The Summer of (Lesbian) Love
The Harvard Crimson
By Jillian J. Goodman
October 03, 2008

Have you kissed a girl?

I have never kissed a girl. Which was fine, until Katy Perry came along.

There is no question that Perry’s pop confection “I Kissed a Girl” was the song of the summer—love it or hate it (and many do), the Billboard Hot 100 has been tasting cherry Chapstick for 20 weeks and counting. Even New York Magazine’s imperious “Vulture” blog had to admit the song’s success, but not without threatening to move to Canada.

Lesbianism was on the airwaves and in the air this summer. It was a neurotic time: McCain and Obama were getting snipey, the Russian government was getting imperial, and Fannie and Freddie were getting killed. We needed something fun, something slightly dangerous, something to blow off a little steam. So we kissed a girl.

It started on June 16 in San Francisco, when gay rights activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon became the first same-sex couple married in San Francisco after the state Supreme Court overturned a 2006 judicial ban on gay marriage. According to a report by the Williams Institute at UCLA, California officials can expect to marry well over 118,000 gay couples in the next three years.

If Martin and Lyon represent one end of the gay spectrum (rainbow), then Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are the other. Gawker, Perez Hilton, People.com—the web’s seedy scandal-mongers were obsessed with Lohan and her fedora-ed “friend.” Although Lohan’s mother Dina denied the relationship—“They’re best friends. They’re just friends. It’s pathetic what people say,” she told the entertainment news show Extra —photos showed them cooing and canoodling and looking very couple-y from New York to L.A.

More than that, they looked happy. Lindsay Lohan, for once, looked happy. Whether you’re for or against gay marriage, you can’t deny that Lohan’s name has appeared far less frequently with the word “cocaine” since she started seeing Ronson. Between Perry’s playful experimentation, California’s flamboyant joy, and Lohan’s newfound stability, lesbianism was suddenly the wholesome choice. It was out in the open, the Band-Aid that would hide, if not heal, the pain of a bruising couple of months.

In “I Kissed a Girl,” Perry is not proud, and she’s not ashamed—she’s just there. “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” Period. And the people welcomed it. Perry performed the song on Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” one of summer’s highest-rated shows, and on NBC’s middle-class morning favorite “Today.” There she was, prancing in hot pants before families at the breakfast table or clustered around their televisions during prime time. A few hard-line Christian groups were unhappy, but there were no high-profile grumblings or media watchdog temper tantrums. Just acceptance.

But the fun was hard-won, and it may not last. California, and in particular San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, have been fighting for gay marriage since 2004, when Newsom ordered the county clerk to begin issuing licenses to same-sex couples. Martin and Lyon were the first married then, as well, but their marriage was invalidated along with 3,954 others when the state Supreme Court ruled that Newsom had overstepped his authority in ordering the licenses issued. Now, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage comes up for a vote in November. Women are walking down the aisle together for now, but the honeymoon could end abruptly.

As for LiLo, she and Samantha Ronson are engaged. Or they aren’t. Or they want babies together. Or she has a crush on Posh Spice. Who knows? Dina Lohan finally acknowledged the relationship publicly in mid-September, telling Entertainment Tonight that “if they are happy, I am happy. This is my child, I mean, what better place for a child to be than happy in her soul and her spirit.”

That is, after all, what this phenomenon boils down to: what makes you happy. As ecstatic as California’s gay community was in June, November may prove to be a somber affair. The economy is collapsing around us, gas prices are through the roof, and who knows what the world will look like tomorrow. Who’s to begrudge a little kiss?

So Katy Perry kissed a girl — that doesn’t mean she’s in love tonight. She just wanted to. It made her happy. And this summer, that was fine.