22 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

FEBRUARY 21, 1997

ON THE AIR OFF THE PRESS

Melissa Etheridge and her partner are new parents

by John Graves

Last week, rock star Melissa Etheridge and her life partner, filmmaker Julie Cypher, became the proud lesbian parents of Bailey Jean; an 8-pound, 9-ounce baby girl. Etheridge says she is going to take some time off to be with her partner and her new daughter.

ABC has announced that it has decided not to put Ellen on hiatus in March but will, instead, move the show temporarily to Tuesdays at 8:30 pm beginning March 4. ABC also said that it was still considering having Ellen DeGeneres' character, Ellen Morgan, come out as a lesbian. The network said that it was waiting for more creative input from the show's producers before making a final decision.

Impatient about Ellen Morgan's long coming out process? Give Ellen a chance-many of our own coming out processes are just as long and didn't we all drop little hints to our true nature as we began to come out? According to a report in USA Today, Ellen DeGeneres excited organizers of the Triangle Ball gay and lesbian inaugural party when she told them she would be sending a message to be read to ball attendees.

The actual letter DeGeneres sent was short and sweet. It said: "I oppose discrimination. And I stand with you in the struggle to achieve equal rights for lesbian and gay Americans."

DeGeneres is scheduled to present an achievement award to lesbian singing stark.d. lang on March 1 at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center's annual Women's Night din-

ner.

Singer Peggy Scott Adams has a new gay-

themed song that is causing quite a stir nationwide. "Bill," written by Ray Charles collaborator Jimmy Lewis, is about a woman losing her husband to a man after he comes out of the closet to himself.

The song, which has caused radio station switchboards around the country to be flooded with calls, has been played on urban contemporary station WZAK FM 93.1 in the Cleveland area. Reaction nationwide has been neither for nor against the song. Listeners expressed surprise that such a song was written and many said that it reflected their own experiences.

Lewis, who says he is not gay, said he did not try to write a song about a man stealing a woman's husband.

He said, "It's a hard song to write because you have to be careful and walk a thin line not to offend anybody. I'm not bashing anybody or promoting anything. She's [the wife] just telling her story about what happened to her." Lewis said that some of the lyrics were inspired by a man he saw on the Oprah Winfrey Show who said he had always had gay feelings but thought getting married would change him.

USA Today reports that Holiday Inn Worldwide has dropped a TV commercial featuring a transgendered person after it first aired during the Superbowl because it offended some viewers. The ad, intended to showcase the hotel chain's $10 billion renovation program, shows a beautiful woman going to her class reunion, and then running into a man who identifies her as his old high school buddy "Bob." The ad had received favorable re-

sponses to pre-broadcast consumer sampling. There has always been a lesbian subplot to the hit adventure/fantasy series, Xena: Warrior Princess. The early story lines this season that seemed to "straighten out” Xena and her longtime companion Gabriella were really not believable. Anyone who has followed the lesbian cult classic series knows that the most dramatically intense and romantically charged scenes are between Xena and Gabriella.

Well, last week's episode of Xena: Warrior Princess was the most homoerotic yet when Xena kissed Gabriella like a new lover. The kiss occurred when Xena, near death, had her spirit occupy and control the body of a male friend so she could help Gabriella find a way to bring her back to life. Xena appeared to Gabriella in her mind and showed her true feelings by bending over to give Gabriella a passionate kiss on the lips.

Even though the camera revealed Gabriella was in actuality kissing the lips of the male friend at the actual moment of the kiss, Gabriella had her eyes closed and lips puckered and there was no doubt she knew the kiss was one of romantic love from Xena.

The expression on the couple's faces was that of two people falling in love. After the kiss, Gabriella asked the male friend if Xena was gone from his mind. When he said "Yes," Gabriella told him, "Then get your hand off my butt!"

If you haven't seen this show yet, check it out. There are so many clues to the fact that Gabriella and Xena are a lesbian couple in each episode of Xena that I'm beginning to think that Gabriella and Xena will be the first lesbian

'It's hard to be gay at St. Ignatius'

Continued from page 19

"intrinsically disordered," and "contrary to natural law," he clearly understood that he was not accepted.

"A few months before he died," his mother recalled, "Robbie said, 'Do I have to go to church? The Catholic church does not accept me, why should I go to it?' At that point I said, 'Robbie, we can find a church that does accept you, that's fine, we can go to a different church.' But he still went with me [to Catholic church] with a little bit of protest at the end."

Last November, Robbie signed on to the Prodigy computer service using his mother's checking account and driver's license. Leslie found out about it on the Monday before Christmas. A week later, on December 30, she and Robbie's therapist discussed getting him into PRYSM again, and for the first time, Robbie was agreeable.

"It was like he said, 'Okay, Mom's finally going to force me to go to PRYSM'."

The therapist also told Leslie that, in the meantime, she should put locks on the com-

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puter room door and "treat Robbie like a year old."

Earlier in December, Leslie had taken Robbie to a psychiatrist who was also gay. “I was glad he was gay," Leslie said of the doctor. "I thought he could be an excellent

"I would tell any parent that I can reach that I tried, and I still lost my son, and it's something that's going to hurt every day for the rest of my life."

role model for Robbie."

The doctor prescribed Zoloft, an anti-depressant that takes about four to six weeks before it becomes effective.

Leslie said she grieved that things seemed to happen just a little too late to save her son. Robbie would have attended his first PRYSM meeting at noon on Saturday, January 4, but two days earlier, he was dead. The day Robbie was buried, Leslie had to cancel the locksmith who was to install the lock on the computer room door.

Called to save other boys

Not able to save her son, Leslie felt "called by God" to reach out to other boys like him. The day of her son's wake, Father James Lewis from St. Ignatius met Leslie at the funeral home.

"I mentioned to him about Robbie being gay. I said, 'You must help these boys—you know you have other Robbies at your school.' He agreed that there were other gay students. I said, 'Please tell those who are not nice to gay people to change and learn to be kind and sensitive. Tell those who are already being nice that they are doing God's work.' He just listened to me, and said that the school teaches kindness to all people.”

She also asked Father F. Christopher Esmurdoc, an associate pastor at St. John Neumann Church, to say that Robbie was gay and deliver a eulogy that would speak of the importance of being accepting of gay and

lesbian people. For whatever reason, he did

not.

In the following weeks, Leslie began the long and painful process of putting together pieces of the puzzle that might explain what had happened to push her son over the edge. She wonders if things might have been different if she would have gone into Robbie's room prior to his death. Instead, acting on the advice of the therapist, she was trying to respect her son's privacy.

"I would have found the suicide note. I would have found out how obsessed he was with this boy."

Robbie's therapist told her how he had said that getting over the boy had "left an empty spot in his heart."

"But truly," his mother said, "[Robbie] was not over this boy."

Leslie was further grieved when Christopher told her about some rumors that had been circulating around the St. Ignatius campus. One of them was that the boy that Robbie had a crush on was telling other students that Robbie had written "Fuck you" to him in his suicide note.

"This boy never even saw the note," Leslie said.

The message that Robbie did leave for this boy was, "You caused me a lot of pain, but hell, love hurts. I hope you have a wonderful life."

Leslie called the boy's mother to find out if there was any truth to another rumor that Robbie had spoken to her son on the telephone at 3:00 a.m. the day he died.

"The mother was fearful that if it got out that Robbie liked this kid, it would ruin this kid's reputation—that if the [other] kids knew, then they might think that her kid was gay. Her concern was that her son would be perceived as gay and would be teased and ridiculed. I said to this woman, 'Please, I just buried my son. Please don't scream at me'."

St. Ignatius declined gay talk

Hoping to have some goodness come from Robbie's death, Leslie spoke with Rory Henessy, who is in charge of discipline at St. Ignatius, and the school's principal, Richard Clark.

"I told Mr. Henessy the same thing that I told Father Lewis at the funeral home—that

couple in starring roles on TV! What I can't understand is why there is so little media coverage, gay or straight, of actress Renee O'Connor who portrays Gabriella.

O'Connor, who is single, says she is more like Xena in real life. She likes martial arts and recently returned from a safari she took with her mother.

A few weeks ago, Xena was a contestant in the world's first beauty contest where one of the other contestants, Miss Artiphys, happened to be a drag queen. According to the special, February 18 "Gay TV Guide" issue of the Advocate, Miss Artiphys was played by real-life, HIV-positive drag queen, Geoff Gann better known as Karen Dior. At the insistence of Xena star Lucy Lawless, who was aware of Gann's HIV status, the two shared a passionate kiss at the end of the

contest.

Fans of the lesbian cult classic series can follow the adventures of Xena and her longtime companion Gabriella on Fox Sundays at 4 pm.

Also included in the February 18 Advocate is a special report on the upcoming film biography, Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story, set to debut on USA on March 26 as well as other upcoming gaythemed, made-for-TV films. And for the most up-to-the-minute information about gay program content on TV, dial up the Advocate's Internet link at http://www.advocate.com.

Finally, it's been reported that the Showtime network has agreed to produce the TV sequels to Armisted Maupin's popular Tales of the City.

there are other Robbies at their school. I told him that Robbie's therapist offered to talk to the school. I said I would come and read something about Robbie's life and about his being gay."

The school has politely declined Leslie's offers, and principal Clark reiterated that the "message of the school is kindness and tolerance." He also said that St. Ignatius is planning to do a mass that will focus on the issue of suicide.

"The funny part of all this," Leslie said, "is that Robbie would have wanted to stay in the closet."

"I see him laughing at me, saying ‘Oh, mom, this is my mom-always trying to help people'."

"I'm not a public person, but I would read on a loudspeaker if it would help one boy out there," she added.

Leslie feels no bitterness toward the school or the church, and wants only good things to come out of this tragedy.

"Me and his sisters and his father, and his other father, we all feel that this is a terrible tragedy that we have to live without him for the rest of our lives. We feel that there are all these other Robbies in the world, and if we can somehow help just one of them. Not just the Robbies, but the people that treat the Robbies badly. If we can help them in any way, then we feel called by God to do it. This is hard for me, I'm not an articulate person. I'm just a mom who loved her son.

John Kirkland is equally as passionate about telling his son's story, and in time, plans to become active with PRYSM or P-FLAG.

"I would tell any parent that I can reach that I tried, and I still lost my son, and it's something that's going to hurt every day for the rest of my life. You can lose them in other ways too. It'll hurt just as much if you lose your son because you alienate him as it hurt me because my son killed himself. You may not think it now, but believe me it's going to. And one day you're going to wake up and realize: That little boy or that little girl 1.raised, I lost them. I lost them because I couldn't accept them. Is it worth that?