Lesbian Couples First To Legally Marry In Portugal, Study Finds Children Of Lesbians Happier And Healthier, AIDS Lifecycle, New Reported HIV Infections Baseline Rather Than Decline

A lesbian couple wed Monday in Portugal, the first same sex service since the predominately Catholic country passed legislation in May allowing gay marriage. Teresa Pires and Helena Paixao, a couple since 2003, married in a fifteen minute ceremony as a Lisbon registry office. Said Pires, “this is a great victory, a dream come true. Now we’re a family, that’s the important thing.” The divorced mothers, both in their thirties, added that they would continue to fight for full gay equality, including the right to adopt. The couple is in fact instrumental in bringing about the legalization of gay marriage in Portugal; in 2006, they tried unsuccessfully to marry at a registry office, subsequently becoming two of the country’s leading gay activists campaigning for change.

An historic, twenty year study reveals that the children of lesbian parents actually perform better than their peers in terms of academic scores, measure with a greater sense of self-esteem and confidence, and are less likely to demonstrate behavioural problems like aggression. Using date collected from United States National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, Nanette Gartrell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and Henry Bos, a behavioural scientist at the University of Amsterdam, the two found that planned lesbian families – households where the mothers identified as lesbian at the time of artificial insemination, overall made parenting a priority, and because of the obvious threat that their children would likely encounter discrimination and stigmatization because of their same sex families, the mothers were more apt to discuss complicated topics like sexuality, diversity, and tolerance at an early age, building a foundation of confidence and maturity for their children.

More than 1,900 riders left San Francisco en route to Los Angeles, the 545-mile, week-long bike ride the 9th annual AIDS/Lifecycle ride that raised both money for treatment and awareness of the virus. The participants are expected to raise an estimated $10 million for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center as well as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Unfortunately, a sad, stark reminder that as AIDS bike rides and walks celebrate a 25th anniversary this year, the numbers of new HIV infections remain the same, rather than in decline, the result mostly of poor sex education, no knowledge of the history of the virus, and the myth propagated by pharmaceutical companies that HIV/AIDS is a manageable sickness.