Lesbian Couple Quotes

Beds are not the right place for reading, watching TV, discussing daily issues or worrying about the future. Beds are only good for two things that always go together: Sleeping and pleasure!

The year I snuck an interracial lesbian couple into the background of an American Airlines commercial, I was feeling particularly flush.

Living inside me is a straight guy, a lesbian, a gay man, a straight chick, and a couple of bisexuals and they all get an equal amount of play time.

Normally if I met a guy who was unemployed and illiterate who hadn't bathed in a couple of weeks, I'd be standing in a puddle with excitement, but I'm sort of in a bad mood tonight, so take this bag and give me the fu**ing paper before I pop your head like a zit. He said, you're a lesbian, aren't you?

I'm not having my wedding day spoiled by a couple of horny bridesmaids who can't decide whether they want to shag or throw up over each other.

Far from undermining marriage, gay and lesbian couples seeking marriage for themselves are perhaps the institution's best friends. At a time when marriage is seen as less desirable and less necessary for straight couples, gay and lesbian people are lining up at town halls and church doors to participate in this traditional and long-standing institution.

Here’s who I envy: lesbians. Why? Lesbian bed death. Apparently, after a lesbian couple’s initial flush of hot sex, they stop having it altogether. It makes perfect sense.

Show me the legacy of a lesbian couple.

We can move to legalize same-gender civil marriage without harming any religious institution or dictating any change to the beliefs and practices of any faith. Religious opposition to civil marriage for same-gender couples irrelevant to the civil, public debate. You're opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds? Fine! Don't authorize your clergy to act as an agent of the State in any such unions. But don't deprive the rest of, who believe that such rites are good and holy, of our constitutional rights to practice our own freedom of religion. We don't live in a theocracy where some one understanding of religion and faith dictates what the State will and will not do. This religious argument against the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples is simply bogus. And unconstitutional. Religious belief should have no bearing whatsoever on the legal right to marry.

I oppose same-sex marriage and civil unions but I support domestic partnership between gay and lesbian couples. I have no problem with gay and lesbian couples adopting. I support equal benefits for same-sex couples such as hospital visitation rights

We were in a state of suspended animation: Oblivious to the world around us, time seemingly standing still, and our perceptions focused only on a couple specific parts of our anatomy. In fact, only one part. My tongue seemed numb, but the feeling in my core was building in an incredible crescendo. Finally, my orgasm exploded. I heard myself scream, as if from another dimension. My head became light, and I thought I would pass out.

The idea of a licentious West that many Arabs hold today closely mirrors the view that Europeans had of the Middle East a couple of centuries or more ago.

After the first couple weeks, when all your sex toys had met all my sex toys, ...

We were unable to obtain any lesbians,” Pomeroy says, as though perhaps they hadn’t been in season, or his paperwork wasn’t in order.)

From the standpoint of integrity, I think we all need to own up to our dirty little secrets. I believe that when we are open about our own strange desires or unusual lives, it paves the way for others to do the same. In the past thirty years, gay men and lesbians took a lot of flack to tell the truth about their love lives and their courage opened the door for a mass migration out of the closet. We’re now at a moment in time when unconventional families (even thirty-year triads and gay couples) are losing their children in custody battles because their families don’t conform to mainstream ideas about what a family should be. Given this context, I want to be someone who stands up for my choices even if they’re unpopular, even if I get snickers at cocktail parties.

I open the cabinet where there’s a shelf that’s all tea. Every lesbian needs a ridiculous amount of tea, and that goes double for a couple composed of two lesbians, Mom always says. It’s in the manual they gave me when I came out. I can show you.

To all my friends who constantly talk disparagingly about the supposed 'homosexual lifestyle' and stereotype gay people and the community, I'd like to get this straight. There are essentially two worlds – the 'gay scene' and the gay (or LGBTIQ) community. The 'scene' is like the tip of the iceberg; what is seen by others because it is visible on a street, suburb or pride parade. Like the ninety percent of the submerged iceberg, the community is larger and less visible. It consists of organisations, groups, support networks and also gay and lesbian singles and couples living 'normal' lives in the suburbs. Occasionally there is an overlap but not often. Some live, socialise and work in both. Many never enter each others worlds. The values, lifestyles and culture of these two worlds are as different as Asian culture is to western is to African is to Middle Eastern. Dig down even deeper below the surface and you find it is not a single community but diverse communities and subcultures that are separate but not necessarily divided. The common thing that binds them together is their experience of inequality, discrimination and their desire to make a better world for themselves, others and future generations. If you believe that all gays and lesbians are shallow and obsessed with sex, body image, partying, nightclubs and bars then you are obviously an observer from the outside or mixing in the wrong circles.

Dad and Mom had a lesbian couple living in our chalet for several years in the early 1970s. One was Dad’s secretary, the other Mom’s helper. They shared a room. Fortunately, my parents were hypocritical and acted as if, no matter their official religious absolutes, the higher call was to ignore what the Bible said in favor of what they hoped it meant. Thus, without ever saying it, it seems to me my parents were affirming that the Bible should be read as if Jesus was the only lens through which to see God. The result was that Francis and Edith Schaeffer were nicer than their official theology.

Eravamo state meravigliose compagne di viaggio, ma in fondo non eravamo che solitari aggregati metallici che disegnavano ognuno la propria orbita. In lontananza potremmo anche essere belle a vedersi, come stelle cadenti. Ma in realtà non siamo che prigioniere, ognuna confinata nel proprio spazio, senza la possibilità di andare da nessun’altra parte. Quando le orbite dei nostri satelliti per caso si incrociano, le nostre facce si incontrano. E forse, chissà, anche le nostre anime vengono a contatto. Ma questo non dura che un attimo. Un istante dopo, ci ritroviamo ognuna nella propria assoluta solitudine. Fino al giorno in cui bruceremo e saremo completamente azzerate.

Recent studies indicate that boys raised by women, including single women and lesbian couples, do not suffer in their adjustment; they are not appreciably less “masculine”; they do not show signs of psychological impairment. What many boys without fathers inarguably do face is a precipitous drop in their socioeconomic status. When families dissolve, the average standard of living for mothers and children can fall as much as 60 percent, while that of the man usually rises. When we focus on the highly speculative psychological effects of fatherlessness we draw away from concrete political concerns, like the role of increased poverty. Again, there are as yet no data suggesting that boys without fathers to model masculinity are necessarily impaired. Those boys who do have fathers are happiest and most well adjusted with warm, loving fathers, fathers who score high in precisely “feminine” qualities.

They argue that opposition to same-sex marriage is a deeply held religious belief, and withdrawing support, whether it’s by declining to photograph a gay wedding or refusing to hire a married lesbian woman, is a rightful expression of their faith. But the logic doesn’t extend beyond the LGBTQ issue: evangelicals aren’t out pushing for the right to discriminate against divorced couples, unrepentant gossips, or gluttons, all people in blatant violation of Christian tenets.

People who think that queer life consists of sex without intimacy are usually seeing only a tiny part of the picture, and seeing it through homophobic stereotype. The most fleeting sexual encounter is, in its way intimate. And in the way many gay men and lesbians live, quite casual sexual relations can develop into powerful and enduring friendships. Friendships, in turn, can cross into sexual relations and back. Because gay social life is not as ritualized and institutionalized as straight life, each relation is an adventure in nearly un-charted territory—whether it is between two gay men, or two lesbians, or a gay man and a lesbian, or among three or more queers, or between gay men and the straight women whose commitment to queer culture brings them the punishment of the "fag hag" label. There are almost as many kinds of relationship as there are people in combination. Where there are -patterns, we learn them from other queers, not from our-parents or schools or the state. Between tricks and lovers and exes and friends and fuckbuddies and bar friends and bar friends' tricks and tricks' bar friends and gal pals and companions "in the life," queers have an astonishing range of intimacies. Most have no labels. Most receive no public recognition. Many of these relations are difficult because the rules have to be invented as we go along. Often desire and unease add to their intensity, and their unpredictability. They can be complex and bewildering, in a way that arouses fear among many gay people, and tremendous resistance and resentment from many straight people. Who among us would give them up? Try standing at a party of queer friends and charting all the histories, sexual and nonsexual, among the people in the room. (In some circles this is a common party sport already.) You will realize that only a fine and rapidly shifting line separates sexual culture from many other relations of durability and care. The impoverished vocabulary of straight culture tells us that people should be either husbands and wives or (nonsexual) friends. Marriage marks that line. It is not the way many queers live. If there is such a thing as a gay way of life, it consists in these relations, a welter of intimacies outside the framework of professions and institutions and ordinary social obligations. Straight culture has much to learn from it, and in many ways has already begun to learn from it. Queers should be insisting on teaching these lessons. Instead, the marriage issue, as currently framed, seems to be a way of denying recognition to these relations, of streamlining queer relations into the much less troubling division of couples from friends.

Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, in their study American Couples, found that lesbians have sex less often than gay men and heterosexual couples. The sociologists believe that this happens because, as they found, in heterosexual couples the man almost always initiates sex, and the woman either complies or exercises veto power. Among gay men, at least one partner takes the role of initiator. But among lesbians, they found, often neither feels comfortable taking the role of initiator, because neither wants to be perceived as making demands.

AIDS, of course, changed the gay scenario. Yet some twenty years into the epidemic, and despite ample reason for fear, a number of studies from the early 2000s have reached a similar conclusion: though monogamy has gained more adherents than earlier, only between one-third and one-fourth of male couples together more than five years are sexually exclusive; the majority of subjects defined “fidelity” in terms of emotional commitment rather than sexual faithfulness—a much higher percentage than found among either lesbian or heterosexual couples.

Hailey winked, then came over to Callie. "Sit down and tell me what you need." "A man?" she blurted, then shut her eyes. Damn. Totally not what she meant to say. Hailey threw her head back and laughed. "It's about time you said that, although I don't know if you need a man so much as to get laid." The other customer at the counter sputtered his coffee and Callie laughed, turning to him. "She meant that I don't need a man in my life, just an orgasm. I'm not a lesbian. Well, I made out with a couple girls when I was, like, nineteen, but that was just experimenting. It's good to make sure you're sure about what you want, you know?" The man blushed hard, put money on the counter, and scurried away.

In many places, the past fifteen years have been a time of economic turmoil and widening disparities. Anger and resentment are high. And yet economic policies that might address these concerns seem nearly impossible to enact. Instead of the seeds of reform, we are given the yoke of misdirection. We are told to forget the sources of our discontent because something more important is at stake: the fate of our civilization. Yet what are these civilizations, these notions of Muslim-ness, Western-ness, European-ness, American-ness, that attempt to describe where, and with whom, we belong? They are illusions: arbitrarily drawn constructs with porous, brittle, and overlapping borders. To what civilization does a Syrian atheist belong? A Muslim soldier in the US army? A Chinese professor in Germany? A lesbian fashion designer in Nigeria? After how many decades of US citizenship does a Spanish-speaking Honduran-born couple, with two generations of American children and grandchildren descended from them, cease to belong to a Latin American civilization and take their place in an American one? Civilizations are illusions, but these illusions are pervasive, dangerous, and powerful. They contribute to globalization’s brutality. They allow us, for example, to say that we believe in global free markets and, in the same breath, to discount as impossible the global free movement of labor; to claim that we believe in democracy and human equality, and yet to stymie the creation of global institutions based on one-person-one-vote and equality before the law. Civilizations encourage our hypocrisies to flourish. And by so doing, they undermine globalization’s only plausible promise: that we be free to invent ourselves. Why, exactly, can’t a Muslim be European? Why can’t an unreligious person be Pakistani? Why can’t a man be a woman? Why can’t someone who is gay be married? Mongrel. Miscegenator. Half-breed. Outcast. Deviant. Heretic. Our words for hybridity are so often epithets. They shouldn’t be. Hybridity need not be the problem. It could be the solution. Hybrids do more than embody mixtures between groups. Hybrids reveal the boundaries between groups to be false.

In regard to gay male life specifically, a number of academic studies have concluded that we’re more emotionally expressive and sexually innovative than heterosexual men, more empathic, and more altruistic (we do volunteer work far more often than our straight male counterparts), and we’re more likely to cross racial and gender borders when forming close bonds of friendship. When part of a couple, we—and this is even more true of lesbian partnerships—avoid stereotypic gender roles and instead emphasize mutuality and shared responsibilities. Gay couples have “more relationship satisfaction” than straight couples, and when we do argue, we’re better at seeing our partner’s point of view and at using humor to deflate belligerence.

In regard to justice, one might also ask: What of same-sex, heterosexual couples who live with and cherish each other, but who do not engage in homosexual acts? Are they less worthy of marriage? If the only thing that distinguishes them from homosexual couples is sodomitical behavior, and if only homosexual couples are to be extended the privilege of marriage, then something of special merit must obtain precisely to the act of sodomy itself. Why should sodomy be privileged in this way? Otherwise, why would marriage not be appropriate for chaste or heterosexual same-sex friendship? The tax advantages obtaining to an estate left by one spouse to another are great. Should they be only for lesbian and homosexual couples and not, say, for brothers, sisters, or others who may love each other and live together?

Prerequisites for sex: Men in general like to have sex to feel emotionally connected, and women need to feel emotionally connected to have sex. Almost 90 percent of the couples we interviewed agreed with that last sentence. We refer to this as women having more prerequisites for sex than men do. Women’s prerequisites aren’t always limited to emotional closeness; sometimes they are about feeling exhausted, distracted, not rested, or not good about herself or her body. Interestingly, the data shows that gay men have the most sex of any type of couple—two people with the fewest prerequisites—and lesbians have the least sex of any type of couple—two people with the most prerequisites. Sexual desire for women is a barometer for how the rest of her world is going. If she’s not rested, or happy, or healthy, or feeling supported or loved, she’s not going to feel like having sex.

Buxton says that when one partner in a marriage comes out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, about a third of the couples break up right away, a third break up after about two years, and a third stay married indefinitely.3 We don’t know a whole lot about that last third—the more than 30 percent of mixed-orientation marriages that remain intact. From the research I’ve read, many of them are negotiating open relationships, but few consider themselves polyamorous or identify with or seek out a nonmonogamous community. As a result, they are left out of significant discussions about nonmonogamy. Research and writing on this topic (including Buxton’s) makes a point of distinguishing between partners who come out as gay or lesbian and partners who come out as bisexual. Those are individual identity choices; I am less concerned with how a person identifies and more interested in the relationship between the straight spouse and the nonstraight spouse, because that ultimately determines what style of open relationship will work for them. Some couples remain primary partners and continue to have a sexual relationship, while others end the sexual element of their partnership.

Buxton says that when one partner in a marriage comes out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, about a third of the couples break up right away, a third break up after about two years, and a third stay married indefinitely.3 We don’t know a whole lot about that last third—the more than 30 percent of mixed-orientation marriages that remain intact. From the research I’ve read, many of them are negotiating open relationships, but few consider themselves polyamorous or identify with or seek out a nonmonogamous community. As a result, they are left out of significant discussions about nonmonogamy. Research and writing on this topic (including Buxton’s) makes a point of distinguishing between partners who come out as gay or lesbian and partners who come out as bisexual. Those are individual identity choices; I am less concerned with how a person identifies and more interested in the relationship between the straight spouse and the nonstraight spouse, because that ultimately determines what style of open relationship will work for them. Some couples remain primary partners and continue to have a sexual relationship, while others end the sexual element of their partnership. In one of Buxton’s studies, the straight husband of a bisexual woman wrote: “I compare my wife and me to a glove with fingers that fit absolutely perfect. It’s the thumb that is just wrong. The more we struggle to make the thumb fit, the worse off we make the fingers. If we free ourselves to adjust the gloves for our thumbs, then the fingers return to their old wonderful fit.”4

Nothing in Scripture or orthodox theology precludes our opening the institution of marriage to same-gender couples. Those who oppose marriage equality for gay or lesbian couples, pleading for us not to “redefine” marriage, do not understand that gay marriage only builds up the traditional meaning of marriage. We are not changing its meaning but merely revising the list of those to whom it is available. Not unlike the rather recent opening of legal marriage to interracial couples, the legal marriage of two same-gender people retains the traditional meaning of marriage while expanding the number of people whom it may benefit.

Some poly lesbians find it especially difficult to come out in their communities, because lesbian couples have fought so hard to gain social recognition that they are wary of anything that seems to risk undermining that recognition. The small size of such communities can make it difficult for some gays and lesbians to have the same freedom of choice and expectations of privacy that cisgender, heterosexual people enjoy. ("Anyone can know except my softball team!" is something we've heard more than once—really!—and on opposite sides of North America.) We've also heard from trans people who have been told that polyamory "de-legitimizes" them by preventing them from finding "true" intimacy. Franklin has heard people say polyamory is something that trans people settle for when they can't find "real" relationships of their own.

Data analysis has allowed Georgia Equality to let state lawmakers know where some 300,000 gays and lesbians are scattered throughout the state. For instance, as a percentage of population, Fannin and Gilmer counties in North Georgia have the fourth and fifth highest number of gay couples living together — behind only Fulton, DeKalb and Chatham counties. This is a surprising and important tidbit of information, given that House Speaker David Ralston is from Blue Ridge, located in Fannin County.

When Franklin Graham recently called for a boycott of gay-friendly companies on his Facebook page, it quickly became apparent that to follow through on his own initiative, he’d need to delete his Facebook account (he didn’t), stop using any Microsoft software, and shut down all Apple devices. When he publicly moved the bank accounts of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to BB&T Bank in protest of a Wells Fargo ad featuring a lesbian couple and their daughter, it generated this Miami Herald headline: “Billy Graham Group Moving Money to BB&T, Sponsor of Miami Beach Gay Pride Fundraiser.”110

Harold Monro, with his Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street in Bloomsbury, was a mentor and inspiration. In 1913 he had turned an eighteenth-century house into a shop, publishing house and meeting place for poets and readers. At his own expense he published poetry and edited The Poetry Review. The shop was on the ground floor. The poet Amy Lowell called it a room rather than a shop. There was a coal fire, comfortable chairs, a cat and a couple of dogs. Offices were on the first floor, poetry readings were held on the second, and at the top were two attic rooms for poets and artists who needed cheap lodgings.

Mopai's stories draw us into the lives of South Africans- from a lesbian couple trying to survive homophobia, to a woman living with albinism and insists on staring down at misogynist violence in many forms- from sex-for-grade abuse in college campuses to the way patriarchal societies pits women against each other to the way such patriarchy limits men's lives too. She is a superb storyteller and I'm eager to see what she does next.

At the end of the day, Esperanza stepped into Myron’s office, sat down, and said, “I don’t know much about family values or what makes a happy family. I don’t know the best way to raise a kid or what you have to do to make him happy and well adjusted, whatever the hell ‘well adjusted’ means. I don’t know if it’s best to be an only child or have lots of siblings or be raised by two parents or a single parent or a gay couple or a lesbian couple or an overweight albino. But I know one thing.” Myron

Gay and lesbian couples simply do not fit the Strict Father model of the family. Homosexuality challenges the monolithic authority of the father. And above all, it challenges the natural order, which presupposes that sex is heterosexual sex in which men are dominant over women and that, in a family, this natural order carries over to the moral order. But

At the end of the day, Esperanza stepped into Myron’s office, sat down, and said, “I don’t know much about family values or what makes a happy family. I don’t know the best way to raise a kid or what you have to do to make him happy and well adjusted, whatever the hell ‘well adjusted’ means. I don’t know if it’s best to be an only child or have lots of siblings or be raised by two parents or a single parent or a gay couple or a lesbian couple or an overweight albino. But I know one thing.” Myron looked up at her and waited. “No child could ever be harmed by having you in his life.” Esperanza

The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as "nominal Christians," and those they brand with the curse of "secular humanist," are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice.

It’s also a shame because I didn’t have John McEnroe pegged as an idiot. He seems bright, funny and quite liberated. Only a couple of weeks ago, he posted a great vlog about equal marriage in reply to some dodgy comments about lesbians by Margaret Court.

Elane Photography’s owners were fined more than $6,000 for declining on religious grounds to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. A small family bakery was fined $135,000 for refusing to bake the wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. And seventy-year-old Barronelle Stutzman was sued for declining to make floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding.8 Stutzman, who has employed gays and lesbians since opening her store, had for ten years designed arrangements for the couple that sued her. Her only objection was to lending her artistic talents to their wedding celebration. Here

From that moment on, I never had another heated argument or conversation about my sexuality because my mother could not understand how anyone could turn their back on their child, regardless of the choices they made. Grateful for that intrinsic belief deep in her heart and soul, I realized the suffering of that lesbian couple she witnessed changed something in my mother’s heart that day.

We had a couple of dates, which were fine. She was a very politically active lesbian, working for international agencies on human rights issues, and while my queerness is very real and important, I am not that gung-ho. It meant I wondered what she saw in me. It turned out she was new in town and hoping I could integrate her into the scene. She also, in every single one of her texts, pretended to be a robot. 'Boop beep,' she'd add. 'Beep boop.

Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).

Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).14 Still, both Rent and Spring Awakening ultimately use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. Angel serves as the emotional touchstone of Rent, endlessly generous and hopeful, caring and sensitive. All mourn his death, which compels the other characters to look at their lives and choices. That Angel’s death enables the other characters to learn about themselves replicates a typical (tired) trope in which an Other (usually a person of color or a person with a disability) aids in the self-actualization of the principal character. Also, Collins and Angel have the most loving and healthy relationship, which the musical needs to eliminate so as not to valorize the gay male couple above all else. In addition, Joanne and Maureen sing a lively number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” but the musical doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Maureen is presented as a fickle, emotionally abusive, yet irresistible lover (Joanne and Mark’s duet, “The Tango Maureen”) and a less-than-accomplished artist (her “The Cow Jumped over the Moon” is a parody of performance art).15 In contrast, Mimi

Both Angela and Pamela were blissfully unaware of the door being opened, and Robynne watched the couple’s embrace in silence.

The case of Emily was a good one.

SUZY BYRNE: I remember being at Lesbian Lives in the early 2000s where people were criticising the way in which the debate was taking place, who was leading it, that it was very male, and that it didn’t look at the diversity of relationships within the community. There was a narrative of what I would have identified as ‘the Good Gay’ … gay and lesbian couples that are monogamous, buy houses and fit in with everybody else. It became very conservative. I’m firmly in favour of marriage equality, but I want to see other forms of relationships recognised. But there’s an awful lot of conservatism and tut-tutting – not just in Ireland, it’s happening internationally, where everybody now sees marriage equality as the thing to go for because it fits into a model of the family. And I very naively maybe thought we would have a range of relationship formations recognised. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties produced a document that Fiona de Londras, Marie Mulholland and people in the ICCL worked on, which had a range of relationship recognition options in it. We don’t talk about those things anymore.

Kieran Rose, chair and co-founder of the Gay & Lesbian Equality Network, accuses the protesters of practising ‘more radical than thou’ politics. ‘I don’t see disability or refugee groups calling for a boycott,’ he says. ‘It’s an immature kind of politics, as if nobody else has opinions on immigration. You must engage with the democratically elected government. The only way not to be criticised is to do nothing. We think it’s entirely appropriate to invite the minister to a festival around the theme of “family values”. The festival has a right to invite him and there’s no connection between sexual orientation and politics. Your social class has more to do with it.’ On the face of it, there is no particular reason why gays should be on the left. In other countries, particularly in the US, many have seen their interests as being more closely aligned with the libertarian right and with neo-liberalism, agrees Sheehan. ‘Lesbians and gays don’t fit into any particular political group,’ he says. ‘Maybe activism has tended to be of the left, but there are also many people who identify socially but not politically with the community. But a lesbian and gay film festival will always be a political event when a gay couple can’t walk down a Dublin street hand in hand.

An old cowboy goes into a bar and orders a drink. As he sits there sipping his whiskey, a young lady sits down next to him. She turns to the cowboy and asks him, “Are you a real cowboy?” He replies, “Well, I’ve spent my whole life on the ranch, herding horses, mending fences, and branding cattle, so I guess I am.” She says, “I’m a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I shower or watch TV, everything seems to make me think of women.” A little while later, a couple sits down next to the old cowboy and asks him, “Are you a real cowboy?” He replies, “I always thought I was, but I just found out I’m a lesbian.

I know the adolescent phenomenon of staring wistfully out of a rainy car window and pretending you're in an Avril Lavigne music video doesn't belong exclusively to lesbians, but I'm talking about the collective energy of this experience. Lesbians are the energy of staring wistfully out of a rainy car window and pretending you're in an Avril Lavigne music video, personified. And that's because yearning is an inherent part of the queer female experience. And I'm not talking about, like, the 2018 awards cycle, when Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga essentially performed yearning to sell their movie. I'm also not talking about Sally Rooney's Normal People, which is about a heterosexual couple who, for reasons unbeknownst, cannot be together because one plays football and the other one... reads books? Straight people, someone needs to tell you this once and for all. You are allowed to be together. You have always been allowed to be together. Romeo and Juliet is essentially hetero fanfic about what it's like to be gay. Your parents hate each other-who cares! For people who experience same-sex attraction, sometimes yearning is all we have. For me, yearning used to be everything-so much so that it damaged the relationships in my adult life. But before I had yearning, I existed in the Thirst Vacuum-a space that was so dark, so desolate, I couldn't yearn for anyone at all.

But efficient sex was not amazing sex. The best sex going on in Masters and Johnson’s lab was the sex being had by the committed gay and lesbian couples. Not because they were practicing special secret homosexual sex techniques, but because they “took their time.” They lost themselves—in each other, and in sex. They “tended to move slowly…and to linger at…[each] stage of stimulative response, making each step in tension increment something to be appreciated….” They teased each other “in an obvious effort to prolong the stimulatee’s high levels of sexual excitation.

According to Aristophanes, there were originally 3 sexes. The children of the moon, who were half male and half female. The children of the sun, who were fully male, and the children of the earth, who were fully female. Everyone had four arms, four legs, and two heads, and spent their days in blissful contentment. Zeus became jealous of the humans joy, so he decided to split them all in two. Aristophanes called this punishment "The Origin of Love", because ever since the children of the earth, moon, and sun have been searching the globe in a desperate bid to find their other halves. Aristophanes' story though isn't complete, because there was also a fourth sex, the children of the dirt. Unlike the other three sexes, the children of the dirt consisted of just one half. Some were male and some were female, and each had just two arms, two legs, and one head. The children of the dirt found the children of the earth, moon, and sun to be completely insufferable. Whenever they saw a two-headed creature walking by, talking to itself in baby talk voices, it made them want to vomit. They hated going to parties. When there was no way to get out of one they simply sat in the corner, too bitter and depressed to talk to anyone. The children of the dirt were so miserable that they invented wine and art to dull their pain. It helped a little, but not really. When Zeus went on his rampage, he decided to leave the children of the dirt alone. "They're already fucked" he explained. Happy gay couples descend from the children of the sun. Happy lesbian couples descend from the children of the earth. And happy straight couples descend from the children of the moon. But the vast majority of humans are descendants of children of the dirt, and no matter how long they search the earth they'll never find what they're looking for. Because there's nobody for them, not anybody in the world.

Dearly beloved... The president’s daughter and Cameron Roberts faced each other, hands lightly clasped, eyes locked. I, Blair Allison Powell, take you, Cameron Reed Roberts, to be my friend, my lover, the mother of my children, and my wife. I will be yours in times of plenty and in times of want, in times of sickness and in times of health, in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in times of failure and in times of triumph. I promise to cherish and respect you, to care for and protect you, to comfort and encourage you, and to stay with you, for all eternity. A willowy blonde stepped to Blair’s side, and Blair lifted a gleaming gold band from her palm. She lifted Cam’s left hand and slid the ring securely on her third nger. With this ring, I thee wed. Cameron Roberts’s gaze never wavered from Blair’s face, her voice ringing strong and clear. I, Cameron Reed Roberts, take you, Blair Allison Powell, to be my friend, my lover, the mother of my children, and my wife. I will be yours in times of plenty and in times of want, in times of sickness and in times of health, in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in times of failure and in times of triumph. I promise to cherish and respect you, to care for and protect you, to comfort and encourage you, and to stay with you, for all eternity. Roberts accepted the matching ring from a young dark-haired woman who leaned on a plain wood cane, and slipped it onto Blair’s nger. With this ring, I thee wed. An anticipatory breath shuddered through the crowd. Six uniformed of cers, the Guard of Honor, stepped in sync to form a path from the proceedings area, facing one another in a line, white-gloved hands on shining saber hilts. By the power vested in me by the United States Army, the President of the United States, and the Commonwealth of... The three male and three female of cers drew their swords with a slick of steel, their blades raised and touching to form the Arch of Sabers. ...I pronounce you wed. The couple kissed, the crowd clapped...

Tuesday and Wednesday flew by. Dylan from 5B came over on Thursday. I didn’t smoke any pot, but I let him hotbox my apartment so I was even more completely stoned than I was the time before, except this time my eyebrows remained intact. We watched three episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and laughed our asses off. Dylan was actually pretty cute. He was tall and skinny and pale with buzzed hair, but he had these really blue eyes. That night he helped me carry my laundry to the basement. “Hey Kate, you wanna go to the skate park with me tomorrow night?” “I can’t, I have a date with a lesbian.” His eyes shot open. “Oh, cool.” “It’s not what you think.” He smiled and shrugged. “It’s your business. Aren’t you still dating that douche wad in 9A?” “Stephen? No, he dumped me last week. He’s dating someone else already.” “His loss.” He said it so quickly and nonchalantly that I almost believed him. We got to the basement door. Dylan pushed it open and walked in but paused in front of me. I leaned around his body and saw Stephen making out with a different girl than he had been with earlier that week. At first I didn’t recognize her, and then I saw her token pink scrunchie bobbing above her head. It was the bimbo from the sixth floor. Every time I saw her she was with a different guy. Stephen turned and spotted me. “Kate, I thought you did your laundry on Mondays?” I contemplated sharing my thoughts on women in their thirties who still wear colorful hair pretties, but I chose to take the high road. Anyway, one or both of them would undoubtedly have a venereal disease by the end of the week, and that was my silver lining. “Don’t talk to me, Stephen.” I coughed and mumbled, “Pencil dick” at the same time. Dylan stayed near the door. Everyone in the room watched me as I emptied my laundry bag into a washer. I added soap, stuck some quarters in, closed the lid, and turned to walk out. Just as I reached the opening, Dylan pushed me against the doorjamb and kissed me like he had just come back from war. I let him put on a full show until he moved his hand up and cupped my breast. I very discreetly said, “Uh-uh” through our mouths, and he pulled his hand away and slowed the kiss. When we pulled apart, I turned toward Stephen and the bimbo and shot them an ear-splitting smile. “Hey, Steve”—I’d never called him Steve—“Will you text me when the washer is done? I’ll be busy in my apartment for a while.” He nodded, still looking stunned. I grabbed Dylan’s hand and pulled him into the elevator. Once the doors were closed, we both burst into laughter. “You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “I wanted to. That asshole had it coming.” “Well, thank you. You live with your mom, right?” “Yeah.” “Please don’t tell her about this. I can’t imagine what she would think of me.” “I’m not that much younger than you, Kate.” He jabbed me in the arm playfully and smirked. “You need to lighten up. Anyway, my mom would be cool with it.” “Well, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong idea.” “Nah. We’re buddies, I get it. I’m kind of in love with that Ashley chick from the fourth floor. I just have to wait until next month when she turns eighteen, you know?” He wiggled his eyebrows. I laughed. “You two would make a cute couple.” If only it were that simple.

We believe that patriarchal investment in hierarchy is so strong that even homosexuality, lesbianism, or any sexual response choice is not a threat to patriarchy as long as it supports hierarchy. Primary relationships do support hierarchy . It is well within the scope of current patriarchal boundaries for two lesbians to live as a suburban couple, have children, own a home, have two cars and be accepted at a progressive block party. Heterosexuality may be a prevalent example of male dominance, but it is not the prime mover of patriarchy - hierarchy is. If women choose to challenge patriarchy at its root, it will be in what we create with equality and not with whom we have sex.

It’s broken!” Gieo stumbled back out of the airship crash with a cornucopia of devices cradled in her arms, discarding most of them as she went, finally filtering down to one specific machine, no bigger than a television remote, hemorrhaging copper wires. “What is it?” Fiona asked, hoping it wasn’t something useful she might later steal. “It’s a Sapphic Intimate-Encounter Reciprocity Concluder,” Gieo said glumly. “Um…okay…what does it do?” “Only let’s a lesbian couple know when they’re done having sex, duh,” Gieo said. “Without it, girl-girl sex could hypothetically go on indefinitely. I mean, how else would you know when you were done?” “Usually when everyone’s happy or my jaw starts hurting.” “You’ve clearly had better lovers than me.