although some people supported Kraut-hammer's

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July 22 essay, about 90 percent of the responses were strongly critical of his position. The strongest criticism was about Krauthammer's linking of gay marriages to polygamy and incest.

Kar-yee Wu, a straight second-year medical student, wrote, “I have yet to read a credible study showing a homosexual relationship causes the same level of psychological trauma that incest does. Also, I don't remember the last time someone was killed because he or she was polygamous. I do know that these things happen to homosexuals." Wu wrote that she became more tolerant of people's differences when she found out that her own mother was a lesbian. "It seems hypocritical to be against gay marriages and at the same time in favor of family values," she said, “Gay marriages can and do provide stability for children and society."

"The False Politics of Values," a feature article by Robert Wright in the same issue of Time, criticizes both political parties for unfounded and hypocritical positions on the issue. In the article, Wright points to the divorces and remarriages of Bob Dole and Newt Ginrich, who abandoned their first wives and families to remarry, and says that "if the take-noprisoners crusade to restore family values doesn't involve heaping shame on this sort of behavior, then what do conservatives plan to heap shame on?”

The answer, of course, is homosexuality and the infamous Defense of Marriage Act. Wright says that DOMA is "focused not on keeping heterosexuals married, but on keeping homosexuals unmarried.” USA Today has taken an editorial position opposed to DOMA but the Cleveland Plain Dealer has stabbed us in the back by coming out editorially in favor of both DOMA

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and the defeat of the gay-positive Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Jim McGrattan and Dave Haskell, of Cleveland's Gaywaves radio show, came up with a couple of items of interest from the August issue of The Progressive magazine. The feature article, “A Match Made in Heaven: Lesbian Leftie Chats With a Promise Keeper," is a lesbian's account of her conversation on an airplane with a man returning from a Christian Promise Keeper rally. The man turned out to be less homophobic than she had expected.

"Texans Resist Hate," a news brief report also in the August Progressive, tells how Wyatt Roberts, director of the Texas chapter of homophobic preacher Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, lost his job at Christian radio station KIXL. Roberts was canned after his attempt to put the Texas Triangle, a lesbian-gay newspaper, out of business by reading the names of the paper's advertisers on the air so listeners could boycott them. The plan backfired, resulting in more business for the paper and its advertisers. The Triangle thanked Roberts for the best unplanned marketing campaign in its four-year history.

Chastity Bono interviews Valerie Bertinelli about her role as a lesbian mom who battles her own mother for custody of her son in the ABC film Two Mothers for Zachary in the September 17 issue of the Advocate. Originally titled For the Love of Tyler, the film is based on the real-life story of Sharon Bottoms, who lost custody of her son Tyler Doustou to her mother because of a Virginia judge's prejudice against lesbians and gays. Judge Buford Parsons severely chastised Bottoms for her minimal role in assisting the producers of the film, which aired Sept. 23.

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