Wednesday, September 21, 2005

We've come a long way baby

I was pleasantly surprised this morning when opening my hotel room door I saw a picture of Melissa Etheridge on the cover of the USA Today. She had a teaser spot on the front page for a story in the Life section. I quickly flipped to the LIFE section, careful not to let anyone see me in the hall.......and there she was, on the cover of USA Today's Life section. I thought how enjoyable, I'll read that later. You can read it now at this link.

I had thought this would be an article about her breast cancer and perhaps a new album; what I was surprised about when I did read the article was that it was mostly about her wife (self described by Melissa) and her family and her breakup and her new outlook since the cancer. Her lesbian relationship and her family were prominent story features.

If you happen to pick up the USA Today you should also note that the article below it, "stop if you've read this before" is an article by a fellow about reading glasses and getting older. The surprise in the article is the male author's casual mention of his partner as if it was normal. Don't you love being normal. It's been a long time since gays and lesbians were normal, ok, never...... I've always wanted to be just another person in the scheme of things and not someone who has to fight for rights. Hopefully this mainstreaming trend will allow people (the normal ones) to think of us as just like them with lives, loves and sorrows.

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