Rosie O’Donnell announced her departure from the view this week. We all kind of predicted this would happen but at least we know it is not due to the stoprosie.com campaign or because of Focus on the Family (extreme right-wing religious groups who discriminate against gays). We know now that the Rosie departure from The View was due to a contract agreement with ABC over the daytime show. Scarborough Country had been doing a real campaign against her even before the latest incident. I feel Rosie was picked on a little too much from the media and that our freedom of speech is limited these days especially when it comes to speaking up against Bush.

I am saddened to see Rosie leave the talk show but I am left with a bad taste in my mouth of a gay leader who is either being framed to say some of these things for ratings or really needs some lessons on respect. I disagree with Fox’s News Corp. and the conservative ideas of Rupert Murdock but for Rosie to make comments to him at a luncheon in front of so many high profile people during an introduction I begin to wonder what is going on. Why would someone give Rosie the podium to speak to such an introduction? It just seems to me that she is being setup to do this or she is clearly going too far at some points.

The View ratings have skyrocketed since she has took part in the show thanks to a feud with Donald Trump and standing up for Clay Aiken. Maybe its good someone stood up to Murdock who owns the Fox News channel but maybe in a way that makes him look bad (not the person speaking).

Rosie O’Donnell certainly has other businesses to run including a gay cruise and possibly a daytime show in the pipeline to compete with The View. I just hope she has not burned too many bridges in the post-Imus days that she cannot get herself back in sync.

Why Can’t Rosie be more like Ellen. We need some more gay and lesbian leaders and role models like Ellen Degeneres.

Not that many years ago it would have been an unheard of thing to write or read: ‘Gay Marriages’ but I do have friends who have been married for over twenty five years so it has been possible (the maybe not legal) in certain countries for over a quarter of a century, which may surprise you.

These days you’ll find marriage between two people of the same sex called many things: Same Sex Partnerships, Civil Unions, and Equal Marriages. Whatever terms are used it is the same thing. Two people in a loving relationship formalise that relationship legally and publicly. And of course in recent years, as equality has become more of a mainstream issue, so has gay marriage and it has not been without controversy. You will probably have read the battles in the papers between the Church and activists, politicians on one side against ones on the other and so on but the fact remains that gay marriages are now legal in at least seven countries including: Demark (the first to allow them in 1989), The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, South Africa and a couple of US states. But other countries also recognise Civil Unions now, opting to allow a union rather than a marriage for whatever reason. There are some surprising countries on this list including Colombia, Israel and the United Kingdom. Some of the more Roman Catholic countries like Brazil and Argentina allow it in certain places only.

There are arguments for and against the allowing of Civil Unions or gay marriages or call them what you will. Activists for argue that it is a civil right for a couple of people to be equal in the eyes of the government of their country and to be able to have the same tax and other benefits as opposite sex couples. The arguments go on and go deeper of course but gay folk contribute just as much to their country in terms of taxes and so on so why should they be treated any differently?

Opponents of gay marriages counter this by arguing that the allowing of gay marriages reduces the status of ‘marriage’ generally to little more than a test of social or welfare benefits. There are some as well who simply think that same sex relationships are wrong because they do not produce children and that’s enough for them.

I couldn’t even start to examine the religious opposition here but needless to say many religions oppose same sex marriages for many reasons. The main one (as far as I can make out from the Christian church at least) is that it is against Biblical teaching and various chapters of the Bible are quoted, including Genesis and Leviticus. But these are also countered by activists as being out of date references to things which are not relevant to today’s society. And so the row rumbles on and drags into it children, tradition, divorce and equality.

I was trying to find a lighter side to this subject but without success, even looking for the count of how many gay marriages had taken place since 1989 was nigh on impossible. The subject is a serious one and one that will not be going away anytime soon. And if you were wondering, my two friends were married in San Francisco in 1979!

And as an after thought, here is a fun thing I found when searching the web:

http://www.cafepress.com/buy/gay+marriage Café Press have a variety of logos and labels you have put on T Shirts and caps etc. Including, for girls, ‘I love my wife’ and ‘Adam and Steve not Adam and Eve’.

I’ve looked at a few ‘personals’ sites in my time and even joined some and let’s face it there are plenty of them out three these days to join. If you are looking for a new partner or just for some on-line chat then these sites are a good and safe place to start. Of course when it comes to actually meeting someone in the flesh you should always be careful and a good personals site will give you guidelines on the safest way to meet a stranger. After all, that is what you are doing and, even though you could chat to someone for weeks and even exchange pictures, you never really know they are who they say they are until you meet face to face.

O.k., warning over with, what are the most popular lesbian personals sites out there at the moment? After a quick search I came up with four alternatives for you:

lesbianpersonals.com

Lesbian Personals claims to have over 3,750,000 members and when you click to the home page you’ll be told how many of these members are in your country. There is a tour you can take which will tell you what to expect, or you can browse the membership by country and USA state. Again it is easy and free to create a basic profile but there is a fee for premium use. The site also has a magazine and chat room associated with it.

lesbianpersonalsonline.com

With its simple, white and purple design this site is nice and easy to use and look at. You can explore it by running a quick search to see if there is anyone near you already registered. Select the state, if in the USA, or country, the person’s age, what they/you are looking for and away you go. The site caters for bisexual as well as lesbian women and you can opt to see face pics or not. You can also see who is on line and read the short profile that each girl has put up. I found this site really quick to search and load results and there were over 250 members on line when I was there. You can create a basic membership for free and there is a non-recurring fee for a premium membership.

thepinksofa.com

The Pink Sofa claims to be the world’s biggest lesbian meeting place and how are we to know any different? There were 463 members on line with 17 chatting when I was there. You can carry out a search by country to see if there is anyone here you’re going to want to meet and you also get access to the forum and classified adverts. There is a travel section so you can see who’s travelling in your area, a business directory and a message board. This site seems to have more extras than the others and looks like a more interactive personals site. You have three free days and then there is a monthly charge of $20 which reduces if you buy in for a longer period of time.

lesbotronic.com

Finally Lesbotronic. This site had a completely different feel to it from the others; it was darker and more ‘jazzy’ in its design. The page to create your profile was huge and very detailed and that’s because the site matches you with your perfect partner for you. There is also a detailed help and information page to check out if you’re not sure that this is the place for you.

With any dating or personals site it’s best to be honest, to fill out as much information about yourself as possible and, if uploading pictures, put recent ones. There’s no point in finding your perfect date only to discover that you are not actually hers now is there?

I have many bisexual friends and sometimes feel a little curious for the bisexual side myself.  So I thought we should put together an overview of the hottest bisexual sites online.  As far as bisexual porn online, Three Pillows (threepillows.com) has got to be one of the best. It’s more than a sex site, more than a place to come and check out your bi-curious fantasies and gives you more than most other sites offer. They say that they have the largest collection of bi-sex material on the web and, with around 500 videos and 2,000 galleries they could well be right.

The content contains lots of varied three-way and coupled sex, MMF, FFM, FF, MF and MM, if you get my drift. They also claim to have some rare bisexual footage too. I found some sample content on the tour and was very impressed with the models in the thumbnails and at how often the site appears to be updated; there’s something new every week as far as I can see. The guys were hot, the girls were hot in fact the whole thing looked sizzling.

But this site is more than just a good collection of videos that, by the way, you can download or stream on line. There is also a message board so you can contact other members with a bi-sex bent, there are streaming feeds, small movie theatres provided by other sites and there is live chat on offer too. Taking a quick tour around I also saw there were personal ads with over 3,000 already posted so you can think of Three Pillows as your portal to dating too. ($24.95 for thirty days.)

I did some research and checked out what people had been saying about this site and all the reviews I saw were glowing. Then I compared it to some other bi-sex sites and it comes out pretty close to the top of the list.

While I was searching around I came across a few others too. Bi Archive also scored well in the ranking and by going to biarchive.com you will get a pretty clear idea of what you are going to get. There are over 250 DVD quality downloads here with all kinds of sexy boys and girls in trio sex sessions. You can view shots from some of the scenes on the tour and if they don’t tempt you inside then the two day trial for $4.95 might, even the thirty day access is reasonable for the amount of content you get inside.

And the third highest scoring site I found was bilatinmen.com (Bi Latin Men) which has the three way sex but with the added attraction of also featuring Latino boys and girls.  Read the complete Bilatinmen.com review.  This site also has e-zine elements to it with stories, erotic art, a message board and live chat links. Another community kind of site that’s good to be a part of if you are bisexual or just bi-curious. I’ve seen around inside Bi Latin Men and I was very impressed with not only the quality, the cute and hung boys but with all the extras too; even the 400 + stories are well written. It’s one of those sites that grabs you because it keeps to its niche and knows what it is talking about and it’s only $12.95 a month so great value for money.

That’s just a quick word about three of the better bisexual themed sites out there, there are of course many more. I single these ones out because I have seen enough of each of them to know that they are good, they have hot, quality content and they are run by webmasters who care about their members. You shouldn’t have any problems or complaints when you decide to sign up to one of these sites and remember, these one don’t just offer pics and vids, they have other bisexual related content, contacts, news and message boards too.

Being stranded on an island of gay bashers and thugs just does not sound appealing to me.  It really has never sounded appealing to go to some of these exotic destinations that I have heard of gay people being killed or beaten.  Plus you also hear of people being robbed at some of these locations.

Rosie O’Donnell’s vacation company recently canceled a summer cruise to Bermuda.  Although, the chairman of Bermuda’s Tourist Board isn’t happy about anti-gay sentiment in the country.  My advice would be to stay away until this clears up.  There are better places to enjoy.

An AIDS activist was slain in Jamaica not long ago.  Jamaica, is another place to steer your gay cruise away from.  It seems every time I hear of someone going to Jamaica you hear how scared they were of the natives and this new mob running around.  PlanetOut recently ran a story about of mob attacks where hundreds of Jamaicans gang up on gay looking or acting people and threaten to beat them to death and have hospitilized some.  Who knows what bodies may have dissapeared and not even spoken of.  The homophobic climate has gotten so bad in Jamaica that they even have musicians singing anti-gay tunes called “murder music”.  You can read more on PlanetOut.com where the title of the article cannot warn people enough:  To be gay in Jamaica “to be dead”.

Afterellen.com is a swish and swanky site that brings you ‘news, reviews and commentary on lesbian and bisexual women in entertainment and the media’. Although the site is not affiliated with comedienne Ellen DeGeneres it does refer to the milestone for lesbians when DeGeneres publicly came out. This site and its partner site afterelton.com were bought by Logo (Viacom/MTV Networks) in 2006.  The site was originally started by Sarah Warn who is the editor-in-chief.

So that’s the background, what is the site like and what does it offer you? Well, taking a quick tour around it you’ll find that it’s neatly laid out and easy to navigate. You have ten major areas to investigate, from a blog to articles and every page contains something interesting or useful for lesbians and bisexual women.

On the day that I was looking at the site the blog had several interesting entries; there was a comment about the South Park episode D-Yikes, a video of Jodi Foster singing a French love song and news about ER and the Grey’s Anatomy spin off ‘Private Practice’ among other interesting things. The news stories and blog stay in the genre of the site in that the news is about TV and movies but everything has a lesbian or bisexual slant. The movies page has reviews of the latest releases as well as behind the scenes and associated articles and I found all of them well written, easy to read and informative. Sometimes it’s hard to stay reading on line for any length of time but not here, the texts kept me interested and were easy on the eye.

Everything is arranged neatly too and you will find some things on more than one page. For example, the interviews with celebrities and stars can be found on the People page as well as on the Movies page so, if an article or interview is relevant to more than one place, it will appear in both places; this ensures you don’t miss anything. The same goes for the books and music page, news about authors, publications and music are all here but you may also find the same article on the people or blog pages. This doesn’t mean the site is short on content and trying to fill out the pages though, it just means everything is well linked and easily available.

You will notice on the right of the pages that there is a log-in facility. You don’t have to, but you can, create a username and password and become and active member of afterellen.com. When you have registered, for free, you can create a small profile so other users will know something about you. Then you can post replies and comments on articles and interviews and really get involved. There is also a forum on the community page with topics covering all manners of interesting things; from creative writing to sex. Taking a quick look at the forum it appears well used with thousands of replies and posts and, if you want to know more about the other folk in there you can click their name and read their profile. It’s something you can really get involved in and, when you register, you will feel like you are part of an on-line community.

Which is basically what afterellen.com is, it’s a place where anyone who is lesbian, bisexual, straight or just interested can go and find out all the latest news from cinema to soaps but particularly news that concerns lesbian stars or characters. What’s more you can then join in and leave your own mark by making comments, posting in the forums and generally making yourself heard. There’s so much to see and do hear it’s hard to cover it all in a short space but go and take a look and you’ll see how fun and fab this site is.

Hi, I would like to introduce myself as one of the new bloggers for this site.  I am excited to bring another voice to the gay and lesbian community.  I hope to blog about gay rights, pride events, and things that matter the most in our lives like gay marriage.  Maybe even a few sinful delights…  Keeping our gay families strong is definately one of my main goals.  Look for lots of fun new posts coming soon…

-Megan