ZOMG Adam says he prefers “the top!” (Kris’ OH NO YOU DI’INT reaction is kind of adorable.)

Truly, not that many people can both hang with KISS and be this coy.

Meanwhile, would we be having this much fun with a Gokey/Lambert final?

And speaking again of parents, from the New York Times:

Racially segregated proms have been held in Montgomery County — where about two-thirds of the population is white — almost every year since its schools were integrated in 1971. Such proms are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change.

/snip/ Students of both races say that interracial friendships are common at Montgomery County High School. Black and white students also date one another, though often out of sight of judgmental parents. “Most of the students do want to have a prom together,” says Terra Fountain, a white 18-year-old who graduated from Montgomery County High School last year and is now living with her black boyfriend. “But it’s the white parents who say no. … They’re like, if you’re going with the black people, I’m not going to pay for it.”

Interesting corollary, from the same issue of the Times magazine:

According to the group Freedom to Marry, about 13 percent of Americans now live in a state that allows gay marriage or recognizes marriage licenses issued in other states, and that percentage is certain to rise. The gist of the disagreement now isn’t partisan or theological as much as it is generational. Unlike their parents, younger Americans and those now transitioning into middle age have had openly gay friends and colleagues all their lives, and they understand homosexuality to be a form of biological happenstance rather than of emotional disturbance. They’re less inclined to restrict the personal decisions of gay Americans, even if they don’t necessarily want the whole thing explained to their children as part of some politically correct grade-school curriculum. In a sense, the gay rights movement of an earlier era was so successful in changing social attitudes that the movement itself can now seem obsolete, in the same way that younger Americans who have grown up with the premise of environmentalism in their daily lives consider Greenpeace to be a kind of hippie anachronism.

Is the U.S. “not ready for snarky superheroes” — you mean, besides the super-popular Captain Hammer? — or does this series just sound kind of grim?

At very least, clearly we do need some sort of hero here — a sidekick, at least, called Rewrite, or something — to swoop in and vaporize all lameass gay jokes.

Anyone busy trying to “defend” marriage from the gays should be required to look Janice Langbehn in the eye.

On NPR.org, from FOBG Nancy Goldstein (married to super-cool cartoonist):

The cost of love isn’t an abstract concept in my household: It’s precisely $1,820 per year. That’s the “gay tax” we shell out for me to be on my wife’s health insurance plan, because her company must treat that benefit as additional taxable income.

The media’s primary focus on the morality debate around same-sex marriage means that most of the public, gay or straight, knows little about the very real economic costs of inequality. It doesn’t matter that Joan and I married in Massachusetts five years ago this week, or that our home state recognizes our marriage. It makes no difference that she works for a progressive company with an active LGBT employees group. Companies pay for their employees’ health insurance with pretax money through a federal program, and same-sex marriage isn’t federally recognized.

Read the rest here.

…“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Governor Baldacci said. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

“Article I in the Maine Constitution states that ‘no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor be denied the equal protection of the laws, nor be denied the enjoyment of that person’s civil rights or be discriminated against.’”

“This new law does not force any religion to recognize a marriage that falls outside of its beliefs. It does not require the church to perform any ceremony with which it disagrees. Instead, it reaffirms the separation of Church and State,” Governor Baldacci said.

“It guarantees that Maine citizens will be treated equally under Maine’s civil marriage laws, and that is the responsibility of government.”

Ayuh!

From Talking Points Memo:

It used to be that when you saw two men and one woman under a chuppah, everyone’s assigned role was clear. Not any more.

Gays: You can get married in Iowa. But if you tell anyone, you’ll get kicked out of the Guard.

More here.