The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

Ellen DeGeneres has won the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

She did so because she's a funny, tenacious, and accessible comedian and talk show host, who has had a truly remarkable career.

But of course for a generation (or two) of LGBT people, her 1997 coming out remains the indelible memory associated with her. I still remember coming home early from the local Gay & Lesbian youth group meeting to watch the second half of "The Puppy Episode" with my mother (laugh all you want), in which Degeneres' sitcom character came out as gay in prime time.

As we all know, Ellen didn't fair too well in the months after it's lead character and its star came out of the closet, and a season later, suffering from poor ratings, it was canceled.

I know many of my fellow gay teens wondered if this was proof that LGBT people would never really be acceptable to mainstream America. Certainly pundits and industry commentators were all to happy to ascribe deep social import to the failure of a 22 minute ABC sitcom.

Which is why to many of us feel a sense of ownership in Ellen Degeneres' spectacular professional successes of the past decade. Simply by being herself, she has been accepted into millions of American homes, along the way becoming many people's first gay "friend."

So congratulations to Ellen, and here's what you need to know today:

• Bill and Melinda Gates have given $500,000 to help enact same-sex marriage in Washington State.
• NOM's new anti-equality ads are deliberately misleading.
• Looking to what path the LGBT/GSM movement will take after the current battles are fought and won.
• As far as the Romney campaign is concerned, hospital visitation for LGBT people is a "benefit" best left to the states, not a fundamental right.
• A University of California study has found that children adopted out of the foster care system thrive equally well in homes with loving heterosexual or homosexual parents.
• At a Maryland town meeting, Rev. Robert Anderson, a black pastor, advocates against same-sex marriage using many of the biblical arguments once used against black civil rights and interracial marriage, before essentially calling for death to LGBT people. H/t to Southern4Life
• Joe My God asks 'Did Romney Secretly Promise To Support ENDA In Return For The Endorsement From Log Cabin Republicans?'
• The New York State Court of Appeals has thrown out a case challenging that state's recently passed same sex marriage law.
• Ontario CA now allows trans* citizens to legally change their gender without requiring proof of surgery.
• Non-LGBT activists are playing a vital role in the current campaigns for marriage equality in Washington, Maryland, and Maine.
• Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock believes pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen" and hence should be looked upon as a blessing.
• Finally, out music icon Leslie Gore presents a cautionary, pro-women's rights lip synch of her '64 hit 'You Don't Own Me':

(Photo of Ellen Degeneres by Alan Light)