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Jeanne Manford, the founder of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, died today in her Daly City, Calif., home. She was 92.

President Obama announced today that he will posthumously honor Jeanne Manford, cofounder of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, with the Citizens Medal.

Adele Starr, who overcame her own negative perceptions on homosexuality to later become an early leader of what eventually became Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, died Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 90. Starr established a support group for parents of gay and lesbian children in 1976 after her son came out to her. The group sprouted up during a time when being gay was widely believed to be a mental illness, possibly caused by poor parenting.

PFLAG mom Betty DeGeneres, mother of Ellen, created this video to support the Care with PRIDE campaign by PFLAG, in partnership with Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies and in association with Walgreens. The campaign helps support PFLAG’s Cultivating Respect: Safe Schools for All Initiative.

Advocacy groups have always inhabited a distinct place in society for being a resource when something needed to change for the betterment of a community or communities. It has just been announced that long-standing pro-rights group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) has partnered with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to build a supportive bridge for LGBT students to report harassment, bullying, discrimination, and any other uncomfortable experience having to do with their status as LGBT students to the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Education Department.

On Saturday May 1st PFLAG honored Liza Minnelli at the Straight for Equality Awards Gala. Liza! (don’t you think her name should always be followed by an exclamation point?) was presented with the 2010 Straight for Equality in Entertainment Award, recognizing her lifelong role as a gay icon—oh sorry, I meant Straight Ally of the LGBT community.

LGBT history overflows with stories of women who have come to the aide of gay men: the concerned mother who founded PFLAG, the doctor who proved that homosexuality was not a pathological illness, the popular 1960s communist who wrote that gays and lesbians were born that way and should be true to themselves in order to find happiness, and the countless number of lesbians who, after years of feeling excluded from the gay liberation movement by their gay brothers, put aside their frustrations to care for them at the height of the AIDS epidemic when hospitals wouldn’t.

When it was announced that Claire Buffie, Miss New York, was running for Miss America on a platform of gay rights (a first in the pageant’s ninety-year history), members of the LGBT community were a bit skeptical. In various interviews and news reports the twenty-four-year-old straight Indianapolis native seemed like a well-meaning individual, but did she have a true understanding of the daily struggles in the march towards equality? Yes, her older sister Sarah is an out lesbian, and she may be involved with PFLAG, but what did she really know?

From the tough-as-nails cop on Cagney & Lacey to the proudest PFLAG mom ever on Showtime's Queer as Folk, Sharon Gless has had a long, storied career that's resounded strongly with the lesbian audience. SheWired.com caught up with Gless to talk about how much the lesbian community has supported her through the years, kissing Rosie O'Donnell and how she's always wanted to portray a lesbian on-screen. 

Katherine Heigl and Alexis Bledel are getting hitched in Jenny's Wedding.

Betty DeGeneres, who will surely go down as one of the most outspoken supportive parents of a gay daughter in history, took a spill and broke her back but she is recovering, according to a Tweet from her ultra-famous daughter Ellen DeGeneres.

The Florida Family Association wants advertisers to boycott the Degrassi: The Next Generation series on MTV because the program delivers a positive portrayal of a young transgender man. “It is very concerning that your company would knowingly advertise during a television show that condones and promotes transgender lifestyles to an audience that is almost exclusively watched by young teens and children,” wrote Caton.

Iconic 80's pop star Cyndi Lauper has taken her gay and lesbian advocacy to the hit show "Celebrity Apprentice." The Grammy-winning singer debuted on NBC Sunday night with her LGBT charity, The True Colors Fund. The contestants on Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" 2010 are Sharon Osbourne, Cyndi Lauper, Holly Robinson Peete, Selita Ebanks, Maria Kanellis, Carol Leifer Summer Sanders, Darryl Strawberry, Bret Michaels, Bill Goldberg, Michael Johnson, Rod Blagojevich, Sinbad, and Curtis Stone.