November 3, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 19

on the airoff the press

Gay stories sprout in fall TV, like dandelions in spring

by John Graves

After a slow start, LGBT characters and story lines are sprouting like dandelions on a spring lawn in the fall television season. In what may have been a precursor to her own lesbian story arc later this season, ER's Dr. Carey Weaver was featured in a moving episode involving a lesbian couple of 27

clothes made of different fibers.

Bartlet ends with, "While you may mistake this for a meeting of the Ignorant TightAss Club, when the President of the United States walks in, everyone stands."

Jacobs is the only one still seated. Bartlet silently stares at her, until she slowly rises. Then he turns and walks out of the room.

years. One of the women, already terminally Yep, she's got a new gal

ill, suffered a severe stroke.

On the episode, which aired October 19, Weaver was profoundly disturbed when she had to tell the victim's partner that she did not have the right to make the decision to terminate life support as her comatose partner had wished, because their relationship was not recognized by law.

Weaver told her that, because the couple had not signed the legal papers that would allow the two women to make medical decisions for each other, only the dying woman's estranged brother could grant his sister's wish. He refused.

A random act of violence

Last week on Law and Order, the police had to find out who murdered a woman who had just divorced after coming out. Police and prosecutors at first suspected her exhusband, until an indigent man with a severe psychosis confessed to hitting her with a brick on a subway platform.

When prosecutors found out the man had been released from jail hours earlier with no medication or follow-up, they went after the company that provided inmate health care services.

President chews Laura a new one

On the October 18 episode of the critically-acclaimed White House drama West Wing, President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) challenged the bigotry of a “Dr. Laura”type talk show host.

Stunned after finding out the assassination attempt in last season's final episode was really a racist attack on the AfricanAmerican aide who is dating his daughter, the president goes into the East Room to briefly address a group of radio talk show hosts.

As he begins to speak, he loses his train of thought when he sees a Laura Schlessinger lookalike in the crowd. He stops, walks over to her, and asks if she is Dr. Jenna Jacobs. She says yes, and he asks her if she is a medical doctor, or a psychologist. When she says no, he gets her to admit that her doctorate is in English..

As the radio hosts stare in disbelief, Bartlet continues: "You say that homosexuality is an abomination."

She answers, "No, I don't say that, the Bible does."

"You're right, the Bible does say that, in Leviticus 18:22," Bartlet replies.

He then goes into a paraphrase of a joke letter to "Dr. Laura" that went around the Internet last summer, asking her for advice on other outdated Biblical pronouncements. Bartlet begins by asking Jacobs how much he should charge to sell his youngest daughter into slavery, as prescribed in Exodus 21:7.

The president then asks if he must personally kill his chief of staff for working on the Sabbath, as it says in Exodus, or if he should just call the police. He wonders how his mother should be executed for wearing

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Ellen

Well it's been confirmed: DeGeneres went public with her new girlfriend Alexandra Hedison at Women Rock: Girls & Guitars, a breast cancer benefit concert that began airing on Lifetime in October.

"I've met her a couple of times, and she is a lovely, lovely person," Ellen's mom Betty DeGeneres told the New York Post. "She has a sense of humor, which Ellen can certainly appreciate. As a mother, I'm just happy to see my child happy."

She went on to say her daughter "is in a great place. She's happy and moving on with her life."

Betty DeGeneres is a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign's National Coming Out Project. Her resource guide book for families of LGBT people, Just a Mom is due out next month.

According to Us, the relationship between Ellen and the actress, photographer and playwright known as "Alex" to her friends, got under way this past September at the Palms, a lesbian bar in West Hollywood where the two women had crossed paths briefly in the past.

Does 'seen with' mean 'dating'?

Betty DeGeneres told Us that Anne Heche's decision to break up with her daughter took them both by surprise.

"We were this very tight group, it was just so out of the blue," she said.

Heche, who has been out and about with Coley Laffon, a photographer who worked on her documentary about DeGeneres' concert tour this past year, will be a guest star on three episodes of Ally McBeal this season.

Just remember that, even though the tabloids and straight media mavens would have you believe otherwise, if Heche is dating a man now, it does not mean she is heterosexual. Heche may tire of this opposite sex relationship (if there really is one), and fall for another woman one day.

Etheridge and Cypher on the town

Meanwhile, Melissa Etheridge, a featured performer at the Women Rock benefit, is still going out on the town with her ex, Julie Cypher.

According to a report in Us, Cypher and Etheridge accompanied each other to an allnight party, attended by nearly 300 celebrity guests, that Kirstie Alley hosted at her home in Los Feliz, California.

One of 'All My Children' comes out

Last week on ABC's All My Children, 19year-old actress Eden Riegel made TV history as her 16-year-old character Bianca Montgomery began coming out, thus becoming the first lesbian long-term character on a daytime soap opera.

Series creator Agnes Nixon told TV Guide soap critic Michael Logan that the show would proceed carefully with coming out story, adding they chose Bianca very deliberately.

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"To make a story like this as relevant and dramatic as possible, to have it perceived by viewers in a sympathetic light, it has to be done with a character they know very well.” Nixon said.

Nixon told Logan that the story line was based on a real coming out story that she had been mulling over “since I was in college way back in 1942."

"I had a very dear friend," Nixon said, “a fellow student, who confided to me that she was a lesbian. This was at a time when it was not understood or accepted the way it is today, so I was very touched by that. I have thought about it all my life."

The coming out story began on October 27, when viewers saw Bianca at a lesbian bar. Later, Bianca told friends she was gay and had her first same-sex experience while she was being treated for anorexia several months ago.

Logan says Bianca will finally come out to her "man crazy, control-freak" mother Erica Kane sometime in late December.

Asked if she thought Erica would "have a cow" at that time, soap veteran Susan Lucci, who plays her, told Logan, “Oh, I think we can safely assume that, I'm sure this is going o throw her for a loop. I don't think the possibility of Bianca being a lesbian has ever entered Erica's mind, so there is going to be quite a war raging inside her. I'm a very lucky actress to get this story."

Lucci told Logan Bianca's age would be one issue saying, "It's not like she's 18. Bianca is an impressionable, young teen. I can see Erica blaming this on the Internet."

When Logan asked if Bianca would appear in steamy encounters like most of the straight couples in the soaps, Nixon replied. "Well, I'm not going to worry about that right now. We will take our time with this

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story. We have miles to go before we sleep.” Bianca's coming-out story on All My Children can be seen on ABC every weekday at 1 pm.

Equality Rocks show is on VH-1

For those who didn't, or couldn't, see it on the Internet when it happened, VH-1 has begun airing the Equality' Rocks concert which was held in conjunction with last April's Millennium March on Washington. The animated Lane

Gay actor Nathan Lane seems to have locked on to a new genre for his acting skills--doing the voices of animals on children's cartoon series.

Lane is the voice of George in George and Martha, an animated series featuring two cohabiting alligators. Oscar and Wilde. airing on HBO Family every day at 7 am and noon. He will also be the voice of Spot, a dog with a yen for learning, on ABC's new Saturday morning cartoon Teacher's Pet. Final season for 'Xena'

Unfortunately. I just found out that this will be the final season of Xena: Warrior Princess, TV's longest running and only show with a lesbian family. (If you don't believe this, you haven't been watching the show very carefully.) Let's hope the producers don't try to "straighten them out" when the series ends.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm. and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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