Don't it make you feel warm and happy?

Gosh but here's another heart-warming role model: "New Brunswick New Democrats have chosen an openly gay social activist and founder of the province's Morgentaler abortion clinic as their new leader," it sez here.

"With a convincing first ballot victory at the NDP leadership convention, Allison Brewer, 51, made history Sunday, becoming New Brunswick's first openly gay party leader."

And of course, because she's a realist, she backpeddled: "While Ms. Brewer acknowledged her win is 'an historic day for the lesbian and gay community,' she said she's not a single-issue candidate and vowed to lead her party to a majority government.... Ms. Brewer took 62 per cent of the votes on the first ballot to defeat fellow candidates Pam Coates, a Saint John poverty activist, and Oscar Doucet of Acadieville. Ms. Brewer earned 248 of the 397 votes, which included mail-in ballots. Mr. Doucet earned 96 votes while Ms. Coates received 47."

If you blink, you'll miss the NDP's presence in the legislature. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Unless you think that a political party should have some clout.


ADDED 16:17 on Tuesday: Egale's Gilles Marchildon notes that CTV has "inned" Allison Brewer -- the network's screed is here. Shame. Bring back the goddamned CBC.

POSTED 16:40 A locked-out CBCer has written: "One reason Brewer's sexual orientation may not have been mentioned is that journalists who work in places such as New Brunswick often come and go. There is sometimes no long term memory, particularly in television, where Global and CTV are based in Halifax and use young bureau reporters across the Maritimes. Every year a new crop of young reporters arrive from Toronto with a Starbucks in their hand and no sense of who any of the locals are....

"Allison was the woman who took on the mayor of Fredericton and launched a human rights complaint, eventually forcing him to declare a gay pride weekend (yes it was only a weekend, not an entire week). Everyone in Fredericton knows her as the town lesbian."