Our New Poll - Vote for Ellen, Emily, Cyndi, Amy or Sharon

We've launched our highly technical voting system for you, God & Gays blog readers, to choose who has earned our Bridging the Gap Award for 2007. See the poll on the right side of the blog.

These people have been nominated in 2007 for several reasons, here are just a few:

Emily Saliers: Raised in the Christian church, she's had more than her share of dealing with the gay and Christian intersection both personally and professionally. She's risen above and has lived her truth and is authentic in her private and public persona.

Cyndi Lauper: A champion GLBT ally, this singer partnered with HRC, PFLAG and the Matthew Shepard Foundation for this summer's concert tour, True Colors. The tour is dedicated to bringing people together and raising not only money, but awareness and understanding for GLBT people and issues.

Ellen DeGeneres: Well, duh. She is sure to be nominated every year. Most recently she's brought on newly outed celebrities and reads email from viewers who thank her for bringing a sense of normalcy to the "gay threat". As one email she read said, "for each celebrity who comes out, is one less teen in the ground." Amen.

Amy Grant: Long been controversial and yet consistent with unconditional love, this highly accomplished singer/songwriter is a favorite and a role model to many who were raised in the Christian church growing up on her music. Her duet with Melissa Etheridge and her sense of immunity to conservative criticism is inspiring.

Sharon Gless: This actress was the ultimate PFLAG mom on Showtime's Queer As Folk. At the end of the series, her character was the first as (that we know of) a heterosexual character who connected the dots of the inequality around marriage. Her character wanted to marry her boyfriend but chose not to as she understood that her gay son couldn't marry his boyfriend and felt it'd be, basically sick and wrong to take advantage.

Most shows that have gay characters keep the characters single and hopeless (which helps avoid the gay marriage thing) while other straight characters gleefully marry, never putting it together that getting married in front of gay people who've been together and would marry if they could is a punch in the soul.

Now there's hundreds of church leaders refusing to sign marriage licenses for only some of their congregation and then there's straight allies (Angelina Jolie, etc.) who refuse to get married until it's equal for all US citizens. Imagine the damage to the wedding industry if all straight allies made the same decision? Or, look at how much the travel and wedding industry stands to GAIN by marriage being equal for us all?

I digress...

There's many many others who are very deserving of this recognition and we look forward to the years to award them all. Until then, vote and forward this blog to everyone you know to vote as well. We'll let you know when the poll will need to close. Happy voting!