The Fam. Says It's A Sham: Is dancer Derek Hough really the right man for Cheryl Cole?

So, it appears to be official: Cheryl Cole is dating the dancer Derek Hough. They are currently enjoying their second holiday as a couple, and saw in the New Year together at a private party. 

Since then they have been pictured strolling on the white sands at Camps Bay in South Africa - the closest they have ever come to looking romantic in public.

Since first being linked in February last year they have been very cautious about discussing the exact nature of their relationship.

Real or fake? Cheryl Cole and Derek Hough take a stroll along the beach in South Africa, where the couple have been celebrating New Year

Hough tends to say with a smile: ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ if you ask him about Cheryl, and his family have been told to not speak on the subject.

Only last week Cheryl repeated her denials of any entanglement, telling TV chatshow host Alan Carr: ‘A lady doesn’t tell about these things.’

But friends including Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli and X Factor choreographer Brian Friedman have been saying for months that they are an item, and Hough’s ‘adoptive’ father Corky Ballas recently revealed on Twitter: ‘It’s no secret they are dating.’

Why, then, are they being so shy? Could it be that Cheryl is holding back for another reason? For it must be said that there is a strong waft of disbelief from doubters who question whether dancer Derek is, well . . . macho enough for Cheryl’s taste. 

The suggestion has been made that their relationship is merely a ‘showbiz fauxmance’ one — an alleged affair conducted between friends that has the benefit of keeping them in the public eye and making both look more desirable.

Intimate: The pair were seen dancing at Preston Haskell's New Year's Eve party in Cape Town, South Africa

Animated: Cheryl and Derek chat on the dancefloor amid the revelry

The theory is that heartbroken Cheryl, 27, shows her ex-husband Ashley what he’s missing, while Derek, 25, gets to bolster his profile.

Certainly, suspicions have been rife in showbiz circles, led by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton who always, cruelly, files stories about Hough under the heading ‘Gay, gay, gay’. 

But, as we shall see, he’s not the only one who has voiced doubts over Hough’s sexual orientation - based, it seems, on not much more than the fact that he is handsome in a pretty way, and makes his living as a dancer.

Together: The pair dance together during a performance of Cheryl's single Parachute

So who is Derek Hough? And what more is there to him than perfect teeth and an impossibly toned physique? 

Even the greatest matchmaker would concede that he is a most unlikely partner for pugnacious
Geordie Cheryl. He is a born-into-showbiz trouper, with an extraordinarily complicated family background. He’s also a Mormon.

Born on May 17, 1985, in Salt Lake City, Derek is the son of Bruce and Marianne Hough, who’d met on a college ballroom dancing team in Idaho. After having three girls - Marabeth, Sharee and Katherine - came Derek, and then the youngest, Julianne.

Marianne had ambitions to turn her brood onto a new version of the Osmonds, and says that for several years she spent more time in her van than at home, devotedly taking all five of them to music and dance classes. 

By the time he was ten, Derek was progressing in competitions in New York and Los Angeles in the field of Latin American dance, cheered on by his family.

At this point, fate took a hand. Famous dance coaches Mark ‘Corky’ Ballas and his British wife Shirley - then based in Dulwich, South London - were on a teaching trip to Utah and saw Derek and his sister, Julianne.

They believed the Houghs were ‘incredibly talented children’ and offered coaching. At around this time, Bruce - now an elected member of Utah’s Republican National Committee - and Marianne Hough were separating. Derek asked Shirley Ballas if he could stay with her and study for a few months to escape the dramas at home. 

Three months later, Julianne followed her brother across the Atlantic, and together with the Ballases’ son, Mark, they attended the famous Italia Conti Stage School in London. 

Derek ended up staying with the family for almost a decade - although he remains on close terms with his own parents - leading Shirley Ballas to say that she regards him as her own flesh and blood. 

‘Even though he is not my birth son, he feels as though he is my son. We love that boy so much - he really is a great kid.’ 

For her part, Ann Sherward, the principal of the Italia Conti, calls Derek ‘the most charismatic performer’ she has seen in 40 years at the school.

Tanned and toned: Derek showing off his incredible physique, and performing during National Dance Day

Certainly, his ballroom dancing was outstanding. Under Shirley’s wing he won all the major titles in the junior and youth divisions, travelling the world to do so. 

After a variety of dancing roles on the West End stage, Derek got his first chance in television thanks to Bruno Tonioli, who asked him to work as a choreographer on the BBC show Dance X - and he proved a natural. 

Spotted: One of the first pictures of Derek at Cheryl's hotel last year

His sister, Julianne, meanwhile, was becoming well known in America thanks to Dancing With The Stars (the U.S. version of Strictly Come Dancing). 

Derek soon joined her, alongside Mark Ballas. Derek and Mark, inseparable since they met as children, set up home together in Los Angeles.

They continue to compete against each other on Dancing With The Stars, which Derek has won three times. But brilliant though they are on the dance floor, their real desire was to be pop stars. 

So Derek and Mark formed a group - the imaginatively titled Ballas Hough Band - but they were dropped by their record label after releasing just one flop single. 

As for his personal life, since becoming a TV star Derek has had only one publicised relationship: with actress Shannon Elizabeth, his one-time dance partner on Dancing With The Stars - who was taller and 12 years older than him.

They lived together - not as a couple, but with Mark Ballas and two other friends, plus four dogs including Derek’s poodle, named Lady Dog-Ga. 

The pair called it quits in August 2009 - Elizabeth apparently found the rumours that her boyfriend was gay very trying, and this seems to have been a factor, although she declined to comment yesterday.

Derek is not the only Hough family member blighted by such gossip - his sister, Julianne, is dating American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, a dapper individual who is close friends with Simon Cowell and has long resisted rumours that he is gay.

Indeed, Julianne told an interviewer that when she first met him, she thought he was gay, too. 

Then just as Derek was struggling for his big break into the world of pop, along came Cheryl Cole. The pair were introduced by their mutual friend Bruno Tonioli, and Derek was hired to dance with her on the video for Parachute, her third solo single since taking a break from Girls Aloud 

They had already filmed the video by the time lurid details of Ashley Cole’s infidelity were made public, and as Cheryl flew to Los Angeles to concentrate on her future, she called on Derek for a shoulder to cry on. 

He took her out for sushi and then turned up at her hotel in a tight T-shirt, carrying a small dog. He was photographed leaving at 4.15am, fuelling rumours of a ‘secret’ fling. 

Showmance? The pair have kept very quiet about the status of their relationship

A holiday in Tanzania followed in the summer (during which Cheryl, alas, caught malaria) and in the months since, there’s no doubt the couple have grown closer. But in what capacity? 

Derek’s stepfather, Aaron Nelson, insists: ‘For Derek, this is true love. There is no doubt about it and it’s easy to see why - she is one hell of a girl. Very talented and incredibly beautiful. She is the girl of his dreams.’

Certainly, now that Cheryl has landed a job on X Factor USA, she will be free to spend more time with Derek. The plan seems to be that, for the time being, she will move into the house which Hough is renting on Mulholland Drive. 

Let’s hope it’s big enough to accommodate her ever-present mum, Joan, and two Chihuahua dogs — but then, as Derek was brought up in a houseful of women and loves little dogs, he will no doubt feel at home.

As for the future, choreographer Brian Friedman says of the couple: ‘I’m very close to them both. They’re amazing people and make a great couple. They’re very, very cute together.’

And Bruno Tonioli says: ‘They complement each other perfectly - it’s a positive relationship.’

It’s no wonder everyone is so thrilled for Cheryl. Following the humiliation she suffered with
Ashley Cole and his pay-as-you-go phone habits, she deserves happiness. 

But is Derek the right sort of man to mend her broken heart?

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk

"Raise a Child" ad campaign puts a real face on gay parenting

The Pop Luck Club, a non-profit organization that supports gay fathers throughout Southern California, announced today the launch of its "Raise a Child" ad campaign that is geared to raise community awareness, support and understanding for gay fathers and their families.

The campaign also aims to inspire and aid gay fathers and prospective fathers as they explore the many routes to creating families, including surrogacy, fostering and adoption. The campaign includes radio PSAs and bus shelter ads featuring family portraits of its members. The ads run throughout January across the Los Angeles region, from the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys through the West Side, Central and East L.A. to Long Beach and Orange County.

The ad campaign hopes to reduce stigma around gay parenting. "We make lunches for our kids, get them to music and karate lessons... just like every family," says Richard Valenza, co-president of the Pop Luck Club. He adds, "With this campaign, we are putting a real face on gay parenting."

Since its founding in 1998, the Pop Luck Club has grown from a handful of fathers to over 500 members. It facilitates monthly "pot luck" play dates, discussions and support groups, online resources and news groups, family events and mentorship programs for prospective fathers.

Some gay fathers have found a perfect match through fostering and public adoption. "Nationwide, over 200,000 children are awaiting families.," said Dr. Tony Zimbardi, a Pop Luck Club board member. "It is our hope that more gay men will be inspired and enabled to create the loving families they deserve."

The group's members overwhelmingly report that raising children has affected them deeply. "Growing up, many of us felt sadness that coming out as gay would end our dreams of parenting," says John Ireland, a Pop Luck Club board member. "I now know that becoming a father and providing a loving home for our child is the most important and rewarding thing I have ever done."

For more information, visit www.popluckclub.org

San Francisco Chronicle...

New York City Stiffs Animal Care and Control, Animals Pay the Price

Snow removal isn't the only policy that needs revamping in the Big Apple. Michelle Hodkin wrote a blog chronicling the allegations of neglect at New York City Animal Care and Control that had been brought to light by ABC News. So didFrancis Battista at Best Friends Animal Society. How did NYC get to the point where bloggers are focusing on the filthy cages and the neglected pets entrusted to the city's care? It might have something to do with budget cuts, courtesy of the New York City Department of Health, to the tune of $1.5 million. Ouch.

New York City is downright miserly when it comes to funding for Animal Care and Control. It allocates one of the lowest per capita rates in the nation for animal control — 85 cents per resident. National animal control recommendations suggest 4 to 7 dollars per capita to provide appropriate animal services.

The Shelter Reform Action Committee acts as a watchdog for AC&C's mismanagement, calling NYC to the carpet for the abysmal treatment of the city's homeless pets. But it isn't easy, since AC&C acts more like a city agency than the independent animal welfare organization its supposed to be.

The AC&C was set up as an independent, nonprofit organization that contracts with the city to handle animal control. However, of the seven board members, three are city commissioners, and the other four are appointed by the mayor, who can fire them at will. Apparently because of this, the board turns deaf ears to the desperate calls, whines, barks, and meows for change.

Elizabeth Hess wrote a scathing article about the harsh realities at the AC&C in 1998, with descriptions similar to what ABC News found: "Dogs sit in their own feces ... Sick dogs and cats often go untreated." Over ten years later, things are still in disarray. Because of the lack of funding, healthy puppies, dogs, cats and kittens are dying.

Due to the latest round of budget cuts, the AC&C has terminated their Lost & Found system, so they will no longer help reunite owners with their lost pets, and reduced their field operations, leaving strays and abandoned animals to fend for themselves in the city streets. The Shelter Reform Action Committee notes that these were supposed to be "mandatory" services in the AC&C's contract with the city.

In an open letter to Animal Care & Control and the Department of Health, SRAC wrote that "with the increasing budget cuts imposed by the DOH, the AC&C is constantly facing impossible choices: which services to reduce or eliminate, and which employees to lay off." They are particularly concerned with the fact that AC&C has cut their services picking up strays. "We cannot solve the AC&C's overcrowding problem by leaving animals to die in the streets."

Other organizations are trying to help the city's animals with spay/neuter outreach. The Mayor's Alliance  provides funding for spays and neuters for pets of low income owners, and the ASPCA's mobile spay/neuter vans perform surgery in low income areas. The vans were booked solid at Pet Bull Pallozasponsored by Best Friends Animal Society, the Mayor's Alliance and the ASPCA last fall.

While more spays and neuters are great, they don't do a thing for the clowder of cats and packs of dogs housed at AC&C. These pets need adequate funding for food, veterinary care, and, of course, clean cages. The lost and abandoned animals of the city need to be brought in from the cold.

Join the Shelter Reform Action Committee in calling on New York City officials to restore funding to AC&C.

Photo Credit: Best Friends Animal Society

by: by Ledy VanKavage

Doctors Abuse Patients with Intersex Conditions

During his famous and infamous career, John Hopkins psychologist John Money revolutionized the way society viewed gender, popularizing the notion that nurture was as powerful as nature in the creation of gender identity.

Unfortunately, Money possessed an unhealthy dose of hubris, and tested his theories by performing sex reassignment surgeries on infants and toddlers who had ambiguous genitalia and other conditions. Horrific doubt was cast upon his treatments when one of his patients, David Reimer, committed suicide.

As an infant, Reimer's penis had been mangled in a circumcision accident. Money, believing sexuality was "malleable" at that age, removed it and turned Reimer into a girl. Reimer never identified as a woman, struggled with his identity for most of his life, later castigated Money and eventually took his own life.

Though Reimer was the victim of a terrible accident, many of Money's patients were people who were born with what are now called Intersex conditions. This is different from transexuality, which describes people who have transitioned or are transitioning to a gender that's different from their assigned sex.

An Intersex condition is an incongruence between a person’s outward appearance and their genitals, hormones, chromosomes or internal reproductive anatomy. Intersex covers a wide spectrum of conditions that can range from an enlarged clitoris to an unusual endocrine system. In some cases, there is cause for medical concern, but more often than not there is nothing medically malevolent about these conditions other than the fact they are abnormal or that Intersex bodies might not fit rigid ideas of gender.

People with Intersex conditions have long been voiceless, largely because the sensationalism and shame that often surrounds their conditions motivates them to stay anonymous. But increasingly they are speaking out against the medical establishment. Many have stories that parallel Reimer's, stories of their gender being reassigned or their condition "corrected" at an early age and subsequently suffering a lifetime of psychological turmoil.

To help protect their medical rights, activist organizations such as the Intersex Initiative in Portland and the Advocates for Informed Choice are advocating that people with Intersex conditions be allowed to make their own decisions about their bodies. They promote a "patient-centered" treatment to replace the old model of secrecy and correction.

In other words, doctors should not be performing radical procedures on children with Intersex conditions. Instead patients and their parents should be supported medically and emotionally to help them cope with the social difficulties. When they become adults, then they can decide whether they want surgeries or other treatments. The doctors shouldn't decide for them.

Unfortunately, not all physicians are listening, and some are still wielding their power over Intersex patients with the same hubris and myopic views that Money once did.

In a study conducted under the auspices of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, pediatric urologist Dix Poppas has performed clitoral reduction surgeries on a group of young girls and teenagers. He performed the operations after deeming the clitorises to be "too big" even though there is no medical evidence possessing an unusually large clitoris has any increased medical or psychological risk.

Even more disturbing, he has followed up these surgeries by conducting "clitoris sensitivity" tests on girls as young as six. The patients are conscious when Poppas uses a Q-tip or vibratory device to stimulate the inner thigh, outer and inner labia and the clitoris of patients to test how much sensitivity they retained after the surgery.

After publishing a paper about his work, controversy erupted and Weill Medical College conducted an internal investigation, eventually finding nothing wrong with Poppas's procedures and stating they are "part of the evaluation of the clinicial success of the surgical procedure and health of the patient." There seems to be no consideration as to whether the follow up tests might have any emotional or psychological effects on the young girls.

The AIC says that Cornell refuses to answer questions about whether these patients will receive normal protections given human research subjects and what kind of information parents receive when making decisions about genital surgery. Also according to the AIC, the federal Office of Human Research Protections is starting to evaluate the matter.

The tragic history of Intersex is rife with stories of physicians like Dr. Poppas who exert control and judgment over Intersex patients that doesn't belong to them .

Tell Dr. Poppas and Weill Medical College to stop the abuse of Intersex patients and to respect their rights. Demand they immediately stop these experiments and allow advocacy groups to help educate the parents of their patients about the true nature of ambiguous genitalia and Intersex conditions.

Marc Dadigan is a freelance multimedia reporter living with the Winnemem Wintu in Northern California. Read more at www.marcdadigan.com.

Heterosexual love and homosexual love is all the same in the brain

There are no differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals or between women and men in terms of the brain systems regulating romantic love, according to new UCL research published in the latest issue of PLoS One.

The study, by Professor Semir Zeki and John Romaya from the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at UCL, is a continuation of earlier work from the same lab which described brain activity in terms of romantic and maternal love.

In this latest study, 24 subjects were asked to view pictures of their romantic partners, as well as pictures of friends of the same sex as their partners but to whom they were romantically indifferent, while the activity in their brains was scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The subjects varied in age from 19 to 47, with their relationship lengths varying from 4 months to 23 years. Half of the subjects were female (6 heterosexual and 6 homosexual) and half were male (6 heterosexual and 6 homosexual). All reported being passionately in love and in a sexual relationship with their partner.

All of the study participants were asked to rate their feelings towards their romantic partners both before and after scanning and declare their sexual orientation on the Kinsey rating which includes groups ranging from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual.

The fMRI results showed a very similar pattern of activity between the different groups and involved activation of both cortical and sub-cortical areas, mainly in areas that are rich in dopaminergic ("feel good") neurotransmitter activity. These areas included the hypothalamus, ventral tegmental area, caudate nucleus and the putamen, as well as the insula, hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex. Dopaminergic activity is strongly linked to other neurotransmitter activities - such as those mediated by oxytocin and serotonin - which are thought to be important in regulating emotional relationships and bonding between individuals. 

The studies also showed that there is extensive de-activation of large parts of the cerebral cortex when lovers - whether heterosexual or homosexual or whether female or male - view pictures of their romantic partners. The de-activated areas involve parts of the temporal, parietal and frontal cortex and include cortical areas thought to be critical in judgment. This may account for why we are often less judgmental about our lovers and lends credence to the old adage “love is blind”.

Professor Zeki said: “Passionate romantic love is commonly triggered by a visual input and is an all-consuming and disorienting state. Previous studies have demonstrated that despite the complexity of this emotion, the brain patterns triggered when viewing the face of someone you’re in love with are limited to only a few, though richly connected, brain regions”.

This made it plausible to the researchers to suppose that it would be possible to detect any differences relatively easily. Given the profound similarity in the sentiment of love expressed in both opposite or same-sex contexts, the authors hypothesised that the pattern of brain activity in response to viewing the face of a romantic partner would be the same in the different groups.

Professor Zeki said that the study was influenced by a reading of the world literature of love, from Plato to Shakespeare, Dante, Rumi, Verlaine and others, in which very similar sentiments are expressed whether in the context of opposite or same sex relationships - and this ambiguity is reflected in the results. 

Physorg.com