Shame on the two Canadian sportcasters (Alain Goldberg and Claude Mailhot) who made homophobic remarks about figure skater Johnny Weir on French-language sports channel RDS last Tuesday and Thursday. The duo later offered an on-air apology and the sports channel gave the following statement: “All discriminatory statements, or those appearing discriminatory, have neither a place in society nor in media.”

So, yes, there's been an apology but that doesn't erase the ugliness of the words or their impact, not strictly on Johnny Weir who seems tough enough to take it (although I wish he didn't have to be) but cumulatively on the other boys and girls out there who might take societal gender policing messages to heart and be less daring, less themselves because to be true to oneself so often seems to mean facing off against a world of intolerance.

When Access Hollywood's guest correspondent Dorothy Hamill read the small-minded comments to Weir he responded by saying, “Every little boy should be so lucky as to turn into me.” Agreed. We should all be as unafraid to be our genuine selves as Johnny Weir is!

I love, love in this clip from his TV show Be Good Johnny Weir, his advice to a young female skater having trouble with her jump that, "I was a taller girl too once and I had to learn to be comfortable with having longer arms, longer legs, everything."

You don't have to be good, Johnny, but stay brave. Stay gold!

I discovered the below Cyndi Lauper & Lady Gaga coolness via Antonia Zerbisias's Broadsides blog at The Toronto Star. They've teamed up (along with MAC) to help try to stop the spread of HIV, especially in women. As Cyndi Lauper mentions here, women 17-24 and 39-60 have the highest rates of new infection.

My favourite part starts at 5:57 where Lady Gaga gets serious about condom usage. The potential risk of unsafe sex is just too high. Neither age, nor youth nor passion will protect you from HIV. And it's important to note that, “Biologically women are twice more likely to become infected with HIV through unprotected heterosexual intercourse than men.”

There's been much controversy lately about CBS's decision to air an anti-choice commercial from Focus on the Family during the Super Bowl tomorrow. While CBS has no problem with an anti-choice message being promoted on their air-waves (hell, they even helped craft the ad!) they nixed a commercial for gay dating site ManCrunch.

CBS says the ManCrunch ad didn't meet network standards. Two consenting adults kissing in a not particularly racy way doesn't meet network standards? Isn't that the key ingredient that soap operas are made of? In fact, CBS made television history in 2007 when their soap As the World Turns became the first to broadcast a kiss between two men on daytime network TV—and then the first to show a male couple post-coital.

So what happened to progress, CBS? Oh, what an ugly mess of intolerance and paternalism!

But here's a commercial that's message I can totally get behind—check out professional football player Sean James and Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner speaking up about “trusting women with their own choices” in response to the upcoming anti-choice Super Bowl ad.

Some abortion stats & info:

* “Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions.”

* “Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.”

* “Where abortion is legal and permitted on broad grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is illegal in many circumstances, it is often unsafe. For example, in South Africa, the incidence of infection resulting from abortion decreased by 52% after the abortion law was liberalized in 1996.”

* “A broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions:
—56% of women having abortions are in their 20s
—61% have one or more children
—67% have never married
—57% are economically disadvantaged
—88% live in a metropolitan area
—78% report a religious affiliation”

* “An estimated 20 million unsafe abortions occurred in 2003, 97% of these in developing regions...Nearly half of all induced abortions are unsafe, putting the lives and health of women at major risk. Each year, about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability.”

Read yet more abortion facts from the * Guttmacher Institute.

Read sex ed site Scarleteen's article * Abortion—what it is, how it happens, what it feels like, how to deal—in plain type.

According to Punxsutawney Phil and Wiarton Willie we're in for six more weeks of winter. This should come as good news for the Vancouver Winter Olympics— in the Vancouver area they've been scrambling to import snow due to a dearth of it so far. Import snow—quite a bizarre concept, isn't it? Especially for the Great White North.

So anyway, I'll be thinking snowy thoughts for Vancouver while simultaneously hoping that the Greater Toronto Area stays dry for the most part. Some mild temperatures would be nice too because yes, I'm a wimp, always the first person in the room to feel a draft and throw on a sweater or hoodie! As I type this I'm wearing my big Beatles hoodie, in fact.

You can check out a brand new interview with my hoodie wearing self over at The Compulsive Reader today. There's information about my upcoming book, The Lighter Side of Life and Death, and my previous two novels, plus a little rant about cynicism (hate it, hate it!). Many thanks to Tirzah for her thoughtful questions!