Included in the script for The L-Word, a Showtime drama about the lives of lesbian women in California, is a plotline in which character Alice Pieszecki keeps a chart of who has "hooked up" with whom. Now Ilene Chaiken, co-creator of the series, has moved the concept online -- both for the show and for real-life women who want to flaunt their lesbianism.
For the show's fourth season -- which began earlier this month -- a chart is posted on The L-Word Web site. In conjunction with that, Chaiken also launched a site called "OurChart."
"Until now, there's never been a central meeting place just for us -- lesbians, dykes, queer girls, gay women, high femmes, butches, drag kings, bois, transwomen and transmen -- however we define ourselves," the site states. "That's where OurChart comes in."
According to the site, users can create a network of connections that "will also form a visual 'chart' a lot like the one featured on 'The L Word's' very first season."
"We're busy making this groundbreaking social network excellent enough for you and all the multitudinous friends, lovers and others who’ll populate it."
Melissa Fryrear, director of gender issues at Focus on the Family, is concerned that a show like The L-Word will glamorize lesbianism at the expense of women's physical, emotional and spiritual health.
"As someone who lived homosexually for almost a decade," she said, "I know from firsthand experience that there is another side of the lesbian culture, and it is anything but glamorous."
Instead, Fryrear said, women with same-sex attraction often experience a string of broken relationships, substance abuse and emotional volatility.
"I personally experienced such in my own life," she said. "I saw it all around me in the lives of other women."
Social-networking sites like OurChart, Fryrear said, could potentially entice women to consider bisexual or homosexual behavior when normally they would not.
"There is good and credible scientific evidence of the emotional harm many women experience as a result of promiscuous sexual behaviors," she said. "And for Christian parents who are trying to raise their daughters within the biblical sexual ethic -- which only condones sex within the marriage of a man and woman -- they should be concerned about their daughters possibly stumbling across this site and being exposed to the glamorization of same-sex behavior."
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Focus on the Family promotes the truth that change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions -- a message routinely silenced today. To learn more, visit the Love Won Out Web site.
