Married couples get love advice from gays

"Queer Eye for the Straight Couple," an online forum where committed gay couples offer relationship advice to married heterosexual couples, was launched on Wednesday by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The seven participating lesbian and gay couples bring a total of 96 years of relationship experience to the discussion. Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a nationally recognized relationship expert, also contributes to the forum.

"We've brought together some fantastic lesbian and gay couples who are kind enough to lend their relationship experience to their heterosexual peers," said Michael Adams, Lambda Legal's Education and Public Affairs Director, in a prepared statement. "These couples have made it through all the same problems married couples face, but without the same support systems," he said.

Lambda Legal created the forum in response to Marriage Protection Week, a series of anti-gay marriage activities organized by right-wing organizations and endorsed by the White House. According to the organizers' Web site, "Marriage was established by God, is enforced by the nature which God bestowed upon mankind, and we tamper with it at our own peril." The coalition is also promoting an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to exclude any legal recognition of same-sex couples, including domestic partnerships and civil unions.

"We know that most married couples don't think their relationships are jeopardized or threatened just because gays and lesbians want equal access to marriage," Adams said.

The roster of advice-giving couples includes Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer and her partner, Diane Divelbess. Cammemeyer's life in the U.S. military was the subject of a book and an award-winning film, "Serving and Silence." Other participants are Brenda and Wanda Hanson, who were the target of gun shots and bomb threats when they first opened Camp Sister Spirit in Mississippi, and Jon and Michael Galluccio, whose New Jersey lawsuit opened adoption to same-sex couples in that state. Couples from Idaho, New York, Texas and Vermont are also included.

The forum, online at www.lambdalegal.org, features questions and answers on topics that vex many couples: romance, money, balancing work and children, and moving in together. "This is not a forum for political or social debate," the Web site says, "it's a place where married, heterosexual couples can get advice and tips on everyday relationship issues."

On Oct. 3, President Bush signed a proclamation supporting Marriage Protection Week and defining marriage as "a union between a man and a woman." The proclamation calls on "all Americans to join (Bush) in expressing support for the institution of marriage with all its benefits to our people, our culture and our society."

Marriage Protection Week was sharply criticized last week by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. Clinton said the Bush administration would rather attack same-sex marriage than "talk about the miserable economy, talk about their miserable foreign policy ... their rollback of environmental laws and workers' rights, education and health care!"

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031016/ap_on_re_us/gays_marriage_counseling_1

Gays Put Spin on Marriage Protection Week
Thu Oct 16, 2:59 PM ET

By DAVID CRARY, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - Opponents of same-sex marriage have declared this Marriage Protection Week, but a major gay-rights group is putting a different spin on the occasion — recruiting long-term gay couples to offer online relationship advice to married heterosexuals.

Called "Queer Eye for the Straight Couple," the forum is using the trendy title to make a serious point, according to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

"Same-sex couples face all of the same challenges and joys that heterosexual couples do — but we're left navigating through them without the protections marriage provides," said Lambda Legal's Michael Adams. "We've brought together some fantastic lesbian and gay couples who are kind enough to lend their relationship experience to their heterosexual peers."

Marriage Protection Week, endorsed by a proclamation from President Bush (news - web sites), was organized by two-dozen conservative groups. Worried that some state courts might legalize gay marriage, the coalition is seeking to build support for a proposed constitutional amendment that would specify that marriage is a union of a man and a woman.

Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America, one of the groups in the coalition, called the Lambda Legal initiative a "silly, sad game."

"They really truly want to equate homosexual marriage with heterosexual marriage," she said. "The sad reality is that it's never going to be the same. ... The American people know marriage is not something to be messed with."

The counseling couples recruited by Lambda Legal include Brenda and Wanda Henson, who have been together 19 years and run a retreat in rural Mississippi; Bob McDiarmid and Jon Marcotte, who have been together eight years and run a potluck supper program for gay couples in Boise, Idaho; and Carolyn Conrad and Kathleen Peterson, who have been together eight years and were the first couple to enter a civil union in Vermont.

On the Lambda Legal Web site, Conrad offered advice to a Jersey City, N.J., man who worried his romance was losing its spark after three years.

"It is the little things that make the difference," Conrad said. "I'm a Diet Coke fiend, and if I'm working late, KP (Peterson) will often drop by with an ice cold jumbo sized one for me. It never fails to make my heart beat a little faster."

A wife from Tucson, Ariz., reported that she and her husband, who both work full-time, were arguing too often about money.

"Be fair to one another," replied the Hensons. "Do not keep accounts on who spends more. Share and be friends."

In addition to seven same-sex couples, Lambda Legal also recruited University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz — an expert on relationships — to answer some of the questions sent to the forum.

"Studying gay and lesbian couples has helped me not only understand them but also all the heterosexual couples I look at," Schwartz said in a telephone interview. "There's a lot that's different, and there is so much that is alike."

Genevieve Wood of the conservative Family Research Council coalition said she laughed after learning of "Queer Eye for the Straight Couple."

"It's almost hard to take it seriously, considering that the majority of homosexual couples don't stay together more than a year and half," she said. "It's ludicrous that they would even suggest that two men or two women could have advice for a married man and woman."

Conrad, who shares a home with Peterson in Brattleboro, Vt., said the conservatives' Marriage Protection campaign is misguided.

"The gay couples that want to get married have taken this decision so much more seriously than many of their straight counterparts, because they have to fight harder to do it," she said. "Allowing them to get married is the best protection of marriage there could be."

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