Coronation Street Gay Parenting Embarrassment

I'm finding Coronation Street's 'gay parenting' storyline embarrassing to follow. When I first realised that gay Shaun was going to offer to be a donor for straight girl Violet, who needs to have children soon (or never) for medical reasons, I thought "Great one. They're excellent friends and lovely people, why shouldn't they make great, albeit unconventional, parents?"

Boy was I wrong. Even though I predicted the story line months in advance, poor Violet was only met with Shaun's proposal around two weeks ago. Within 24 hours she had accepted his offer to father her child, within 48 hours, despite not having discussed any of the finer details of their arrangement, they attempted to have sex, failed (due to Shaun being a) gay and b) afraid of destroying their friendship) and got out a turkey baster. Also, rather than discuss their plans with their nearest and dearests, the pair ran around secretly trying to impregnate Violet whilst giggling like teenage girls and not at all like people seriously trying to bring another life into the world.

Rather than demonstrating that gay people can make good, solid parents who typically contemplate parenthood a lot more thoroughly than many straight couples, poor scripting and badly planned storylines have managed to turn Shaun and Violet's potentially sound partnership into a frivolous joke. Just what the gay community doesn't need!

Lesbian Beauty Pageants

Oxford Pride should be wicked, particularly now that K is going to be there, having managed to wangle a weekend off work. However, I'm disappointed by the official after pride party hosting the Oxford heat of Mr Gay UK. Now I don't like to judge that which I know nothing about but I can't imagine it being my kind of thing.

Anyway, this lead us to consider the type of woman who might win a Ms Lesbian contest. Classic Miss World winners and most of the lesbians I know, seems to be at polar opposites with the former being associated with vanity and femininity and the latter with modesty and sometimes androgyny.

We concluded that the winner of such a contest would probably by a very striking feminine woman; someone tall with amazing bone structure, a ladish (but revealing) dress sense and short hair style, perhaps like Keely Hawes as Kitty Butler or Mandana Jones as Nikki Wade.

Now if only it was the Oxford heat of Ms Lesbian UK... No, I still detest beauty pageants.

Why do men think it's OK to crack on to lesbians while we're with our girlfriends?

In the unlikely event that a guy tried to chat up a girl who was walking along the road with her boyfriend, what do you think would happen when she pointed out that she not only had a partner, but that that partner was in fact two feet away? Do you think the hopeful lad would keep trying to get her number, or would he embarrassedly back off?

For some reason, a guy who'd spotted K and me in Tesco last night, felt it was appropriate to continue asking me out even after I introduced him to K and made it clear that she was my partner. The following five minutes, during which the guy alternated "You're beautiful" and "When can I see you again?" while his mate cracked onto K, were exceedingly awkward and I was furious that the two men felt it was acceptable to show such disregard for our relationship.