With the passing of Proposition 8, 2008 has left a bad taste in a lot of our mouths.  But it would be sad to let a year full of PR triumphs for one of the hardest working and most outspoken communities slip by without acknowledging all the honors and milestones that have been achieved! So, forget the h8terade, from the death of “don’t ask, don’t tell” to the first openly gay prime time news anchor, there were a lot of wins to be proud of—just take a look at the long list of Great Gay Headlines In 2008!

Last night, I went to bed proud to be an American! But this afternoon, other issues on the ballot, like Proposition 8, made me extra blue, and not in the cool way. Sadly, some of our fellow Americans in California, Arizona, and Florida think they have the right to discriminate against homosexual love and ban an entire community from marrying. WTF?  Did you people not see how adorable the Portia and Ellen wedding pics were?! Well, looking at heterosexual divorce rates, perhaps marriage itself is the lost cause.  So, if America can’t support a partnership based on love, whose relationships should we really be concerned about? [San Francisco Chronicle]

No worries, Portia, it was all part of her gift bag for doing your wifey’s daytime talk show.  But Hayden was so excited about the cotton undies she flashed Ellen….and America!  See, stars are just like us. They love dolphins and granny panties too! Screen grab, after the jump…  [Egotastic]

Kanye West debuted the video for his single “Love Lockdown” on “The Ellen Degeneres Show”, while Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” video will air on “20/20” this Friday—“TRL” really is so over.

“My heart just feels a little bit different, softer and somehow more in love. I don’t know how. But it just feels really romantic and lovely.”—Ellen DeGeneres [AP via People]

This week, Ellen DeGeneres was announced as the new face of CoverGirl. While I’m a big fan of the very out and very outspoken talk show host, I feel a little uneasy about where CoverGirl is really coming from with their latest cover girl choice. Without a doubt, DeGeneres is likable, quirky, relatable—heck, she’s even “easy breezy.” But hawking a major cosmetics brand? I don’t know. To me, it feels gimmicky and phony, like a marketing ploy, in the same way the Dove campaign for “real beauty” did. As it turned out, Dove airbrushed those real women into oblivion. I didn’t buy that Dove ever thought real women with real cellulite and real curves were really beautiful. Nor do I buy that CoverGirl really thinks Ellen is representative of their very airbrushed All-American girl image. I mean, it’d be one thing if she were a lipstick lesbian, but does Ellen even like makeup? Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn’t. But I’m willing to bet she’s not hung up on it. Color me cynical, but using unconventional beauty to sell products designed to bring women closer to the ideal standard of conventional beauty just seems disingenuous to me. So what do you think?

Does this seem like a couple that should have ever NOT had the same right to get married as Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, Larry King and his bazillion wives, or any other couple in the universe for that matter?

This week, Barack Obama is expected to announce his running mate. Who will he choose? Many of the rumored contenders are men, but a few women, including Hillary Clinton, are rumored to have been considered. We here at the Frisky would love to see Obama pick a female as his VP. So, we’ve assembled a list of the ladies we think would make for a suitable candidate-mate.

Lesbianism is such a hot topic, some celebs even seem to be capitalizing on the media coming out party.  While faux-mo’s make us want to barf, in general, the mainstreaming of what was once considered counterculture is exciting. Now heteros can finally play Indigo Girls’ records in public without being judged!  But who are the trailblazing scissor sisters bridging their community? Since everyone’s personalities are a mixture of nurture and nature, here are the basic types of lesbians from which you can make-up the Venn diagram of lesbian society.

The Sophisticate Usually an artist or academic, this well read member of the intelligentsia is socially conscious without smelling like patchouli. An important public person, she’s a wise, loving role model. Example: Melissa Etheridge

A few photos from the upcoming issue of People, featuring newly married Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s personal wedding album are online at People.com.

Sure, there are plenty of stories in the news about women stabbing their husbands and the like, but there are also ladies who are doing spectacular things these days, especially right now with the Olympics going on. Below, ten fabulous females who make us proud.

Dara Torres
The oldest Olympic swimming medalist ever at 41, Dara Torres completed her fifth Olympic games this weekend with two silver medals, just missing a gold in the 50-meter freestyle. Not only did she prove that women can be competitive even as they get older (her age was more than the gold-and bronze-medal winners combined), but she’s also the ultimate working mother, with a two-year-old daughter named Tessa. [WSJ]

Dude, I love the Daytime Emmys. There is so much glitter and beading and cleavage, it’s not even funny. Soap stars have the most flamboyant style in Hollywood, like they don’t learn to tone it down until they land their first sitcom deal or movie role. After the jump, ten of the hottest ladies on the red carpet and picking up their awards. Forgive me if I resort to calling them by their character names.