In the past year, she has—on a national scale—turned into a much-needed champion of same-sex love and affection. She moves with pride through familiar Hollywood circles, a counsel and friend to producers and directors who trust that her eye won't be unduly judgmental.

She's a natural born activist, a serious woman who knows how to laugh, a strategist armed with smiles, a realist eager to help inter-group understandings grow. When she approaches ignorance incarnate, it isn't her style to frown. She's neither disgusted nor fearful. She simply walks up to it, puts her arm around its shoulder and offers it, in a friendly way, a few practical insights.

This is why the 28-year old lesbian daughter of Sonny and Cher, does so well at what she does. People in the entertainment industry are beginning to rely on her talents. They see that she's a whiz at determining whether gay and lesbian scenes are realistic and if in-group dialogues can make the grade or gay and lesbian characters are truly in character.

Chastity Bono is, it seems, a peacemaker, one who serves to unite her communities, especially Hollywood, with a brand of forthrightness her famous mother and father can't help but notice. She's also a living exemplar, one who was outed by tabloids before she was ready to emerge publicly as a lesbian. The experience, natch, was unsettling. Perhaps terrifying.

She'd just entered adulthood— was attempting to start a career in music-- when she was brought face to face with an unexpected 1990 Star headline: "Cher Shattered As Daughter Chastity Tells Her: I'm Gay".

Sonny and Cher stood by their Chastity during this dark moment. They knew, better than anyone did, that their child had grown into a person with integrity on her side. They'd watched their offspring develop into a wise adult, one armed with unique gifts.

And there's gripping evidence that young Chastity became an even more compassionate adult after responding to the first major tragedy of her life, her lover's painful death from cancer. The tabloids outed her again with National Enquirer, saying, "Cher Wipes Away the Tears as Her Daughter Mourns Gay Lover's Death"

With the paparazzi chasing her to the wall, she avoided becoming bitter or petty.

Chastity's resolve bloomed in her understanding that she'd been called to a greater struggle, one in which the nation's cultural playground, the entertainment industry, would be her battlefield, one where her "weapons" would cause peace, not war.

She would work, she said, with "anybody who wants to do a better job." Even Steve Coz, editor of the National Enquirer, now fits into this category, she says, proving, in spirited ways, that peacemaking is at the heart of her work. Coz, she smilingly describes as somebody out of whom she gets a kick.

A year ago Chastity Bono joined GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. As the organization's entertainment media director, she's become the unofficial Secretary of State from America's gay and lesbian communities to an industry she's known intimately since childhood.

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America says of Chastity: "I find her forthright, upfront, honest, and a valuable source of information."

A famous story about how she handles Hollywood issues emerged from her interchange with the makers of As Good as It Gets, a film due out at Christmas. When the filmakers asked, after showing her a preview, if their use of the word "fag" was offensive, she replied, "No, not in that particular context."

The contexts in which Chastity emerges as she works with GLAAD, improving communications across little-known worlds, changing for the better the ways in which we humans see ourselves, is as good as it gets.