Just In Time For Christmas

Like Fathers, Like Son

ATLANTA — At last, Chad and David Craig's quest to become fathers is over. They say they feel more happy, and more tired, than they have ever been.
The gay couple, whose attempt to create a pregnancy through a gestational surrogacy arrangement was followed last year in a Los Angeles Times series, welcomed their son, O. Jansen Hodge Craig, into their lives nine weeks ago.
"We just look at him and think he's a miracle," Chad said last week as he drew Jansen, clad in a snug jumpsuit, close to his chest. "It's something we just always believed in. Finally, he's here."
Chad and David's attempt to bring a child into the world involved a woman they barely knew. After fertilizing her eggs in vitro using both men's sperm, another woman would carry the resulting embryos to term. They had no idea whose DNA would carry the day.
Jansen's birth marked the end of a four-year journey that involved three egg retrievals, 65 eggs, seven fertilization attempts, three surrogates and more than $200,000 in expenses.
There were many ups and downs. In June 2006, Chad's sister, who had agreed to take on the role of surrogate mother, gave birth to twins, Asher and Holland. But the tiny siblings were premature and lived for only three and six days respectively.
Chad and David came out of that experience with enough hope to keep trying. They signed on with a new doctor, arranged for a third retrieval from Jessica -- the egg donor who had helped them produce the twins -- and found a new surrogate, a school crossing guard and mother of three from Massachusetts.
Finally, they had found the right components to make it work.
Jansen was born Oct. 13 at Massachusetts General Hospital, weighing 8 pounds and 2 ounces. When a nurse read out the time of birth -- 6:16 p.m. -- his fathers burst into tears. The time echoed the date of the twins' birthday: June 16.
Both Chad, 37, and David, 39, like to think that Jansen, who has a ski-slope nose and plump cheeks, bears a physical resemblance to the twins.
As for the identity of the biological father, they prefer not to know. Chad says the baby has David's chin and small nose; David thinks he has Chad's dark hair and olive skin.
As the new family settles in its Atlanta home, the surrogate continues to pump and freeze breast milk for Jansen. Each week she ships bottles from Massachusetts to Georgia packed in dry ice.
Other than that, Chad says, "we're just going through what all parents go through."
Jansen's fathers take turns feeding and changing him, fussing and fidgeting. Their favorite thing, they say, is to squat down beside his bouncy seat and caress his cheeks, tickle his feet and marvel at each small development.
Already, his blue eyes are becoming more gray, and his dark eyelashes are getting longer.
And he has begun to smile.
from The Los Angeles Times

Matthew Rhys Talks About Kevin Walker

On Brothers & Sisters, Matthew Rhys plays Kevin Walker, the family lawyer who also happens to be gay. Rhys has no trouble playing Kevin as he has portrayed homosexual characters before, and isn't worried about being stereotyped for gay roles. In fact, he has some pretty steamy love scenes with both Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller in the upcoming movie, The Edge of Love.
“That's the flip side of the coin. I mean you play the gay part and then you play the heterosexual part,” Rhys told The Star Online. “It's a balance of yin and yang, I guess.”
While Rhys is finding balance in work, his television persona is struggling to reconcile the contending forces in his life.
“He's both sides of the penny,” he said. “On a professional level, he's this very confident lawyer who knows what he's doing and does it very well. And on the flip side, his love life is a complete no-hoper. He desperately tries to put that side of his life together. ”
Clearly, Rhys' Kevin is a complex individual, although he is only one among a diverse group of characters that Brothers & Sisters show audiences every week. The series is also known for its rich but complicated themes, and its quality writing, which was what initially drew Rhys to the show.
“The writing was very strong; I hadn't read any writing of a pilot like that for a long time,” Matthew Rhys said. “You had some characters who interact beautifully on the page. [Creator and writer Jon Robin Baitz] writes conflicts so well.”
While Rhys has no qualms about his Brothers & Sisters character, there is one thing that has proven to be quite challenging: speaking with an American accent.
“I do find it difficult,” Rhys, who was born and raised in Cardiff, South Wales. “It's not something you can just do. I always work at it. It doesn't come naturally.”
He shares this burden with costar , a native of Melbourne, Australia. He and Griffiths maintain their American accent while on the set.
“When we talk in our own accent, it makes going back to the American accent so much harder,” he explained.
Rhys and Griffiths are only among the numerous foreign actors who have sought work in the United States. Rhys thinks that, in the case of British actors, the surge is mainly due to the lack of jobs in Britain.
“I'm sure very soon the Americans will grow very tired of us,” he said. “But God bless them for letting us work here.”
from Buddy TV

Eyeliner For Men?! Pencil These Guys In

When Josh Lomon brought his fashion A-game to the Kelly Clarkson concert at DAR Constitution Hall this fall, he wore skinny jeans and a dramatic necktie and topped off the ensemble with a black fedora. But his friend Mary Betancourt was taken with the thick, black rings of eyeliner around his eyes, smudged just so.
"You look so . . . affected," she said.
Guyliner. The new catchphrase for boys behaving girly, joining last year's manbags (handbags), mandals (sandals), mannies (nannies) and himbos (bimbos). It's the lexical equivalent of making pink hammers for women.
Of course, the fellas have been dipping into our makeup bags for years. (Yes, we noticed, and we have one tip: It's called blending.) But eyeliner? That can take years to master, even with coaching from teen magazines and a few shots of Jaeger.
Plus: Why? You can deal with a man who gets a manicure. You can deal with a man who handicaps "Project Runway." But eyeliner? Let's explore.
The guru of guyliner is Mr. Ashlee Simpson, a.k.a. Pete Wentz, the bassist for Fall Out Boy, who created a video for People.com on how to apply the stuff properly.
"Smear it because when you're a guy, you don't really want your makeup to look perfect," he says. "Which usually isn't a problem."
Another tip: Sleep on it. "Day-old makeup is way better."
Of course, Wentz is not the first or only guyliner aficionado. David Bowie and Alice Cooper were your frontiersmen of the '70s, and then Robert Smith, of the Cure, and Prince, rocked it in the '80s. Johnny Depp's kohl-lined eyes helped make Jack Sparrow the swishy swashbuckler we love. Pop-punk bands My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco and the Killers wear guyliner to emphasize their angst. Their darkness. You don't know my pain.
Dustin Schaad, a 22-year-old assistant buyer for a men's clothing store, doesn't leave his Silver Spring home without applying guyliner. He started wearing makeup in high school because "a little concealer goes a long way when you hit puberty," he says.
It almost always starts with the concealer. The skin-colored glop is the gateway drug of men's cosmetics. But don't call it makeup.
"You mean our enhancing and correcting line?" interrupts Marek Hewryk when asked about his men's makeup line, 4VOO (pronounced "for-vou").
4VOO sells $25 "enhancing eyeliner" in black and brown. The Canadian company even offers application instructions on its Web site, with a warning: "Apply only a fine line. Too much 4VOO enhancing eyeliner will make your eyes look hard, [whereas] a light line will define your eyes and enhance the color."
Beth Loffreda, an associate professor of English at the University of Wyoming who also teaches courses in gender and sexuality, thinks that guyliner is a byproduct of consumer culture. It's about repackaging women's products for men, therefore tapping into new markets. Is there that much difference between Nivea and Nivea for Men?
But Loffreda also sees guyliner as an outlet for men to experiment with gender roles.
"Women have for a long time always been able to treat our appearances as a kind of theater," she says. "There's no denying the pleasure of giving a really good hair performance. I think that men -- and especially straight men -- haven't had nearly as much access to that kind of theatricality and the pleasure of that theatricality."
At Bluemercury, an upscale beauty store in Dupont Circle, 25-year-old makeup artist Renee Smith says she sells eyeliner to men. And "it's not just punk rockers and gay guys."
When straight men shop for eyeliner, they tend to choose a subtle brown instead of black, then grab for the nearest cotton ball.
"They'll buy it, but they'll always take it off before they leave," says Smith, "then try it at home." Smith has been in the makeup business for three years and, while she's seen a steady increase in guyliner sales, she estimates she sells only one pencil to a man per week. (Liquid eyeliner -- not for the novice.) Clearly, some people are not hip to the trend. Sample response from a preppy-looking young man in a coffee shop, when asked if he wears eyeliner: Laughter and then, "Wait, is that a serious question?"
Ah, but might he dabble in shine-reduction powder? This is one of 4VOO's top sellers, which Hewryk promises will not alter skin color or give a matte effect like women get with their makeup. Of course, there's a word for that, too: "mancake," as in pancake foundation. To use it in a sentence: "Zac Efron, the 'High School Musical' heartthrob, is often accused of wearing mancake."
Actors have worn makeup on and off the set for decades, but Hewryk has a surprising explanation for why it's getting so much attention now: HDTV.
"There's a heavier tan and more powder. If you have high-definition TV? Wow. There's no mercy," he says. "You can see everything . . . every wrinkle."
Manly cosmetics demand manly names. Clinique's concealer for men is called "M Cover," and the company suggests applying it on shaving nicks. John Varvatos sells a steely gray canister of cream concealer in the three colors "light, medium and dark." (Women, however, have a choice of ivory, warm beige, honey and soft sable in the CoverGirl section at the drugstore.) Jean Paul Gaultier offers a line of "complexion enhancers," including "tinted brow and lash groomer," which some of us call "mascara."
Men can't use "mascara" because culturally, men can't borrow from women as easily as women can borrow from men. Nobody writes articles anymore when women wear cargo pants and baseball hats (did they ever?).
Straight men have historically had the most power in our culture, so to adopt their style is to redouble your power, says Loffreda. But for men to borrow from those who are supposedly "beneath them" is a far riskier proposition.
As university professor and cultural contemplator Camille Paglia once said, "A woman putting on men's clothes merely steals social power. But a man putting on women's clothes is searching for God."
Guyliner as spiritual quest? Maybe not.
"It's not changing the world," Schaad says. "It's just saying it's okay to be different."
Schaad and Lomon, who both swear by MAC eyeliner, say they're just fighting monotony.
"Here's the deal: Boys' clothes are so boring," says Lomon, 23. "In the end, you're going to wear a T-shirt or a button-down. So you have to do what you can."
And despite his appearance at the Kelly Clarkson concert, Lomon usually goes for the subtle look.
"People's first thought should be 'That looks amazing, his eyes really stand out,' " he says. "Not 'He's wearing makeup and he's a boy.' "
from The Washington Post

I'm Not Gay....

Reality Show Gays Are Dating

We love it when there's love in the family! And across shows, no less! So we are thrilled to share the news that our very own Dale Levitski from "Top Chef" is dating "Project Runway's" Jack Mackenroth. How did we uncover this news? We picked up the phone and called Jack, who had this to say:
"It's very baby steps. I really like him a lot. And geography is a bit of an issue, but we'll see where it goes. I like him a lot. I assume he likes me a lot. Unless he's lying...(laughter)... He's adorable. I like keeping it incestuous, keep it in the Bravo family."
SO we immediately had to call Dale, who told us,
"Yeah, we randomly met over Myspace. And then we bumped into each other at the OUT100 party and clicked. He's hilarious. We're just gonna roll with it and see what happens. And he's cute as %&#@. We have the same sense of humor. We giggle a lot, and you know, anytime you end up going through the Bravo-reality-show...we just looked at each other and said, 'yeah...'"
The picture was described to us, by the way, as "it was the first time we met. All starry-eyed and stupid."
from Out Zone TV

HIV-Positive Navy Priest Accused Of Sexual Misconduct

An HIV-positive Navy chaplain and Catholic priest who allegedly had consensual and non-consensual sex with other military men without disclosing his condition will face a court-martial, military officials said Tuesday.
The court-martial of Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee, 42, will begin on Thursday at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va.
The Archdiocese of Washington, where Lee was ordained in 1993, received allegations of sexual misconduct in June and subsequently “removed his faculties to perform Mass,” said Susan Gibbs, a diocesan spokeswoman. He also was relieved of his military duties in June, though military officials would not disclose his current duty status or unit.
As of Tuesday night, Lee was a patient at National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md. When reached by phone in his hospital room, he declined to comment on the upcoming court-martial.
“No thank you, no thank you. I don’t wish to talk,” he said, before abruptly hanging up.
The five charges Lee is facing include allegations of sodomy, aggravated assault, indecent assault, fraternization and conduct unbecoming a military officer, according to a statement issued by the Marine Corps officials Tuesday night.
The Marine Corps did not offer any details regarding the victims in the case. Sources said the sexual partners in question are all men.
Sources said Lee has tested positive for HIV, which could explain the aggravated assault charges. In cases dating back to 1987, military prosecutors have brought criminal charges for HIV-positive troops who have unprotected sex and fail to inform their partners. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in 1991 approved the use of the aggravated assault charge in such cases.
Lee served as a chaplain at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., from 2003 to 2006, and then he was transferred to Quantico, according to military records.
From April 2001 to September 2003, Lee was stationed in Gaeta, Italy, with Naval Forces Europe, 6th Fleet Detachment, and on the guided-missile cruiser Port Royal from 1998 to 2001, records show.
Lee grew up near Philadelphia and graduated from the seminary St. Charles Borromeo in Wynnewood, Pa., in 1987, Navy records show.
A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese for the Military Services declined to comment on the case. A spokeswoman from the Naval Academy also declined to comment Tuesday night.
More than 25 priests working in the military diocese have faced allegations of sexual misconduct in the past 30 years.
“We believe that the problem may be worse in the military than in other dioceses,” said David Clohessy, the national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a victim’s advocacy group.
“For a sex offender priest, the military is very attractive because of the transience of military families and the even greater authority and trust that comes with having two titles — both a priest and an officer,” Clohessy said.
The Archdiocese for the Military Services has one of the largest member populations in the United States, and its geography spans the globe.
from Navy Times

Jesse Metcalfe Goes Gay

Actor Jesse Metcalfe has been snapped holding a plaque that reads 'gay'.
But it was only for an awards ceremony at London nightclub G-A-Y to celebrate its 15th birthday.
Jesse was presented with a special award, bearing the club's name.
On-off girlfriend Nadine Coyle shared the stage with the Desperate Housewives actor as he accepted the tribute.
The Girls Aloud star, 22, was performing with her bandmates.
Jesse cuddled her on-stage so looks as if the pair are definitely back together.
from Now Magazine

Court Says Sperm Donor Liable For Child Support

NEW YORK - A Nassau County man who said he donated sperm to a female co-worker as a friendly gesture - and then sent presents and cards to the child over the years - is legally considered the father and may have to pay child support for the college-bound teenager, according to a judge's ruling.
"What's the saying? No good deed goes unpunished," said Deborah Kelly, a Garden City lawyer for the man, who acknowledged that he is named as the father on the child's birth certificate.
Like all the involved parties, the man remains anonymous because of privacy concerns.
Nassau County Family Court Judge Ellen Greenberg ruled on Nov. 16 that despite the mother's willingness to have the child's DNA tested, the man was barred from seeking a paternity test to determine if he is truly the father because the results could have a "traumatic effect" upon the child, who is now 18 years old and lives in Oregon with the mother. The next step is a meeting with a support magistrate to determine the amount of child support payments - if any - the man would have to pay until the teen turns 21, Kelly said.
The magistrate will determine child support based on the mother's earning capacity; the reported income of her female partner; and the income of the father.
Even without genetic evidence, the man's interactions with the child over the years had a patriarchal nature, said Jeffrey Herbst, an attorney who represents the mother in the lawsuit through a federal agreement called the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act.
"It's still a parental relationship," Herbst said.
According to the man's testimony, in the late 1980s he was a physician at the same Nassau County hospital where the child's mother was a resident. After learning the woman and her female partner wanted to have a baby, the man donated his sperm and the woman gave birth on July 26, 1989. Married at the time, the man agreed that he would not have any rights or benefits in raising the child, but the verbal agreement was never put in writing, according to court documents.
Still, he took the unusual step of allowing his name to appear on the child's birth certificate because he thought it was in the child's "best interests that he would have an identity when he grew older," he said in court documents.
Before the mother, her partner, and the child moved to Oregon in 1993, the man had contact with the child, according to court documents. He also sent the child money, gifts, and cards and letters signed "Dad" or "Daddy," and spoke to him by phone about seven times in the past 15 years.
That correspondence, coupled with an affidavit from the child stating that he "has never known anyone other than [the man] to be his father," is enough for a parental relationship, according to Herbst.
"The fact of the matter is that he held himself out as the child's father for 18 years until he asked for DNA testing," Herbst said.
In the murky legalities of artificial insemination by a known donor, the best protections are to have everything in writing and "do your homework," said reproductive lawyer Melissa Brisman of Park Ridge, N.J.
"You can't be half a father, and half a not, under the law," she said.
But the man's trust was abused, his lawyer said.
"The doctor was told this is how it's going to be," Kelly said. "And 18 years later, you end up dealing with something that you didn't know you were going to deal with. Sometimes people aren't really thinking about the legal ramifications."
from Newsday

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