All this talk about Gays and Pride and Gay Disney Princesses (see posts below) reminded the Gay Uncle that he’s covered some of this ground before, prompting him to re-read his seminal piece “Beyond Heather Has Two Mommies”, a survey of current offerings in media portrayals of gay and lesbian characters for young kids. He thinks you should too. Here’s a teaser:
When I was a little boy growing up in the Midwest, the closest thing I had to a queer media role model ”” besides Bert and Ernie ”” was Ferdinand, the flower-sniffing, cork-tree-shade-sitting, hoop-earring-wearing, Spanish bull who refused to participate in the bullfights. Ferdy wasn’t overtly gay in any way ”” in fact, many people thought he wasn’t even a bull, but simply a pacifist metaphor, drafted in opposition to Franco’s ascendance ”” but I distinctly remember sitting on the floor of my room, reading the story, and feeling a connection with his bovine alienation.
So, what are you waiting for? Click on.
The Gay Uncle recently read a research study examining the role and prevalence of heterosexual romantic love in Disney’s top-grossing G-rated movies from 1990-2005. (Here’s 
The Gay Uncle, while gay, does not love parades; they sadden him. Neither does he love the claustrophobic feeling of being pressed up against a bunch of defeated, suburban queens, walking up the vomit-stained sidewalks of his neighborhood in blazing hot summer sun (or torrential downpour) while said invaders take cell phone photos of plastic men in rainbow underpants. Neither does he enjoy parties at which he encounters belligerent drunks in tight tank tops who try to shame him for not being “in the spirit”. And he’s frankly kind of sick of the the Lady Bunny. So, no, he will not be attending the New York Pride “celebrations”. But he is pleased to be gay, in his own way. Which is why he would like to share this piece with you, the gayest ever of his gay car columns, all about the tragic and uplifting tale of FagBug. 
To memorialize the death of Farrah Fawcett, the Gay Uncle presents you with his homage to the transformative power of her image as read through the lens of 1970’s adolescent queer sexuality: his first published short story from back in 1996, “Farrah”. 
It’s a movie that’s at least peripherally for kids, which the Gay Uncle believes affords him the opportunity to cross-promote his humorous review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at Vanity Fair.com. 
Some lesbian friends recently came to visit the Gay Uncle and his boyfriend at their house Upstate. And guess what? They’re trying to get pregnant! This is good news for Gunc, as it means at least one more guaranteed sale of his book. But instead of adopting an unwanted American child, or trying to steal one from the arms of its family in Malawi, they’re going the donor route. The G.U. is down with this too. But he has to admit that when they started talking about the specifics of why they chose a particular dude from the list of tens of thousands of cum shots that the Sperm Bank had in their deposit accounts, he got a little…creeped out. “He’s Italian like me, but he’s not one of those short Italians because his mother was from Denmark or Norway or something, so he’s tall. And everyone on both sides of his family has good teeth. And he has eyes like her [her partner]. And no history of heart disease or cancer. And I found out on line that they have an attractiveness scale that they use internally at the Sperm Bank to rate the donors when they come in. It ranges from two to eight point five, and when I asked the lady where he rated, she said, Eight. And when I asked how many eight point fives they’d ever seen, she said, One. So he’s our guy.” Now Gunc is down with giving your kid all the proper advantages. And he supposes when offered choices on stuff like this, he’d tend toward ticking off some of the same checkboxes. But there’s just something borderline…Eugenicist about the whole process: picking out a kid–like a handbag or sweater–who’ll match your skin and eyes, selecting a donor based on his similarity in appearance to an idealized version of yourself. It just seems like a set up for an even worse form of narcissism than the one normally derived from participating in what Gunc likes to call “The Ultimate Vanity Project”. Maybe straight people pick their partners for the same reasons: they’ll breed well? Or maybe the G.U. is the only one who finds it odd. Let him know what you think in COMMENTS below.
The Gay Uncle’s second favorite newspaper journalist, Heidi Stevens, is starting up a new feature in the Sunday Tribune newspapers. It’s a column where parents write in with questions, and then other parents chime in with advice. (And then an expert–like Gunc–comes in and provides two more cents.) To get the ball rolling, Heidi has some starter topics, but is looking for parents who are interested in dishing out tips. Here are the first few queries:
Stumped about what to get that special daddy in your life? Worried that a manscaping kit, three pairs of boxer briefs, and a gift certificate for a facial might give him the wrong impression? Wishing that he was just a little…smarter about the whole fathering thing? Well, there’s only one present that will solve for all of these issues: a copy of 
The Gay Uncle 
The Gay Uncle hasn’t seen the new movie, “Up”, but apparently an old woman dies in it. Obviously, this is not the first Disney film in which a female character buys the farm. In fact, Gunc is having a hard time remembering a Mickey-flick in which one doesn’t bite it. But in “Up”, the depiction is a bit more straightforward and unobscured than usual, and the bereaved is not a mermaid, a princess, or an adorable baby deer, but an increasingly embittered old man. So when the G.U.’s second-favorite newspaper columnist,