Video by Googoosh features a lesbian couple

BY CATHERINE MORPETH
dot429

On Valentine’s Day, Iranian pop star Googoosh released a special video for her new song “Behesht”—translated as “Eden” or “Heaven”—which depicts the relationship of a fictional lesbian couple. Being such an influential figure and the first to speak out publicly in Iran in support of LGBT citizens, her video has sparked considerable outcry and backlash.

The video begins with Googoosh performing to a crowd of couples before we see a girl through the eyes of her partner. The video then takes us through the various important moments in their lives from their engagement, to meeting the parents, to being physically accosted by a group of men on a subway. Throughout the video, the fact that the couple consists of two women is not revealed until the final minute of the song, when we return to Googoosh’s performance to couples. One of the couples in the room is the woman and her fiancée.

Read more at dot429.com

The post Iranian pop star releases groundbreaking pro-LGBT music video first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Meet Sara and Ashley who are celebrating their one year anniversary today.

This Valentine’s weekend,  my fabulous girlfriend Ashley and I will be celebrating not only Valentine’s Day, but also the first anniversary of our relationship (February 17) and my 31st birthday (February 18). February 17 is also the day I moved into my very first apartment after six years of marriage. Needless to say, February is kind of special for us.

When Ashley decided to take me on, she took on the baggage of my Evangelical Christian upbringing here in Arkansas. When I told her I had just gotten a divorce, she was freaked out, but she didn’t let it scare her away. She’s been with me through my first PFLAG meetings, my changing jobs so that I could live openly (I worked at a non-affirming church at the time), my coming out to my parents, my first time speaking publicly about my story and all the silly, scary things that come up every day. She is the most wonderful, kind, supportive, sexy, loving, funny, beautiful person in the world and I am so lucky to have her. She inspires me every day to be more patient and to not let the little things bother me so much.

Looking for your real-life love story? OneGoodLove.com is the leading online dating site created specifically for the relationship-minded LGBT community by the LGBT community. We understand how challenging finding love can be so find LOVE now.

The post ‘Real-Life Love Stories’: Happy anniversary! first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Every lesbian deserves her own super sweet Valentine. So in case you don’t already have one of your own this year, we’ve gathered a collection of Imaginary Valentines from a handful of our favorite lesbians.

Just pick your favorite celesbian and enjoy her special love note written just for you. (We can pretend, right?)

Ellen DeGeneres

Billie Jean King

Brittney Griner

Melissa Etheridge

Abby Wambach

Jillian Michaels

Happy Valentine’s Day from Lesbian.com!

Looking for your real-life love story? OneGoodLove.com is the leading online dating site created specifically for the relationship-minded LGBT community by the LGBT community. We understand how challenging finding love can be so find LOVE now.

The post 6 lesbian Valentine’s Day cards we wish we were getting first appeared on Lesbian.com.

No need to fret if the impending Valentine’s holiday finds you at a loss for words. Whatever your particular variety of lesbian love, be it unrequited, mutual or fading fast, there are countless poems, sonnets and quotations to help express your passion as you mark the occasion.

From Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet XLIII from Sonnets from the Portuguese” (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”) to Shakespeare’s “18th Sonnet” (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate”) you’ll find no shortage of poetic prose to assist in articulating your sapphic adoration.

First offered in 1794’s “A Selection of Scots Songs,” Robert Burns’ playful offering “A Red Red Rose” is one of many verses which employ the use of similes to express adulation (“O my Luve’s like a red, red rose/That’s newly sprung in June;/O my Luve’s like the melodie/”That’s sweetly played in tune”).

Percy Bysshe Shelley invoked the elements of nature to illustrate his admiration in “Love’s Philosophy” (“The fountains mingle with the river/And the rivers with the ocean,/The winds of Heaven mix forever/With a sweet emotion;/Nothing in the world is single;/All things by a law divine/In one spirit meet and mingle./Why not I with thine?”)

If unrequited love is what you’re looking to convey — and we’ve all been there at some point, right? — look no further than Robert Browning’s “You’ll Love Me Yet! — and I Can Tarry” (“You’ll love me yet! — and I can tarry/Your love’s protracted growing:/June reared that bunch of flowers you carry/From seeds of April’s sowing./I plant a heartful now: some seed/At least is sure to strike,/And yield-what you’ll not pluck indeed,/Not love, but, may be, like!”). It holds a special appeal for lesbians who love gardening, as well.

If you’re tending to a broken heart for the holiday, you may find solace in Walt Whitman’s “Sometimes With The One I Love” [“Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn’d love;/But now I think there is no unreturn’d love — the pay is certain, one way or another; /(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return’d; /Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)”].

But perhaps the best way to express your lesbian love on Valentine’s Day is to apply the modest, straightforward approach taken by Michael Shepherd in “Love’s Grammar Book”:

“I love you.

That’s it, really.
all there is to say.
sums it up.
in a nutshell.
the long and the short of it.
the be-all and the end-all.
I know what I mean;
you know what I mean.
more or less.
we know what I mean.
most of the time.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Looking for your real-life love story? OneGoodLove.com is the leading online dating site created specifically for the relationship-minded LGBT community by the LGBT community. We understand how challenging finding love can be so find LOVE now.

The post A verse for every lesbian Valentine first appeared on Lesbian.com.

In a Valentine’s Day gift to herself, actress Ellen Page came out as a lesbian at the HRC Time to Thrive LGBT youth event in Las Vegas.

The post Ellen Page comes out at HRC Time to Thrive conference first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Many a New York Times trend piece has attempted to explain the millennial generation’s total disregard of traditional courtship rules. We millennials are apparently more fond of speed dating — at least our their own form of it, comprising efficient meet-ups at bars and coffee shops — than expensive dinner dates. Millennials like their “hookup culture.” They might want to get married, someday, maybe? They’re notoriously phone-skittish, preferring instead to text, or use one of a myriad dating apps available (mostly) for free. And all of this is making their love lives really confusing.

Source: Emily McDowell

Source: Lissa Loo Stationary

Read more at Huffington Post Gay Voices

The post Valentine’s cards for those times when it’s complicated first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Meet Ruth and Michelle, who found love in a surprising place.

I rarely read the Craigslist women-seeking-women posts. Most of them seemed to be written by women who were home alone for a few hours and just wanted to fool around. Still, that night eight years ago, for some reason I couldn’t explain, I clicked on them. When I entered the key word “spiritual,” it eliminated 99% of the ads. And there she was.

Ruth, top, and Michelle.

Her ad had a cheesy title – “Are You Out There?” But she was in my age range and nearby so I clicked to read it.

She was looking for someone who, like her, placed spirituality at the center of her life. I was a spiritually-oriented therapist. She mentioned that on some days she identified as butch, but on other days “I find labels problematic.” I’m femme-of-center, but have been called “butch in the sheets. ” I was a poet who’d published three books of poems; she said that the woman she sought “would bring at least three books on an outing to the beach, including a book of poems.”

She would be my next partner. There was no doubt in my mind.

“Be prepared to have an engaging email correspondence before meeting,” she’d written. And indeed we started one. Soon we were emailing each other long letters two or three times a day. She told me about the time she ran away from home at 13. I told her about my sister’s mental illness. She told me that her first partner had been abusive to her. I told her about the breakup that had shattered my heart, and how it had led me to change my life and become a healer.

Two weeks later, when I walked into the café where we were meeting, I spotted her right away. She was a tall woman with a slightly ungainly gait, and the sweetest face I’d ever seen. We sat at a table by the window and sipped our tea long past the time when it went cold. It seemed we would never run out of things to say!

I was used to meeting perfectly nice women, but feeling nothing for them. This time it was different. I was moved by Michelle – her brilliance and her vulnerability, both. Disappointed when she said she had to leave, I walked her to her car. Later she told me she’d watched me walk away down the street, thinking, “I like that woman!”

Does God(dess), or the great Lesbian Matchmaker in the sky, make use of the internet? I’m quite sure she does. I found out later that Michelle’s personal ad had come to her mind, fully written, one afternoon while she was meditating. Good meditator that she was, she gently pushed it away. But when it came back again the following day, she sighed, opened her laptop, typed it in, posted it, and then went back to following her breath.

The very next day, I “just happened” to check the Craigslist ads for the first time in years.

It’s been almost eight years now, years of a lot of change. We moved cross country together; we moved back to California again. We’ve seen each other through illness, financial struggles, life coaching and family crises. Through it all, our connection to each other has only grown deeper.

The first thing most people notice is that Michelle is Black, and I’m white. It’s never been an issue for us. Sometimes we like to say we come from the same home planet.

Neither of us ever wanted to have children, but we’ve both strongly motivated to help others. Michelle’s background is in Neuroscience; she attended seminary, and has had a Buddhist meditation practice for 20 years. I’m a therapist, healer and writer. Between the two of us, we’ve taught at seven universities, and published 14 books. But our life experience, and our years of painful relationships, have been our greatest teachers. We feel we’ve discovered the tools for happy, healthy love. To share this with the world, together we’ve launched “Conscious Girlfriend: Your Path to Happy, Healthy Lesbian/Queer Relationships.”

Looking for your real-life love story? OneGoodLove.com is the leading online dating site created specifically for the relationship-minded LGBT community by the LGBT community. We understand how challenging finding love can be so find LOVE now. 

The post Real-life love stories: The personal ad that rocked my world first appeared on Lesbian.com.

As if we needed another reason to love Beyonce, the singer goes and releases gay-inclusive underwear gift sets just in time for Valentine’s Day.

The “Yours & Mine” underwear box sets are being sold in bundles on Beyonce’s official website. The $40 gifts include boxers and boyshorts emblazoned with the words “Yours” and “Mine” in the same pink lettering as her namesake album title (with a nod to her Drake collaboration, “Mine”).

They are available in male-female, male-male and female-female varieties for all couples in love.

Read more at Huffington Post Gay Voices

The post Beyonce’s gay-inclusive Valentine’s undies can be yours and ‘Mine’ first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Lush has launched a new campaign in an attempt to “keep attention on [Russia’s] anti-gay propaganda law” in advance of the Sochi 2014 Olympics. “…To forbid or criminalize love… is unnatural and cruel, so I am proud that we are standing in solidarity with LGBTQ people and campaigning for equal love,” said Tamsin Omond, head of Lush campaigns.

“In its Valentine’s campaign, Lush’s stores will display signs proclaiming ‘We believe in Love.’ Staff will also encourage customers to paint pink triangles on their bodies as a symbol of support for equal love.” The Indepedent reported.

From Lush’s UK website: “We believe in love for everyone, between everyone. As part of our Sign of Love campaign, Lush are creating photo petition books which we will send to Russian embassies worldwide on the 14th February – the international day of love. Show your solidarity by uploading a photo of yourself painted with a pink triangle, using pink lipstick, then share your #SignofLove via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.”

Read more at TheSeattleLesbian.com

The Seattle Lesbian online magazine reaches over 188,000 readers per week globally

The post Lush Cosmetics campaigns for LGBTQ rights in Russia first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY MEGHANN NOVINSKIE and KIM ROSENBERG

It’s Cupid season! Did her arrow miss you this year?! While our team is busy arranging dinner date reservations for our matched up couples, we want to offer a guide for some of our favorite people in the world — singles. Some will forget Valentine’s Day even happened and others will have a date with two men (named Ben and Jerry)!  But for those who are dateless and want something to do, here’s where and what (and potentially who) to do on V-day:

If you are less inclined to party than the aforementioned, call your best friend or your favorite couple and invite them over for dinner. Nothing shows love like cooking a delicious meal for others. If your favorite couple has kids, offer to babysit for them. If you love baking, whip up a couple batches of cookies and drop them off at your local fire station. Any of these will warm your heart – and theirs.

Read the rest of the list at TaggMagazine.com

Tagg Magazine is a print and online resource for LBT women in the DC Metropolitan and Rehoboth, DE areas

Looking for your real-life love story? OneGoodLove.com is the leading online dating site created specifically for the relationship-minded LGBT community by the LGBT community. We understand how challenging finding love can be so find LOVE now.

The post How to rock a single Valentine’s Day first appeared on Lesbian.com.