Showbiz Commentary: Heidi Oringer

Sept. 20 -- Another celebrity lesbian couple hits the skids, an ’80s music heartthrob gets hauled off to the slammer, and a former Angel denies she mistook someone’s lawn for a bathroom during a chichi party. Yes, the summer hiatus is over: Hollywood is back in session.

Sure, Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres ended their relationship this summer. But despite all the publicity surrounding their romance, they weren’t the first lesbian celebrity couple to break down barriers. Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher went public long before Ellen and Anne started billing and cooing in public.

Boys on the Side?

After 12 years, rocker Etheridge and director Cypher have issued a joint statement saying they have ended their relationship “with the utmost love and respect for one another.” The couple would divulge absolutely no details, though they did say the most important thing right now is to focus on the children. They have two, borne by Cypher, who was artificially inseminated with sperm donated by David Crosby.And so the question of the hour is: Who gets the rest of David’s sperm?

Just kidding! The real question is: Now that stardom’s only two openly lesbian celebrity couples have broken up, will it set back the whole openness policy? Both couples seemed eager to speak about their relationships while they were ongoing, but their breakups remain a mystery. Something tells me Dr. Laura will have oodles to say about this.

By the way, more details are emerging about the Ellen and Anne split. When the story first broke, we heard that Anne went a little off the balance beam, ended up in some stranger’s house, took a shower, watched some TV, and was briefly hospitalized, but no further details were forthcoming (such as, “Why?!”). More recently, it has been reported that Anne has been canoodling with numerous men, including Vince Vaughn (one of her exes), an unknown actor from a movie she is filming, and a cameraman who worked on the documentary Anne was shooting about Ellen’s comedy tour.