Maman Poulet

So Time Magazine picked ‘us’ as their person of the year. The Advocate which is the USA’s leading lesbian and gay magazine has profiled gay bloggers in their current issue. These are people who are gay who blog about politics and culture generally and not solely on lgbt related issues. The piece of course forgets about lesbians who blog in the USA and I’d like to correct that and nominate Pam Spaulding @ Pam’s House Blend, one of my favourite blogs, and recommend her to you!

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For those who’s Xmas is rather too straight….
Coming Out on Christmas Day – Sydney’s Lesbian and Gay Choir

Home for Christmas – Over Christmas dinner Annie tells her family that she’s a lesbian.

I saw Daddy kissing Santa Claus – Ru Paul

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A Waitrose spokseperson says: “For too long prunes have been the least glamorous ingredient in our larder but we are expecting a real run on them.

An unfortunate turn of phrase to describe this weeks Nigella effect on sales of certain goods in UK supermarkets. Last week it was goose fat, this week it’s prunes.

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Excuse me whilst I have a tuppence inspired paper round moment!

The Irish Independent tells us today that Fine Gael’s Jim O’Leary is breaking new ground in webcasting his message for the under 35 age group and he’s paying some company money for it too! Should have gone to the Blogging the Election Conference Jim – we’d have saved you a lot of cash! It’s all very blue don’t you think?
Anyway back to the indo report (reg req.) on the matter.

A DUBLIN councillor has become the first politician to start webcasting his message in advance of the upcoming election.  

Complete rubbish – Brody, Dominic and Thomas would say otherwise.

Jim O’Leary might be the first politician to press release about it though.

This moment was brought to you courtesy of my second ciggie of the day. By the way Simon has been busy with his camcorder and I’m glad to know someone else has a thing for Tommy’s Wonderland!

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Having sorted out this issue (quite nicely thank you, still pinching myself) I am now on the trail of a new abode. It being at least 11 years since I went flat hunting, the property rental market in Dublin has changed considerably. In fact Morgan I can’t remember how we got that former massage parlour in South Richmond Street? (All Ireland Weekends were quite amusing there actually with the intercom going and drunken guys saying ‘I want a massage’. ‘Well you won’t find one here’ says me…) The Bretzel on a Sunday around the corner was bliss though – now I have a longing on me for a cheese bun.

So the changes in 2006 Dublin? A Bedsit is now a studio. A one bed apartment may also be a studio depending on the craftiness of the landlord. The Evening Press is no longer with us and the Evening Herald is no longer the place to look for the des res of your choice.

These days the place to go is Daft.ie, and one can set up email alerts to get immediate notification of places in your desired locale and price range being advertised. Then if you are sat on your PC you read the email, decide if you want to view/know more and ring the number or email through the site and hope for a viewing. I have learnt the following from this process…

1. Be online every morning and hang around a bit

2. Prepare to be amongst many others who are doing the same.

3. Develop sixth sense when ringing agency to ascertain how many other people are interested. Be pushy when asking additional questions to get answers- it’s a landlords market, they don’t want to answer questions but make them anyway.

4. If you get told about the viewing time don’t always assume that viewing will take place. Two viewings have been cancelled whilst I was en route.

5. If you do get inside the door of the advertised accomodation prepare to do a version of the job interview if you like the place. And as for the references? Many want the oaths of landlords, employers, bank!! etc. How does one say I don’t have a landlord’s reference – and no you can’t ask my ex what I was like to live with!
There are definitely some scams operating on daft.ie. The beautiful two bed townhouse in Drumcondra which was going for €1000 a month earlier this week (beautiful sofa, kitchen and dining table and leather chairs) had a landline voicemail system in operation – by the time I emailed about it 20 others had got there before me. I still couldn’t believe how little the rent was. Anyway I wished who ever got the house well and knew I would not hear back from the landlord. Then last night the same land lord and phone number was advertising a two bed apartment in the IFSC for €1000 – I started to smell something – there is no way in hell that a 2 bed in Ireland’s Canary Wharf (ok I’m being generous) only goes for €1000 a month.

As the rental market slows before the festive season I am left hoping that maybe prospective renters will go on their holidays and I will be left alone glued to my screen and some lovely one bedroomed (with seperate living room) flat with a decent kitchen in Dublin 1, 3, 5, 7 or 8 will come up. I’m even touting myself to landlords through Daft’s tenant database – but I’ll let ye dig around for that particular ad yourselves – far too embarrassed by the crap I said about myself there to do a link to it!!!

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Ten years after the party passed a motion onthe matter (proposed by yours truly) at a party conference in Limerick, today the Labour Party have published a Civil Union Bill to be debated in the Dáil during private members time.

I could say about time but really it’s a bit late into the ‘game’ really and not enough. The bill only applies to same sex couples and would guarantee rights in pensions, property, family and other areas. The opportunity to guarantee full equality and not to treat lesbian and gay couples like second class citizens has been lost by the Party.

However this bill is another example of a bump on the road to Mullingar. Unlike Fine Gael’s policy on same-sex citizenship the Labour Party’s bill deals with the issue of adoption. Whether the party spokespeople actually really understand the issues involved in lesbian and gay couples parenting (ie. that it’s much more than ’stranger’ adoption I don’t know and it will be interesting to see the issue debated further.

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Hardly surprising really but Katherine Zappone and Anne Louise Gilligan have lost their High Court Challenge to have their Canadian Marriage recognised in Ireland. They’ll be off to appeal this to the Supreme Court no doubt. Later today there will be further developments outside the legal arena towards recognising same sex partnerships. More on Maman Poulet later.

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Bernie Goldbach was looking for someone – probably me –  to bite in his latest edition of podcasting.ie. 

Goddess forbid that any of the students who made the podcast that I wrote about here would actually talk about or respond to the issues made in the post or comments. And of course actually talking to Travellers might be too much of a good idea also. Ah no just read out the most patronising rant on Travellers which totally misunderstands and wrongly interprets Traveller culture, ethnicity and identity. 

The rant in question by Brenda Power, of course is couched in the ‘even if I say this I’m being accused of racism’ (taken from Ian O’Doherty) whine to cover up it’s bigotry.  And from my experience Travellers are so tired of dealing with racism institutionally and otherwise and trying to live their lives to mount any sort of response.

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There is an interesting viewer generated media experiement taking place on Newsnight on BBC2 at the moment. An Invitation for videos was issued by Jeremy Paxman and a shortlist of 13 videos are now on the Newsnight blog for the public to view, vote on and five videos will be shown in January. Somewhat related to Simon McGarr’s Votetube.org project, it makes for interesting viewing.

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Lesbian to have baby.  Not just any lesbian but the daughter of Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States.

This annunciation has the left and right of US politics all over the place. Is Mary really putting it up to her Dad on his refusal to suport same sex marriage? The Evangelicals are of course apopletic with concerns for this fatherless baby (now that would be an immaculate conception if ever there was one.) The ‘experts’ are also out in force saying lesbians die younger and the child could be orphaned at an early age.

Lesbian and gay family advocates point to the potential birthplace of this baby. Not Bethlehem but VIrginia. (The Joseph in this story is Heather Poe, Cheney’s long term partner.)

Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of Family Pride writes in the Advocate about the difficulties facing the couple and their child in the future.

 Mary and Heather live in Virginia. Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child. If something were to happen to Mary and Heather needed to advocate for their child in an emergency room, at school, in the courts, the state of Virginia would not recognize Heather as a parent to their child. If Mary some day chose to deny Heather access to their children in terms of custody or visitation, Heather would have no legal standing to challenge her actions. If Heather chose to walk away from her life with Mary and their family, Mary would have no recourse to pursue child support to help her care for and raise the children that together she and Heather brought into the world.

So all eyes then will be on the trip from Bethlehem Virginia to Nazereth Boston (Where same sex couples can get married.

Julie Bindel in the Guardian gives us a history lesson on pregnant lesbians, the fashion statement that they have become to some and the divisions that lesbians having babies brought about in the lesbian movement.

While the rest of us were getting on with your typical lesbian lifestyle – drinking, fighting, getting tattoos, converting as many women as possible to lezzerism, and frightening normal people in the streets by showing them our hairy armpits and extra fingers – the lesbian parents were submerged in hetero- sexual-style hell. Bathtime and bedtime stories replaced dancing to I Will Survive and I Am What I Am down at the local gay disco.

While her tounge was probably firmly in her cheek for a lot of this article, it did make me laugh as I remembered the arguments in communities and sudden changes that the couples making babies would go through as they became parents. 

 This does not just happen to lesbian communities, many single straight women are also frozen out by the baby talk of their married/coupled friends. I have often sat down one end of the table of the pub with the childless straights engaging in mutual wincing as yet more tales of episiotomies are rolled out by a mother recounting the delivery of child number 3. 

But back to Mary Cheney and her immaculate conception. The daughter of a soon to retire political figure in the USA is having a baby – it won’t make a bit of difference to same sex parents and their families. Her relationship has not impacted US policy so far. I’m sure there will be photo’s and maybe a few books and interviews, but no change in how these families are viewed and supported in the USA.

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