Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Pam's House Blend (Pam Spaulding)

Individuals like Pam Spaulding and her blog, Pam's House Blend http://www.pamshouseblend.com/ has been credited with focusing America’s attention on Don't Ask, Don't Tell in recent months. This resulted in a temporary moratorium on Democratic National Committee (DNC) donations by the GLBTY community who made the Obama administration realize there was a price for its inaction on this issue.

Pam Spaulding is the editor and publisher of Pam's House Blend (pamshouseblend.com), honored as "Best LGBT Blog" in the 2005 and 2006 Weblog Awards. The Blend, which averages 120,000 visitors a month, launched in July 2004 as a personal response to the anti-gay state of the political landscape.

With roots in North Carolina and New York City, Pam considers herself to have "dual citizenship" status as a Southerner and a Yankee -- and brings that perspective and voice to her blog, which focuses on current political events, LGBT and women's rights, the influence of the far Right, and race relations.

Pam's House Blend is ranked in the top 50 progressive political blogs. Michael Rogers, editor and publisher of gay blog PageOneQ.com wrote, "Pam is certainly the most important lesbian blogger in America. She's a lesbian in a gay blogging world that is overwhelmingly gay men. She's a blogger as a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world and she's of color and the internet is so skewed to the privileged." Mike Airhart of Ex Gay Watch says, "Thanks to efforts by bloggers such as Spaulding, XGW can spend less time analyzing the religious right and more time focusing on exgays."

Spaulding has provided commentary on CNN during the 2008 presidential election cycle, spoken at national forums, and performed the first-ever live-blogging events for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network's annual dinner in May 2006 and the National Black Justice Coalition's Second Annual Black Church Summit in March 2007.

In 2006 she received Distinguished Achievement Award from The Monette-Horwitz Trust for making significant contributions toward the eradication of homophobia. Pam was named one of Huffington Post's Ultimate Game Changers in Politics in 2009, honored with the 2009 Women's Media Center Award for Online Journalism, received the 2009 Courage Award from the New York City Anti-Violence Project and selected as one of the OUT 100 for the year.

Spaulding has a B.A. in Media Studies from Fordham University and in the non-virtual world, serves as Information Technology Manager at Duke University Press. She is a board member of The Institute of Southern Studies, which publishes the award-winning investigative journalism publication Southern Exposure, and the blog Facing South. Pam is on the organization's Media Advisory Group.

She lives Durham, NC with her wife Kate -- they legally married in Vancouver in 2004 -- and their two dogs.

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