• Cynthia Stewart, a 17-year-old junior in Alabama, event planner on the prom committee and out lesbian, allegedly asked her high school principal if she could bring her girlfriend as her date and was told no. When Stewart’s aunt/guardian appealed the principal’s decision to the school board, they let it stand. Happy prom, kids! [Feministing]
• For the first time ever, the Mormon church has announced support for gay rights legislation by speaking up for Salt Lake City laws which would ban discrimination against gays in housing and employment. The church still says it doesn’t support gay marriage, though. [CBSNews.com]

Depending on what kind of high school you attended and what part of the country you grew up in, you’re probably well aware of school dress codes: no miniskirts, no baseball hats, no gang colors, etc. But some kids who are challenging their dress code aren’t just trying to flash a skimpy thong to get the QB’s attention: they’re trying to express their opposite-sex gender identity. Now, increasingly, high school administrators have to navigate tricky situations and questions, such as What do we do when Bobby comes to school wearing a dress, high-heeled boots and eyeliner?

I am currently seeing this really great girl. She’s smart, sweet and really fun to be around. We agree on a lot of things. We both hate the death penalty, love pizza and enjoy hanging out—sometimes illegally—on rooftops overlooking New York City. There is one thing, however, that we just can’t see eye-to-eye on. It’s not, as you would think, what to do on Saturday or where to have dinner or which baseball team is the best. Surprisingly, the issue that we butt heads on the hardest is gay marriage.

Boo! Maine, you FAIL. In yesterday’s election, Maine voters repealed a gay marriage law which would have made it the sixth state in America where gays have the right to marry just like straight couples. Instead, Maine has the dubious distinction of being the 31st state to make gay marriage verboten. It’s a total bummer that this kind of bigotry came from the people up; the gay marriage law had actually passed through the state legislature and was signed by the governor six months ago. The trouble was that gay rights opposition groups were hot on the politicians’ tails and immediately mobilized voters to repeal the law. Sorry, my dears, but at least you can still get married in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa, right? [ABC News]

Further proof some men don’t know jack about women: Esquire magazine says chicks go bananas for vampire love stories because we lust after ... wait for it ... gay guys. Gay guys don’t want to be with us the way vampires can’t be with us and you know us ladies: we just want what we cannot have.

No, I’m not buying it either.

There was a huge gay rights march in Washington, D.C. this weekend and “The Daily Show” had its best man on the case. John Oliver hit the streets to talk with rainbow-wearing folks about their nefarious aims—equal rights, fair treatment, dangerous things like that. Brace yourself, folks, because they’re here, they’re queer, and they have a gay agenda.

Following Meghan McCain‘s tweets has always been a strange endeavor. Under the Twitter handle mccainbloggette, Sen. John McCain’s 24-year-old daughter is as likely to tweet “God bless the troops!” as she is “Off to Perez Hilton’s party!” She doesn’t tackle many tricky political issues, but follow her Twitter feed and read her columns for The Daily Beast and it’s clear there is one social issue dear to her heart: gay rights. The girl’s a Grade-A fag hag—there’s no question about it. Just read how aflutter she got this weekend, tweeting while thousands of people marched in Washington, D.C. for marriage equality.

We’re not just the first generation to elect a black president—some say we’re also the first generation in which gay teenagers feel safe coming out to their parents and classmates. In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine cover story, writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis chronicled how adolescents are so much more confident telling their friends, families and parents that they’re gay at younger ages than ever before. Just how young? The author spent time with middle schoolers across the country who’ve come out of the closet at 13, 12, and even 11 years old.

“The Newlywed Game” has been on the air since 1967 and in all those, oh, thousands of episodes they have never included a gay couple. Why? Because the rules of the show specifically state that the couple must be legally married, which whittles the number of same-sex candidates down significantly. Thankfully, the show, which now airs on the Game Show Network (GSN) and is hosted by Carnie Wilson, is about to welcome its first gay couple to the stage. And it’ll be Mr. Sulu from “Star Trek!” Yep, George Takei and his partner, Brad Altman, will be appearing on the show in October for a special celebrity episode. They’ll be going head-to-head with Davy Jones of The Monkees and his new bride, Christopher Knight and Adrianne Curry, and Jonny Fairplay of “Survivor” and his lady. Davy Jones was my childhood crush, so I sort of hope he wins, but I think Takei has it in the bag. This couple got married last year in Los Angeles, before the whole Proposition 8 thing, and just celebrated their first anniversary. But they’ve been together for 22 years.

Well, this is novel. A fine wine purveyor is targeting gay men with a line of special wines. Spanish UO! Wines has three vino options: Antinoo, Oscura Lágrima, and Ánima Blanca. Antinoo is a red: “young and mature, fruity, elegant, smooth…Mediterranean.” Oscura Lágrima, another red, is described thusly: “They say that the best sex is tumultuous like a storm cloud, and we’re inclined to agree.” Ánima Blanca is a white: “It’s fresh on the palate, potent…like a low whisper floating at you from behind your neck at just the right time.” Steamy! Nothing sells wine like sex, one imagines. Every bottle label features a hot, ripped dude in various stages of bondage/undress. Kinky! But where’s the line of wines for the lesbian ladies, UO!? [Notcot]

“My mom started asking when I was 12, ‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’ I then told her I was bisexual. And she said, ‘You’re so trendy, but you are not bisexual, you are gay.’ She cut to the chase. What can I say?

—Michael Kors, “Project Runway” judge and fashion designer. [Vanity Fair]

I gotta say, given that it’s 2009 and all, I’m just not impressed with how gay and lesbian folks are portrayed on television. Sure, you might see gay couples on TV, particularly of the lesbian variety. But often, these portrayals smack of being publicity stunts. This week, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation did a study of how the biggest 15 networks represented LGBT characters in their shows last season. They looked for shows that reflected “the lives of gay, bisexual and transgender people.” And, of course, they found that HBO did the best—with 42 percent of its prime-time programming hours devoted to this. Showtime, with shows like “The L Word” and ‘‘The United States of Tara,” was next with a 26 percent. But once the study got to the more mainstream media, the numbers dropped significantly. Of the five major networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW—ABC ranked the highest with 24 percent. NBC had only eight percent, and CBS came in with a pathetic five percent. At first glance, these numbers don’t sound too terrible. But I’m going to go ahead and argue that things are a lot grimmer than they appear.

When my boyfriend IM’d me something called “Swedish Lesbians Suck Sperm Banks Dry,” I initially thought he was just horny. But, lo and behold, it’s actually an article about how more lesbian couples in Sweden are using donor sperm from fertility clinics for artificial inseminations. In fact, one Swedish hospital reported an 18-month backlog for baby juice! In a roundabout way, the spike in lesbians at sperm banks is good news: Swedish law changed in 2005 to allow gay women the right to fertility treatments at the country’s hospitals. Though The Register calls this the “problem” contributing to the backlog, we think reproductive justice is awesome. Whip out your Playboys, Swedish dudes. Lesbians of Sweden who want to be mommies need you! [The Register UK]

If gays can’t marry, no one will. That’s the point of view of some clergy in the Refuse To Sign movement, who believe that gay marriage should be legal everywhere, but individual churches should be allowed to choose whether or not to perform the unions.

While some clergy won’t perform any weddings or sign marriage certificates to straight couples, other clergy members will still announce, “I now pronounce you husband and wife” but will request the straight couples have a judge sign their marriage certificates instead.

Perez Hilton just got more hate-able: the bottom-feeding gossip blogger told The Advocate, a gay magazine, that during his fight with Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas, “I thought about calling him the n-word, but I thought the f-word was even worse.”

“I see an exciting adventure in your future, a new sexual experience that forever changes you,” she said, tracing the sole of my foot with one soft fingertip. Her husband grinned at me from the bed. I sat half-naked in the overstuffed armchair and trembled with nerves.

This is not how I’d imagined my first — or any — threesome. I’m not bisexual, and I can count the number of times I’ve been physically attracted to a woman on one hand, with two fingers left over.

Of course, sexual health educators should still teach everyone to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS. But researchers have created an interactive online “HIV/AIDS Atlas,” which shows how only one-fifth of America’s counties make up 80 percent of the cases. It’s sometimes hard to make public health topics “interesting” and “cool,” but a map does a good job of it!