Latest Lesbian Stories

By Cynthia Littleton LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sometime around the middle of last month, "The L Word" became a digital media success story for Showtime. With the start of its third season in January, the ensemble drama series following a group of lesbian friends in Los Angeles began generating more than a third of all the traffic on the Showtime Web site. Clips from "L Word" episodes make up the top 10 video clips streamed on the site. Downloads of the show's podcasts have...

By Chris JohnsonLONDON -- Gay and lesbian civil partnerships -- better known as "gay marriage" -- could bring lasting health benefits to same-sex couples, researchers said on Tuesday.Doctors already know that marriage benefits the health of both sexes in a variety of ways. British scientists said civil partnerships for gay couples were likely to offer similar advantages."Marriage confers health benefits on men and women and similar benefits could arise from same-sex civil...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Logo, MTV Networks' new gay- and lesbian-themed channel, said Monday that it has four original scripted series in development, including two animated projects. The animated series are the gay domestic comedy "Rick and Steve" and "Slink," centering on five lesbian cats who inherit a mansion in Malibu. "The Rules: A Lesbian Survival Guide" is a live-action comedy about a single woman looking for love, based on the short film by Michelle Paradise and...

By Kirk Honeycutt PARK CITY, Utah (Hollywood Reporter) - Sundance has always been a huge showcase for women directors, so the fact that I saw so many films by women in the first few days is no surprise. What is refreshing, though, is that these directors have moved beyond the rhetoric of feminism to enter into the lives of today's women with a sense of discovery. These films -- in each case written by its woman director -- zero in on the ties that come unraveled in the lives of...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's blood donor service has banned blood from sexually active homosexual men due to a higher risk of HIV, it said on Thursday, provoking an angry response from gay activists."A man who has had sex with another man within the last five years, whether oral or anal sex, with or without a condom ... is not permitted to donate blood and must please not do so," Sapa news agency quoted the head of the South African National Blood Service, Dr. Robert...

By Palash KumarNEW DELHI (Reuters) - The arrest of four people on charges of homosexuality and running an online gay club in northern India has triggered criticism by NGOs and the United Nations' AIDS body, UNAIDS.Police in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, said the young men arrested last week had dozens of members in their secret Internet club.Homosexuality is illegal in India but is prevalent undercover. Many night clubs in New Delhi and other cities even host secret gay and...

By Gershwin Wanneburg JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's top court said on Thursday it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry, putting it on track to become the first African country to legalize same-sex marriage. The Constitutional Court told parliament to amend marriage laws to include same-sex partners within the year -- a step that would make South Africa the fifth country in the world to approve gay marriage despite widespread African taboos against...

Findings reported in this week's New England Journal of Medicine (November 3 issue) highlight promising findings from two Seattle-based researchers on the origins of bacterial vaginosis (BV). In a collaborative effort to identify specific bacterial markers for bacterial vaginosis in vaginal-fluid samples, David Fredricks, MD, of the Program in Infectious Diseases, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Jeanne Marrazzo, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington and Harborview Medical Center...

By Jim Christie SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's highest court ruled on Monday that lesbians who conceive children while they are a couple must both be treated as parents, even if they are not registered as a couple, giving them rights and responsibilities similar to unmarried heterosexual parents. Gays in California may register as domestic partners and establish parental rights, but the rulings in three cases broke ground by holding unregistered partners to such standards....

By Lisa Baertlein SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Maria Masters became a woman in a 1986 sex change operation then experienced a series of life and romantic ups and downs before meeting her mate through matchmaker Dale Bullock. "I never did think I could find this kind of happiness in life," said house-painting contractor Masters, 61, who married Camille Quenneville in an Episcopal ceremony in 1998. As the legal debate over gay marriage rages, San Francisco-based Bullock has found a niche pairing...