June 1, 2001 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

on the airoff the press

Who is the Out editor's lover? Baseball wants to know

by John Graves

Out magazine editor-in-chief Brandon Lemon set off a controversy in the sports world when he wrote in the June issue that he was dating a major-league ballplayer.

"For the past year and a half, I have been having an affair with a pro baseball player from a major-league East Coast franchise, not his team's biggest star but a very recognizable media figure all the same," Lemon wrote in his Letter From the Editor.

Lemon did not name the player, but urged him to come out, saying that he could still do that and remain in baseball. No one in pro team sports has ever come out while still playing. Former San Diego Padre Billy Bean came out after he had left baseball, as did football players David Kopay and Roy Simmons.

Predictably, Lemon's column produced a flurry of "Who is it?" gossip, coupled with sportswriters decrying his motives for all but ensuring that his lover would eventually be outed.

Newsday's Johnette Howard, in the May 18 issue, quoted Bean saying, “If I were that ballplayer, I'd have cold sweats right now."

"I agree the world is becoming a little more tolerant," Bean added, "but [Lemon] has to understand baseball, the mentality of baseball fans, the cultural differences of the people thrown together . . ."

Lemon said later that the ballplayer read the article before it was published, and approved of it.

The New York Daily News also quoted Bean on May 18, in a decidedly worse mood:

"I think it's very disappointing that someone from the gay community is pushing a ballplayer off the plank," Bean told the News' Corky Siemaszko. "What that editor did was an extremely vindictive act. It doesn't seem like something someone involved in a loving, caring relationship would do."

USA Today sports columnist Jon Saraceno, who complained last year about having to "suffer through" the drag performers in the Olympic closing ceremonies, called Lemon "self-serving."

"Lemon shows a stunning lack of sensitivity, common sense and intuition regarding one of the last true bastions of male machismo and raging testosterone: the major league clubhouse," Saraceno wrote on May 25. "Lemon naïvely suggests that his anony-

"I think [the] nudity is gratuitous and we Etheridge's 'Popular' date

don't need it as much any more," Sparks told Entertainment Weekly columnist Lynette Rice. "The important thing is that viewers accept these gay people as real sexual human beings, whether or not somebody sees my crank."

Queer as Folk executive producer Tony Jonas counters, "We don't want to lose the reality of the show, and part of the reality is nudity and explicit sexuality."

Showtime has ordered 20 more episodes of Queer as Folk for the show's second season set to air in January.

TV drama's first lesbian headliner

With almost no notice in the mainstream press, actress Laura Innes made television history a few weeks ago when her character, Dr. Kerry Weaver, came all the way out of the closet on the season finale of ER. She thus became the first openly lesbian main character on a network dramatic series.

The coming-out happened in the final scene, when the homophobic Dr. Romano tried, for the second time, to fire Weaver's estranged girlfriend Dr. Kimberly Legaspi basically because she was a lesbian.

Legaspi had split with Weaver when Weaver was too closeted to come out to defend her the first time Romano tried to fire her.

After the split, Weaver decide to leave town to reflect on all that was happening to her and wound up turning down the romantic overtures of a handsome executive she met while waiting for a plane to Las Vegas.

When Weaver returned, she tried to make up with Legaspi who had begun dating another woman with a letter expressing her true feelings. While they were discussing the letter, Romano, ostensibly upset because Legaspi hadn't returned his call while she was dealing with an emergency, fired the psychologist on the spot.

Declaring she was doing it, "as the Chief of Emergency Services, as a woman and as a lesbian," Weaver confronted Romano about his homophobia, which last year drove lesbian Dr. Maggie Doyle out of the hospital. She threatened to go to the press and to bring charges against him unless he backed off of Legaspi. I don't know if NBC realizes it yet, but the character of Dr. Kerry Weaver is now and forevermore a lesbian.

mous lover is better served by informing the All hair and no lips

world of his sexual orientation."

But others, including Arizona Republic sports columnist Pedro Gomez, invoked the image of Jackie Robinson, who paved the way for African Americans in baseball 55 years ago.

Tone down the nudity, says Sparks

Actor Hal Sparks, who plays Michael Novotny on Queer as Folk, would like to see some of the show's nudity and sex toned down as it heads into its second season on Showtime.

Actress Winona Ryder was disappointed with the final cut of her same-sex kiss with Jennifer Aniston on the April 26 episode of Friends.

"When I saw the episode, all you see is hair and you don't see lips," Ryder told Access Hollywood. "I was kind of bummed out because we got a couple chances to do some pretty nice kisses. She's a very good kisser."

John R. O'Connor, LISW ACSW of D.L. Dunkle and Associates Practicing in Two Locations

"So, you hear that I'm dating Melissa [Etheridge] now? I just thought you should know," Meg Ryan quipped to a male friend at the grand opening of the new Hugo Boss store in New York, according to the May 25 Us Weekly.

In that same issue, Us joined the supermarket tabloid Star in saying that Etheridge has been dating Tammy Lynne Michaels, costar on of the WB series Popular. Although Us says the two women have been seen dining together around Los Angeles, and danced with each other at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation awards in April, the magazine was unable to get comments from representatives for either of the two stars.

Etheridge spent Mother's Day quietly with her ex Julie Cypher and their children, said People magazine.

DeGeneres to host Emmys again

Although they reportedly split after dating for a short while last year, Ellen DeGeneres and Alexandra Hedison, daughter of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea star David Hedison, may be an item again.

Photographs of the two women holding hands for publicity photos at that same GLAAD awards show were published in the May 22 issues of the Star and its sister publication, the National Examiner.

DeGeneres, who cohosted the Emmys in 1994, the year she and her character came out of the closet, has been picked again to host this year's 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards show to be held on September 16.

DeGeneres will play a lesbian dot-com whiz who moves from Los Angeles to her small-town home to become a high school counselor on the Ellen Show, premiering on CBS this fall.

PRIDE CARD

ACCEPTED HERE!!

Rosie O'Donnell makes it official

Rosie O'Donnell ended years of speculation when she finally came out of the closet during her acceptance speech at this year's Daytime Emmy Awards held in New York's Radio City Music Hall.

The talk show host was outed by New York magazine in a March 5 story on the city's gay elite. She later made it known through others that she was comfortable with the story.

According to the Star, O'Donnell, who is recovering from a hand injury that became seriously infected, dedicated her fifth Emmy to her lover Kelli Carpenter. "This is for Kelli, who slept on the floor of the intensive care unit and prevented the doctor from taking my finger off. Thanks very much. I love you."

Carpenter sat by her side in the audi-

ence.

According to the Star, which published pictures of the couple sitting in the stands at a baseball game last fall, Carpenter lives with O'Donnell and her children in a $6.5 million Manhattan brownstone. New tolerance site

USA Today's Net columnist Vincent Meddis notes a new web site, Tolerance.org, whose aim is "to create a national community committed to human rights."

Meddis says the site "tracks headlines and offers ideas on combating hatred" and offers a "self-test for hidden bias." The site can be found at www.tolerance.org.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay 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 contributed to this column.

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