October 10, 2003 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 15
on the airoff the press
Fall TV season brings many gay and lesbian characters
by John Graves
The new TV season has brought many gay and lesbian characters, including some who are parents.
Two of the new shows, ABC's It's All Relative and Fox's A Minute With Stan Hooper feature gay couples in a long-term relationship, notes New York Daily News columnist Donna Petrozzello.
CBS's Two and a Half Men stars Charlie Sheen as a man whose estranged sister-inlaw is a lesbian and Jane, an Asian-American woman on NBC's raunchy new sitcom Coupling joins Will and Grace's Karen as a very open bisexual.
The gay parents can be found on ABC's It's All Relative, a sitcom starring Lenny Clarke and Harriet Sansom Harris as a conservative Irish-Catholic Republican couple who own a neighborhood bar. Their son gets engaged to a woman who has been brought up by two cultured and somewhat snobbish gay men, played by John Benjamin Hickey and Christopher Sieber.
"This is one of the first times that I've gotten to see someone like me on prime-time TV," said Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and a mother of three herself. "I hope ABC uses the show to give people a closer look at some of the realities of the gay parenting experience for both the parents and the kids."
It's All Relative executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron noted that successful shows such as Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, HBO's Six Feet Under, Showtime's Queer as Folk and NBC's longrunning Will & Grace paved the way for It's All Relative by allowing viewers to see a wide variety of gay characters on TV.
"These shows are all representative of people in gay communities, and ours is just another take on it," Zadan said. "We want to present families the way that they exist in this
world. Families aren't defined by blood any-
more, they're defined by love."
Despite GLAAD's optimism over the new shows, Garry said that most of TV's gays still are affluent white men. "We're looking for more stories, more dimension and more depth to gay characters. The media absolutely has a responsibility to reflect the world around them."
Michael Schneider, writing for Variety, reports Fox is also developing a gay-themed sitcom about two straight men who move into an apartment building that rents to gays and lesbians.
Will finally gets a boyfriend
It seems that Will, the half of Will and Grace who never has a boyfriend, will finally get one on the October 30 episode.
He will be played by actor Dylan McDermott, recently of The Practice and also the villain in Charlie's Angels.
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McDemott told People magazine about his wife Shiva Rose's reaction to the new role.
"She loved the guy I play in Wonderland [a new biopic about the late porn star John Holmes], because I came home with tattoos and a beard," he said. "But now that I'm this gay Will and Grace guy, she's getting less action. She's not too happy about that."
A centerfold your mother can see
The October 7 edition of Soap Opera Weekly featured a two-page centerfold of All My Children's Bianca and Lena in a loving embrace along with some facts about Eden Riegel and Olga Sosnovska, the actresses who play Bianca and Lena, after readers picked them as Daytime's Hottest Couple.
Riegel, whose sister is lesbian, was born in the nation's capital and is a former White House intern. She is currently on leave from Harvard University where she is studying political and social theory, and has sung backup for Michael Jackson and Jewel. Sosnovska; who speaks English, Polish,
know the money is missing from their bank account, to stand up and give $100,000. Tonight in honor of Calpernia, David and Antonio, I'm going to give the first $100,000 and ask if there are nine other people who can, please do it."
In accepting O'Donnell's gift, NGLTF executive director Matt Foreman said, "We are extremely grateful for Kelli and Rosie O'Donnell's extraordinary gift. It will enable us to further organize our community and our allies against the anti-gay backlash now being launched by the political and religious right.”
Transgender honoree Calpernia Addams asked the television and film people in the audience to represent transgender people fairly, saying, "Please stop writing transgender characters as prostitutes, punch lines and psychos. I think we have a real opportunity in Hollywood to turn things around by writing a portrayal of somebody who is real, has love and passion and is successful."
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Poland to England, where she lives with her husband, when she was 11.
Commenting on her role as a lesbian in All My Children, Sosnovska told Soap Opera Weekly, "I look forward to the day a gay storyline is no more and no less 'important' than any other."
The magazine is offering a 22 by 36 inch full-color poster of the centerfold to readers on their web site at soapoperaweekly.com/ inweekly.
No Twinkies
I caught a commercial on Reno 911, Comedy Central's spoof of reality cop shows featuring gay, hot-pants wearing Lieutenant Dangle, which showed what appeared to be a gay male couple talking about how much weight they had lost on the Slim-Fast Plan.
O'Donnell pledges $100,000 to NGLTF
Rosie O'Donnell pledged $100,000 to support the work of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force when she accepted her award at the 14th Annual NGLTF Leader-
ship Awards in Los Angeles September 28.
Other honorees at the awards included transgender activist Calpernia Addams, writer/producer David Lee and Los Angeles city councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa.
O'Donnell also encouraged other people of means to match her gift, saying that it takes getting to a place where anger takes a back seat and the truth takes a front seat.
"As a person who is privileged to have access to a society in which too few get to speak, who has been benefited tremendously from the love of strangers, we need you to talk to your friends and we need you to talk to your family but mostly what you need is money. What does it take to raise a million dollars? Ten millionaires, who will never
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Kudos to People magazine, Us Weekly and yes, even the Star supermarket tabloid for providing extensive, and LGBT-positive, coverage of the Melissa Etheridge/ Tammy Lynn Michaels nuptials on September 20, the day after California Gov. Gray Davis signed the California Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act into law.
The wedding was really a commitment ceremony as full marriages between samesex couples are not recognized in the U.S. The new law, which grants same-sex couples in California many of the rights that heterosexual married spouses enjoy, does not take effect until January 2005.
A-list guests among the some 200 family and friends who attended the posh $200,000 affair held at Dick Clark's oceanfront estate in Malibu included former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Ellen DeGeneres and her partner Alexandra Hedison, producer Steven Spielberg, Kathy Najimy, Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson, Friends star Jennifer Aniston, Helen Hunt, Mike Myers, singer Sheryl Crow and David Crosby, who had donated sperm for the two children Etheridge had with former partner Julie Cypher.
"They wanted us to bless them," one guest said about the rocks guests were given when
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they entered the estate. "There was a water fountain where everyone put their rocks, and at the end of the evening Melissa and Tammy took them to put them in a special vase. It was interesting and extremely romantic."
The women took their vows, in which Michaels brought the house down with "I promise to always be gay," in bare feet under an arch of blue and pink hydrangeas where they exchanged custom-made platinum and diamond wedding bands before the Reverend Charles Hall who sealed the union by declaring them "beloved wives."
After the brides kissed each other, they retired with their guests to the reception where they dined on Mexican food and danced to the Temptations hit "My Girl."
John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Saturdays at 9 am, and at www.wruw.org. See what's coming on TV in the Couch Potato Report, under "Entertainment" at www.lgesc.org. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.
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