Wow.

California has become the first state to ban denials of insurance coverage based solely on a person’s transgender status.

California became the first state in the nation to ban denials of insurance coverage based solely on a person’s transgender status when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation today authored by Assemblymember Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood). AB 1586 adds gender and gender identity to existing anti-discrimination provisions in California laws regulating insurance companies and health care service plans. The new law will take effect January 1, 2006 and prohibits insurers and health plans from discriminating on the basis of gender identity in contracts and policies or in the provision of benefits or coverage.

“Transgender people are part of our human family and they deserve equal access to health coverage and treatments available to everyone else. AB 1586 goes a long way toward ending the indignities that transgender men and women face when trying to access healthcare. This is a matter of human compassion and basic fairness,” said Assemblyman Koretz.

Pulp, Patricia Kane’s sexy homage to the sultry, jazzy world of 1950’s lesbian pulp fiction, runs today through Oct. 15 at the BCA Black Box Theatre (539 Tremont St., Boston. 617-933-8600).

“Pulp,” set in 1956, follows a blunt military woman named Terry Logan (“I’m a lesbian, plain and simple. I don’t make any bones about it”) on a visit to a women’s bar called The Well.

Kane added music - jazzy songs from the period, plus some originals written in the same style, performed by an all-women cast in “drag-king” manner.

It’s campy fun, but Kane said there’s more to it.

“I discovered this pulp fiction was an important part of lesbian history,” she said. “Though the pulps were written with more straight guys in mind, they were used as a lifeline for a lot of lesbians during a very repressive time.

“But those novels often ended with these women paying for their predilection in some sort of way, either being ostracized or committing suicide. I offer a revisionist ending. I want these women to be happy.”

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It can pacify football players and make them feel like girlie men.

Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures, the report on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s study of Americans’ sexual activity was released on September 15th.

Among the findings of most interest to the GLBT community are that 6% of the males surveyed have had sex with another male; 5.7% having engaged in oral sex and 3.7% in anal sex. But the number drops by more than half, to 2.9%, when it comes to action within the last 12 months. Some 1.6% of men reported having sex only with other males over the last year.

Females were more likely to report ever having a same-sex experience ( 11% ) . That held true over the last 12 months ( 4.4% ) , but women were less likely than men to be exclusively same-sex oriented ( 1.3% ) .

You can view the complete 56-page pdf version of Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures here.

A KANGAROO-HUNTING, beer-drinking 22-year-old student has been appointed Australian academia’s first “heterosexuality officer”.

Dave Allen, a the third-year law student, has been given a vague mission to safeguard straight rights.

Many universities in Australia have gay and lesbian student groups, which receive a portion of their funding from mandatory student union fees paid by every student.

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I wonder if there will be more t-shirts.

Congressman David Dreier, who has refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation, was thought to be (for a few hours, anyway) the replacement for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay after we learned yesterday of Delay’s indictment for allegedly violating campaign finance laws.

Last September, LA Weekly reported that Dreier has lived with his chief of staff, Brad Smith, and speculated that both men are gay and possibly a couple.

During an interview with gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile at the 2004 Republican National Convention, Dreier refused to say whether he is heterosexual, fueling longstanding rumors that Dreier is gay.

With media coverage focusing on Dreier, a number of gay bloggers and groups posted items questioning his sexual orientation in direct or indirect ways.

The Stonewall Democrats, a gay partisan group, issued a press release calling on Dreier “to be honest” and “openly discuss” his legislative agenda and whether he would allow the FMA to again come up for a House vote.

But the withdrawal of Dreier’s name happened quickly with the announcement that Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) would take over Delay’s leadership role (and Dreier would share some of the responsibilities of majority leader with Eric Cantor).

Many bloggers are speculating that Dreier’s name was withdrawn because of the rumors about his sexual orientation.

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Bryan Bamford, who came home one day to find his wife and her lesbian lover kissing, denies that he cut the brake pipes of the car his wife’s lesbian lover was driving. Instead, he claims it was her, the lesbian lover, who cut the pipes.

It was also found that potatoes had been stuffed into the car’s exhaust pipe, suggesting someone had tampered with it, and the police were informed.

Bamford was later arrested and his own Toyota Corina was searched, and a pair of pliers found in the boot.

Forensic tests allegedly later confirmed that they had been used to cut the brake pipes.

The court has previously heard that Bamford took the marital split badly. It is claimed he bombarded his wife with telephone calls and text messages after they separated.

His wife has her own denial problems:

He said he had no idea his marriage of eight years was in trouble until he caught his wife and her friend together in May last year.

On the morning he discovered them together he had left home to help a relative with a spot of DIY but returned when he realised he’d forgotten his overalls, he told the court.

“I walked in there and both of them were on the settee and they were kissing,” he told the jury.

“I said, ‘What the hell is going on ?’, Karen jumped up and said, ‘We are not doing anything’.

“I said, ‘I saw you kiss her’, and she said, ‘No we weren’t, no we weren’t’.”

Ontario wants to capitalize on Canada’s image of being more accepting of the gay community — highlighted by national legislation permitting same-sex marriages, passed this summer — as part of its overall effort to sell the merits of Ontario to the rest of the world, David Spencer, a spokesman for the provincial Ministry of Health, said on Tuesday.

George Smitherman, Ontario’s first openly gay cabinet minister and its health minister, spent the past weekend at a conference for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, making a bid to attract its mostly American members.

The province is short nearly 2,200 physicians, leaving almost 1.2 million people without access to a family doctor, the Ontario Medical Association said earlier this month.

A number of members of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association asked Ontario officials about Canadian immigration laws and medical practice requirements following Smitherman’s opening speech at the conference on Friday, said Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the San Francisco-based association.

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It is now believed that erectile dysfunction drugs may be linked with HIV infections and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Studies have shown that gay men who use erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis are much more likely to practice unsafe sex and to be infected with HIV or another STD. A study conducted in San Francisco showed that 31% of a group of gay and bisexual men reported using Viagra without medical supervision. That study also showed Viagra use was linked with higher rates of risky sexual behavior and STDs. Another study shows that recreational Viagra users were twice as likely as nonusers to be HIV-positive.

Because many gay and bisexual men also use erectile dysfunction drugs in combination with illegal club drugs, Jeffrey Klausner, of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, wants to see less free samples and limited refills of erectile dysfunction drugs given and the drugs classified as controlled substances by the FDA.