Through the lobby of San Francisco's painfully chic Clift Hotel, I can hear a collective sigh of disappointment from the lesbian nation. I know; I felt it myself when I called the room of the attractive actress behind Melanie Marcus, Queer As Folk's power-lawyer-lesbian-mom, and a gracious man answered, telling me Michelle was on her way down. Boyfriend.

But dykes take heart. Clunie is the next best thing to gay. Although she humbly rejects the label, she's a gay activist. (She's in town, in fact, to raise money for the Destination Foundation, which funds travel for people with terminal illnesses, many of them with AIDS.) On Queer As Folk, in the face of opposition from religious conservatives on the one side, and gay moralists on the other, the petite Portland, Oregon, native embodies a huge lesbian statement. She's the first-ever, full-time, always-was, explicitly gay woman on an all-gay TV show.

In person, Clunie shares one trait with Mel: she has a deliberate honesty and desire to set things right. Otherwise, the actress; who floats across the Clift's lobby swaddled in a black cape over black slacks and sweater, looking more like an elf from Lord of the Rings than a homo from Pittsburgh; is surprisingly delicate, graceful, and spiritual, a leftover from her self-described "hippie, boho, Bob Dylan" upbringing.

Queer As Folk has a green flag for two more seasons. Foes, who've found voice in the group Queers Against Queer As Folk, will have plenty of politically incorrect content to complain about. Lesbians hungry for more dyke action will likely be disappointed. But addicts jonesing for their Sunday-night infusion of "mature content" soap opera fare; only all gay; will not.

Girlfriends: How did you get hooked up with the Foundation?
Clunie: Tim Hepworth called me; he started the Foundation. I respond to the Foundation because it's not like, "here's a vacation because we know you're dying." It's more like, "Here's an opportunity to see the world, and to heal your mind, body, and spirit." It comes from strength and love, instead of sympathy.

Girlfriends: The politics of healthcare is obviously something you care a lot about. You just finished a feature movie for Showtime called Damaged Care, about evil HMOs.
Clunie: They're going to screen it in Washington for Congress to see if we can change healthcare.

Girlfriends: Is there some personal reason you care so much about this issue?
Clunie: I come from a very blue-collar, working-class family. There were four kids in our family, and money was tight sometimes. When you come from that you have a very deep understanding that everything is not easy in this world for everybody. I would like everybody to be treated as equals. That may sound very communistic of me, but it really bothers me when people have fundamental rights and privileges because they have money.

Girlfriends: Laura Dern, who you acted opposite of in Damaged Care, costarred on Ellen's coming-out episode, and I get the sense she thinks of herself as an activist for gay causes. You're also not a lesbian but are giving your all to a gay show: do you think of yourself as an activist?
Clunie: To be honest with you, I just think of myself as an actor. I don't know enough about gay life to go out there and start fighting for causes. At the same time I do know that I have this great love for humanity, and I do understand artistic expression, and I do believe in creating a world where you are free to express yourself, whatever that may be, as long as you don't hurt anyone.

Girlfriends: Were you at the L.A. Director's Guild Queer As Folk panel in March, when the group Queers Against Queer As Folk protested?
Clunie: Yes. (laughs) It was a really sad picket line. There were, like, four of them.

Girlfriends: What does it feel like, to know that there's an actual movement to get your show cancelled?
Clunie: Well, like I said, I think it's really important in this world when you don't know something about a subject, to not start shooting off at it. Unfortunately for them, they only saw one episode where Debbie gets mad because her son Michael is dating a guy who is HIV-positive. They didn't give it time to see where the story-line went.

The protest was very reactionary, really. If they had thought about it, maybe they would have realized that this is an interesting way to shine the light on prejudice: to take the one character on the show who everyone loves; there's no reason that you could possibly not love that character, Michael's mom, played by Sharon Gless; to take that character and show that even she has prejudice in her. She's the character that most people, especially Middle America, can relate to because she is a high-profile actor. To make her the one that's prejudiced, maybe it will open them up a little more. It's a really smart way to do it.

Girlfriends: Does it bother you when the guys on the show make their "muff-diver" jokes and get grossed out by the idea of Mel and Lindsay having sex?
Clunie: It bothers me in character. But as Michelle, I understand it. I see gay men make jokes about lesbians all the time. I was working on a show, and this person knew I was playing Melanie on Queer As Folk, so he said, "Oh, I have a book I wanna give to you. It's so funny." And so he brings me this book, and the title of the book is All About Lesbian Humor. And all the pages on the inside were blank. I said, "Oh, that's so funny, ha, ha, ha." And this was a gay man. So it does exist.

But the whole point of Queer As Folk is to show things as they exist in the world. I think we need to show that. As Michelle, I never really thought about it before. But once I started playing Melanie, I was like, ³Jesus, why do I feel so strange about this?² and then I realized, in a way, Iım a minority of a minority.

Girlfriends: And suddenly it wasn't okay for them to make fun of you like that.
Clunie: Yeah!

Girlfriends: I know a lot of gay men who have more or less of a problem with lesbian sexuality. But the great thing about Queer As Folk is that the characters work through it, too. It's not as if Melanie and Lindsay just throw up their hands and walk out.
Clunie: That's because we're friends. I don't know how many gay people there really are in Pittsburgh. But on the show, we're stuck with each other. This is our group of friends, our family, like it or not.

Girlfriends: It's true that Melanie and Lindsay don't get as much airtime as the boys. But the scenes you've been getting lately are great. What was it like for you to act in that scene when Mel and Lindsay have dinner with Lindsay's parents, and the parents completely dismiss the meaning of their marriage ceremony?
Clunie: That was really hard. I enjoyed the fact that I didn't have many lines in that scene because sometimes acting is not about what you say, but what you don't say. To be a mature person, to be there for my partner, meant sitting there and containing myself instead of exploding.

I spent a lot of season two being a rock for Lindsay. It was hard for me as an actor.

Girlfriends: But your sex scenes are steamy! Was it a conscious decision in season two to turn up the volume on your sex scenes?
Clunie: I think so. It's something that I wanted, and that Thea [Gill, who plays Lindsay] wanted. I think it's important to show women who have a strong sex drive, just as much as men. Because we do. I don't know what kind of propaganda says we don't. It's just insane.

Girlfriends: Critics of the show may say that there's a lot of negative language about lesbians and lesbian sexuality. But your producers and your writers have no problem whatsoever with showing it on screen.
Clunie: Exactly.

Girlfriends: And they treat it the same way they treat the boys'. Explicit, nude.
Clunie: Yeah.

Girlfriends: The beauty of Queer As Folk is that everyone is tied together by semi-secret, suppressed lust for one another, like Friends only gay and rated R: Michael for Brian, Ted for Michael, Lindsay for Brian, Mel for her ex. Do you get why Lindsay's unresolved feelings for Brian drive Mel crazy?
Clunie: Oh, totally. I think one of the ways I hook up with Melanie as a character is that she isn't interested in half-truths in life. So I think it's very frustrating for her to deal with Lindsay on the subject of Brian because she's not naïve. Whether Lindsay admits it or not, she knows what the truth is.

Girlfriends: Do you think that Melanie is worried that Lindsay isn't as gay as Mel is?
Clunie: I'm sure there's a little bit of that there. I'm sure. Absolutely. I think that Melanie was born gay. She knew that she loved women from the time that she came out of the womb. There's no, "what if Melanie fell in love with a man." That option doesn't exist.

Girlfriends: Do you know the Kinsey scale?
Clunie: No, no! What is that?

Girlfriends: Alfred Kinsey was a sexologist in the 1950s and he invented this scale to describe people's sexual orientation. A zero is totally heterosexual, and a six is totally homosexual. I always think of Melanie...
Clunie: She's a six. Well, maybe Melanie's a five and a half. She might think about it and go like this: "Huh, interesting." But that's it. Actually, she's a hard six.

Girlfriends: So do you think that Lindsay would be somewhere between a three and a four?
Clunie: I don't know, I don't want to speak for her character. She'll be really mad at me and next season will not be easy. (smiles)

Girlfriends: You've said that "it's not a big stretch" for you to play a lesbian. "A lot of people interpret this as bisexuality, and it could be. On a human and emotional level, I find that the lines are very thin between gay and straight and bisexual. To me, it's all love." I read that to my associate editor Jen and she said, "okay, so Clunie wouldn't kick a woman out of bed." Is she right?
Clunie: Oh! That's really funny. I have to be honest. I am straight. It does sadden me sometimes, because I was talking to Peter Paige [the actor who plays Emmett], about a mutual friend of ours who's in the closet, not anyone on the show, and I said I feel really sorry for that person. I said I could understand what they must be going through. I don't know what I would do if I was in that position. His reply was, "Oh, honey, we all know what you would do if you were in that position. There would never even have been a closet." Because he knows I'm a wannabe lesbian, and that if I were a lesbian, I would be flying out there right at the forefront. I think genetics have something to do with it, actually. But I certainly wouldn't shut the door on it. You never know what's going to happen in your life. Five years from now, you could meet me, and I could have met some woman who just completely did it for me, the chemistry was there, the mental makeup, and it just clicked for me. So I wouldn't shut the door...any person who says they know completely what they are, they're lying. They're full of it.

Girlfriends: So if you were to fall for a girl, would she be more like Angelina Jolie or Reese Witherspoon?
Clunie: Oh, Angelina Jolie, for sure! (laughs)

Girlfriends: Missy Elliot or Britney Spears?
Clunie: Well I don't know who Missy Elliot is, but Britney Spears neverŠ

Girlfriends: Never did it for you?
Clunie: No, god, Britney Spears would drive me fucking nuts.

Girlfriends: I named Missy Elliot because she's a really foul-mouthed hip-hopper, the opposite of Britney Spears.
Clunie: Well, I don't know her, but I'll take Missy Elliot any day over Britney Spears. Actually, I do own a Britney Spears CD and I have bopped around the house to it. I just wouldn't want to date her.

Girlfriends: Your career has really moved up a notch with Queer As Folk. Say it plays out after many successful seasons. What would be your dream job after this?
Clunie: My dream is to slowly develop a production company where we produce digital films. I want to create really strong female roles for myself and for other actors. In the 1940s you had all these fabulous female roles. Nowadays, the scripts that I'm getting, I'm not interested in any of them, because you're playing The Girlfriend, or The Fuck, or A Victim. We really, as women, need to start to write our own scripts and direct our own movies because what's out there is really sad. Maybe it's postmodern capitalism; and to be quite honest with you I don't know what the fuck that exactly means, but I've heard it a lot lately and I've been having discussions about it; and in that there lies some answers as far as the white, dominating male figure. I think he's starting to crumble. I'm just spit-balling here, but I think now is the time for women to come to the forefront.

Girlfriends: This is where the communistic part of you comes in again.
Clunie: Oh really, is that what's going on? Am I a commie? I hope we don't have another McCarthy era. I might have to go to Europe and make my little digital films.

Girlfriends: You may do that anyway.
Clunie: I might, actually. You never know.