National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman. Photo by Rex Wockner.___________
' [ W ] e're at war with jihadists ( and millions of their supporters around the world ) who wish devoutly to see Western liberties replaced by Koranic law. To acknowledge this reality is not to buy into some nefarious right-wing agenda; it's to recognize a clear and present threat to liberal democracy—a threat that gays, above all, should take seriously, because tolerance of people like us heads the long list of things about the West that drive orthodox Muslims nuts, and because we'd be among the very first to suffer in a society governed according to sharia.' — Gay author Bruce Bawer writing in the pride issue of the Seattle weekly The Stranger, June 20.
' [ M ] ore pro-LGBT-rights laws were passed this year than any year in our movement's history. As a result, for the first time more than half the U.S. population will live in jurisdictions that outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and nearly 40 percent will live in jurisdictions that protect transgender people from discrimination. Seven years ago, the fight for civil unions in Vermont nearly caused a civil war. In the last seven months, however, three states—New Jersey, Oregon, and New Hampshire—enacted civil-union laws with barely a ripple. As a result, one-fifth of the population will now live in a state that offers broad protections to same-sex couples.' — National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman writing in the pride issue of the Seattle weekly The Stranger, June 20.
'You can have a loving relationship despite an age difference. ... I think the Greeks understood it well, and so did the gay community. Back in the '70s, the gay community featured older, hairy guys in gay porn all the time. During the AIDS crisis, everything we saw, in advertising and porn, suddenly became young and clean.' — Christopher Turner, 35, husband of author Armistead Maupin, 62, to the San Francisco Chronicle, June 17.
'I have a really bad habit of taking washcloths from hotels. White ones, with the round corners. I use them back home to wipe up around my sink. I'm obsessive. After I brush my teeth or wash my face—if there's a drop of water on the faucet or sink I take one of my washcloths and clean them up. I love them when they're 100 percent cotton. I have good ones from the Palais Jamaï Fés. They were mint and had the P and J sewn in. Very chic.' — Lesbian comedian and actress Sandra Bernhard to the Dallas Voice, June 15.
'I was looking through second-hand [ record ] stores and things that were uncharted territory, at least for me. So then I landed on country music and really started to get a vision for cow punk, and fell in love with Patsy Cline, and sort of had an image of how I could approach country with a very liberal, gay, vegetarian point of view.' — Lesbian singer k.d. lang to Chicago's Windy City Times, June 20.
'It really started because I don't wear leather, and finding appropriate plastic shoes became too much of a hassle.' — Lesbian singer k.d. lang on why she performs barefoot, to Chicago's Windy City Times, June 20.
'Travel is over. Travelling to America, I can't think of anything worse. This is the year I unveil my new no-planes policy. ... Before 9/11, airports were my favourite place in the world. Now, they are just where you see the mess of the world, the worst side of authority, with swaggering security people telling all the wrong people to take their belts off. It's just not a good feeling any more.' — Gay actor Rupert Everett to Scotland's Sunday Herald, June 24.
'Ex-gay ministries are support groups designed to offer strategies to keep people out of gay establishments or relationships that they desperately want to be in. In the old days, this was simply called being in the closet. But Exodus [ International ] figured out that misery likes company and that they could profit by creating a communal closet where self-loathing and sexually frustrated homosexuals could whine to each other about their unhappiness.' — Syndicated gay press columnist Wayne Besen, June 21.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
