If Rosie O'Donnell's performance earlier this week at a private cancer fundraiser is any indication, the future Rosie - who will soon be unencumbered by a daytime talk show - will be profane, opinionated, and openly and proudly gay.

"I'm sick of being [expletive] nice!" she roared Monday night before a capacity crowd of 250 at Caroline's on Broadway. "Fasten your seat belts - here we go!"

She then did about 15 minutes of material, which included riffs on Barbara Walters, Anne Heche, Tom Cruise and her own sexuality.

"I'm a dyke!" Rosie declared at one point, dispelling all doubts (if there were any left) about her sexual orientation.

She reportedly lampooned Walters' speech, and said of Anne Heche, who was once Ellen DeGeneres' live-in girlfriend but is now married and expecting a child: "What the hell kind of train wreck was that?!"

On being a lesbian, Rosie was quoted as saying, "I don't know why people make such a big deal about the gay thing. . . . People are confused. They're shocked, like this is a big revelation to somebody!"

And she wasn't shy about criticizing gay activists - whom she labeled "gay Nazis" - who had accused her of concealing her sexuality.

"'Oh, but you were lying,' the gay Nazis say. 'You said you liked Tom Cruise.'

"I said I wanted him to mow my lawn and bring me a lemonade!" Rosie hollered. "I never said I wanted [to perform a sex act on him]."

Ever since her daytime talk show premiered in spring 1996, Rosie has cultivated a public image that was so viewer-friendly she was nicknamed the Queen of Nice.

Now, though, with the end of her talk show slated for May, the Queen appears to be dead.

This week, she returned to her stand-up comedy roots for a celebrity-studded benefit for the New York-based Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. The evening at Caroline's comedy club was billed as a tribute to the late Madeline Kahn, who died of ovarian cancer in 1999 at age 57.

Among the performers were Robert Klein and Nathan Lane, who co-hosted, as well as Joy Behar, Mario Cantone, actor Peter Boyle and comedian Judy Gold. Caroline Rhea, who is replacing Rosie on her TV show, was scheduled to appear, but didn't make it.

Among those spotted in the audience, where the best seats went for $250, were Edie Falco of "The Sopranos" and Bette Midler.

By all accounts, Rosie was riveting.

"People were just mesmerized at what was going on," said one observer. "She was great."

Said another, Caroline's general manager Louis Faranda, "She was in a great mood and she absolutely slayed the audience.

"She killed."

http://www.gaywired.com/index.cfm?linkPage=/storydetail.cfm&Section=12&ID=9414

Moms ‘R Us
2/28/2002

by Winnie McCroy

Once she publicly airs her sexuality on ABC News PrimeTime with Diane Sawyer on March 14, Rosie O'Donnell can officially be counted as one of the estimated 6 to 9 million gay and lesbian foster parents nationwide.

O’Donnell hope that her appearance with Sawyer will draw attention to the hot-button issue she is concerned about: Florida's law prohibiting gays and lesbians from adopting children. Since 1977, Florida has banned adoption by homosexual couples or individuals. In doing so, it keeps company with only Utah and Mississippi.

O'Donnell has one foster child and three adopted children, Parker, Chelsea and Blake, and, unlike many show business mothers, she raises them without the help of nannies. The adoptions were not handled in Florida, but in New York, where O'Donnell's show is based.

Among celesbians with children, O'Donnell is among the first to take such a public stance. Since last year, O'Donnell, who has a home in Miami and is a Florida foster parent, has been working with the American Civil Liberties Union to overturn the ban, said Eric Ferrero, spokesman for the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. Her support is drawing cheers in the gay community.

"She gives credibility to the issue," Dean Trantalis, president of the Dolphin Democratic Club, Florida's largest gay and lesbian political party club, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "She is someone who can help to validate the notion of gay parenting. A lot of people are going to have to think twice about their negativity."

O'Donnell's move follows a policy statement released earlier this month by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends that gays and lesbians be permitted to adopt because studies show no psychological, emotional or academic harm to children of homosexuals. The study found that the optimal development of a child depends on the relationship between child and parent, as well as the relationship between each parent, regardless of sexual preference. The best scenario for raising a child is having parents with high self-esteem, less relationship dysfunction and equality as a parenting team, according to the report.

This is old news to lesbian parents, including Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher. Although Etheridge and Cypher ended their 12-year relationship last year, they share parenting responsibilities for their children, daughter Bailey Jean and son Beckett.

"With the utmost of love and respect for one another, we have decided to separate," read the statement that Etheridge released last year via her record label. "As committed parents, our top priority continues to be what is in the best interest of our children. Though elements of our lives will change, our family will always remain intact."

Cypher gave birth to both children, later revealing in a February 2000 Rolling Stone interview that the father was singer David Crosby via artificial insemination, sans turkey baster.

"No kitchen implements were involved,' Cypher quipped in the interview.

Etheridge said that Crosby's musical background figured into her decision, but did not comment on the time he spent in jail for drugs or the liver transplant he received five years ago. Crosby and his wife, who recommended the collaboration, have been sober for 14 years.

The Rolling Stone issue featured Etheridge, her partner, and their 2 children, and Crosby and his wife on the cover. Crosby, who has four children of his own ranging from ages 35 to four, was not present at Bailey's and Beckett's birth, and does not have parental duties, Etheridge said.

"Maybe it's a good thing for a lot of straight families to see that this is not something strange,' said Crosby, who was happy to lend a hand.

Annie Leibovitz, America's most famous and highly paid female photographer, also reportedly chose artificial insemination in the birth of her child, Julia Margaret Cameron (after the great photographic pioneer), born last October by Caesarean section. Leibovitz, who gave birth at the age of 52, is the partner of author and essayist Susan Sontag, 68.

Neither woman, however, has conceded so much in public, living in separate penthouse flats in the same apartment building in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Their tight-knit and extremely loft circle of pals, including Harry Evans and Tina Brown, and Michael Douglas, have helped maintain privacy.

"They have powerful friends who protect them," Carl Rollyson, a professor of English at City University of New York, told the Independent of London. As for their relationship, which blossomed after they met at a photo shoot 13 years ago, it is "common knowledge," Rollyson added. "People are afraid to talk about it because they've such powerful friends and influence in New York society."

But that hasn't kept rumors flying that the sperm-donor was none other than the author David Rieff, Sontag's 49-year-old son. The well-documented affinity between Sontag and her son gave this unlikely notion credence. Jonathan Miller, who is close to Sontag, once commented that the mother and son were "passionately wrapped up with each other."

Leibovitz's mother, Marilyn is among those to have stepped out of the shadows to quash this speculation. She broke a family vow of silence to insist to the world that the sperm came from a bank, not from Rieff. "Absolutely not. God forbid," she told the Independent of London. But Marilyn Leibovitz did reveal a few secrets--for instance that Sontag was present at the delivery of Julia. She also noted that her daughter took her camera to the event and expended rolls of film photographing her new child.

Ultra-private actress and suspected lesbian Jodie Foster also chose artificial insemination in the births of her two sons, Charles, born in 1998, and Kit, born in 2001. Although she will not comment on who the donor was, according to an October 11, 2001 article in the National Enquirer, Foster's friends say she requested sperm from the same anonymous donor. According to numerous reports in the British press in 1998, Foster had proudly announced that after a long hunt, she had had herself impregnated with the gametes of a tall, dark, handsome scientist with an IQ of 160.

Even on-again/off-again lesbian Anne Heche is expecting, announcing in September 2001 that she was three months pregnant by husband, Coleman "Coley" Laffoon, a cameraman she met while filming an uncompleted HBO Special documenting ex-girlfriend Ellen Degeneres' career in comedy. Degeneres also made comments last month about her desire to have children.

"I hope to have at least one child if not more, and I will try to figure out the best way to do that," said DeGeneres said in an interview posted January 16, 2002, on the Web site of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Yet it's not always smooth sailing for celesbians with kids. Suspected lesbian comedian Paula Poundstone's career hit the rocks last summer after she was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney with three counts of committing a lewd act on a girl under age 14--one of the three adopted and two foster children she cared for.

Poundstone was hauled off to jail before being released on $200,000 bail, and her children were taken away. It is now thought that the child, angry about her foster mother's drinking problem, fabricated the allegations.

According to the National Enquirer, a source close to Paula contended, "Paula's daughter blew the whistle on the comedienne not for molesting her, but out of anger."

Poundstone, who was spending time in a rehab facility, supposedly got into a screaming match with her daughter over the child going out unsupervised that evening.

"The daughter brought charges against Paula, forcing her to expose her drinking problems to the world. Shortly after the blow-up with her daughter, the 'lewd conduct' charges were filed against Paula," Poundstone's friend told the Enquirer. "I believe her daughter made up the charges with no basis at all for the terrible accusations."

"I didn't do anything sexual. I didn't hit anybody," Poundstone commented during a January 2002 expose on Dateline NBC. "What happened is so colossally stupid that it's probably more embarrassing than anything else, but I don't want to say anything or do anything that will make the judge mad," said Poundstone. Regardless, her career has been heavily impacted, and she can no longer serve as a foster parent.

Lesbian parents, even potential ones like Degeneres, view parenting as the ultimate achievement.

"It's a challenge to be a parent and not screw somebody up--to have that responsibility, to have a living being and not squelch their spirit but allow them to soar and find out who they are without telling them who they are," said Degeneres in a January interview on HRC's Web site.

And, while continuing to maintain a relationship with Cypher is not Etheridge's ideal situation, she too recognizes the importance of providing a stable family structure.

"Her and I have to come to a place in our relationship, because we are co-parents to our children, and there is no way that we can just separate because that is not the healthiest thing for our children," said Etheridge in a July 2001 interview in The View Magazine. "So we live in houses that are back to back, so that the kids don’t feel like they’ve lost either of us. It’s mostly for the kids; I think if it was up to me, I’d run away, never to see her again, but what’s that?"

"Parenting is the single most important thing in our society and there’s no magic formula for it," Etheridge continued. "Maybe it takes a man and a woman. Maybe it takes one woman or one man, or two women or two men. The key ingredient is love. The more diverse our families become, and we see what works, the more we will see that it's what goes in, not who puts it in."