| Leading Mom
Betty DeGeneres talks about coming out and learning to love
Interview by Gretchen Lee
Introduction by Pam Huwig
“Somewhere along the way, people were taught that being different was a bad and fearsome thing. Now it’s got to be our job to teach a different lesson – that intolerance is unacceptable,” says Betty DeGeneres, mother and activist. When her comedian daughter came out, Betty stood beside her, and became the first straight spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign’s National Coming Out Project.
In her new book, Love, Ellen, Betty talks about coming into her own, and shares the story behind the struggle and triumph of Ellen’s coming out.
Curve spoke with DeGeneres just before her book was scheduled to go to press to find out just how much her life was changed when Ellen spoke those three little words: “Yep, I’m gay.”
Against the Current
Paddling the Colorado River’s Black Canyon
By Lucy Jane Bledsoe
Photographs by Greg Meyers
It’s not like I thought we would be in the closet. It’s just that I didn’t expect my girlfriend to tell the entire story of our relationship to all those straight guys at the first evening campfire.
All she had to do was say her name and share her reasons for making this 4-day kayaking trip through the Black Canyon (30 miles south of Las Vegas.) But Pat’s story reached back to the day we met, explaining that she should have known then what trials (her word) or adventures (mine) were in store for her. How, in her opinion, I was a regular amazon. How she was a musician, and how kayaking the Colorado River wasn’t exactly her cup of tea.
“Go ahead, honey,” I mumbled. “Why don’t you tell them about our sex life next.”
Exposures
Curve’s Fourth Annual Lesbian Life Photo Contest
The results are in! Peek through the lenses of lesbian photographers across the country for a fresh look at lesbian life – sweet, sexy, silly and solemn.
From baby dykes in bowlers to brides in white lace, this year’s collection of photos shows us the great diversity of who we are and how we live.
A Really Modern Bride
By Elizabeth Reba Weise
First comes love, then comes marriage, but what’s a feminist to do when she finally finds her match? A recent bride shares her experiences, coming to terms with the institution of marriage.
There is a call among humans to ritual, to sacred space that lifts us up and beyond ourselves, that breaks down the dailyness of life and makes us exist, for however brief a time, truly in the present. We carry within us, I believe, a deep hunger to experience that ecstatic state.
My own ignorance of that fact notwithstanding, I experienced it during our wedding. It was a new thing for me. In my travels and experiments over the years, ritual was always something I stood apart from, whether it was the masses of my Catholic high school, the Passover seders friends have invited me to, the temples I’d visited in China.
Her Darkest Desires
By Alison Smith
Photographs by Lisa Graziano
Hair and Makeup by Nicole Connor
Self-confessed smut-peddler Tristan Taormino has made a living of talking sex. Find out what she really does at home.
Tristan Taormino answers the door of her Brooklyn apartment holding her two dogs at bay. Jordan, a Boston Terrier, inspects my boots while Reggie Love, a handsome lab-whippet mix, presses her nose firmly into my crotch.
“Don’t worry, they just want to get to know you,” she says over her shoulder as she leads us all into her sunny living room. She is wearing a striped, purple baby T-shirt, old jeans and faux leopard-skin slippers. Her shoulder-length curly brown hair is pulled back with two tiny white barrettes. Silver wire-frame glasses slip down her nose as she gently pulls on Reggie Love’s collar. She curls into the far end of the couch; Jordan jumps onto her lap and licks her chin. There is the distinct odor of Murphy’s Oil Soap in the air.
According To
Lesbians & Now – Mending the Rift
By Patricia Ireland
During a family weekend at the county home of my father’s boss, the boss’s daughter and I (we were both about six) wandered off for private games. We had stripped ourselves naked and were happily playing doctor by the time our parents found us.
On our drive back home, my mother spoke to me in a confidential tone. “You know, Patty, not all boys fall in love with girls when they grow up, and not all girls fall in love with boys. Some girls fall in love with other girls, some boys with other boys. But this makes their lives very hard.”
Her tone was entirely calm and matter-of-fact. She gave no clue as to what had prompted the discussion.
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