100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
In no particular order…
Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Cheryl Jacques
LGBT civil rights leader Cheryl Jacques was Massachusetts’s first openly gay state
senator. During her 6-term service from 1992 to 2003, she penned and passed over 40 pieces of legislation and led the national fight against the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Jacques is also the former President and Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign, and has appeared as a commentator on a variety of news programs. She was recently appointed an administrative judge for the Department of Industrial Accidents, which oversees the Workers’ Compensation system. She and her partner, Family Equality Council Executive Director Jennifer Chrisler, are the proud parents of 6-year-old twin boys, Tim and Tom. “Equality cannot wait for a convenient time,” writes Jacques on cheryljacques.org. “….Change does not come through
cautious inaction, but through principled
insistence.” –MF
In no particular order…
