"THIS IS '88, '89. I mean, there was a witchhunt ... if you were gay, they'd string you up." -; James Caan being interviewed about his role in the FX movie A Glimpse of Hell, about the deaths of 47 Navy men aboard the U.S.S. Iowa. He plays Captain Fred Moosally, who finally did the right thing in saying he did not believe it was likely that Clay Hartwig caused the explosion. The Navy pinned the event on Hartwig, saying he was gay and was jealous of friend Kendall Truitt's marriage to a woman.
"HONEY, my flame has been rekindled and is burning brighter than ever." -; Peter Paige playing ex-ex-gay Emmet on the Showtime series Queer as Folk. Emmet had joined an ex-gay ministry, See the Light, and tried to have sex with a woman. Both Emmet and the woman turned back gay right away.
"Larry Kramer hasn't written a play in years, or led an ACT UP demonstration since last century, but the acclaimed author and prickly conscience of the gay-rights movement can still pick up the phone and lecture Tom Brokaw or Leslie Stahl on their gay and AIDS coverage. Everyone takes his call." -; Author Michelangelo Signorile writing in New York Magazine, March 5.
"We're the one subculture where fame reduces your ability to get laid—if someone comes up to me in a bar and says I saw you on television, that's it, I have no interest in having sex with that person." -; Author Andrew Sullivan to New York Magazine, March 5.
"The question must be asked: after two decades of sunken faces on the evening news, political protests during rush-hour traffic, AIDS quilts, recriminations, free condoms and Marisol and Julio's drama played out in a [ New York City ] subway advertising campaign, how can anyone fail to grasp that certain sexual practices can lead to a fatal disease?" -; The New York Times, Feb. 11.
"Few Hollywood couples are prepared to stay together for the sake of their kids, the exception being Jodie Foster and her turkey baster, though they too are now said to sleep separately, one taking the master suite, the other the kitchen drawer." -; Mark Steyn, writing in Canada's National Post, Feb. 12.
"It [ Sitges, Spain ] was a better place when they [ my family ] lived there. Now it is full of gay Germans. I prefer normality. I say what I believe and I am not a hypocrite. In a few words, I like women." -; Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle to The New York Times, Jan. 11.
"I go on [ line ] with a fake name, and there are all these guys with their fake names and no one is saying anything except how they're looking for sex. I usually get into these funny arguments with people because no one is saying anything intelligent or interesting. I get bored of it very quickly. Someone will ask me what I'm wearing, and I'll tell them hoop earrings and full make-up, just to piss them off, and before you know it, they've logged off!" -; Boy George to Chicago's Windy City Times, Feb. 21.
" [ The ] word 'public' means, not that it's owned by the government, but public in the sense that it's an entity that opens its doors to the public, that invites the public in, and therefore that the state has an interest in assuring equal opportunity, based on longstanding precedent of the Supreme Court and our country. So the [ Boy Scouts' ] case first of all involved the power of a jurisdiction to ensure equal opportunity and nondiscrimination for its citizens in public accommodations, which are of great importance to people in civic life." -; Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Marriage Project Director Evan Wolfson to the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, January/February, 2001 ( formerly Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review ) .
"That claim [ public accommodations ] that was settled unanimously by the New Jersey Supreme Court, which rejected the Boy Scouts' attempt to escape from the reach of the civil rights law. The New Jersey Supreme Court found that the Boy Scouts is a public accommodation. And, by the way, 'private' entities can be public accommodations, such as restaurants, theatres, hotels, the Jaycees, because they open themselves to the public, are generally nonselective in their membership or the people they provide services to, and—in the case of the Boy Scouts particularly—are often entangled with the government, which diminishes their claim to being truly private. ... Once [ they ] found that they were a public accommodation ... then that meant that they were covered by New Jersey's civil rights law. What the Boy Scouts then claimed was that they should nevertheless have a First Amendment shield against the law, because having to obey this law would somehow infringe upon their expression." -; Wolfson.