Pictured Liza Minnelli. Photo by Tracy Baim
' [ I ] t's not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen. And then some doors are open and light comes in, and there are skylights and it widens. Brad's my partner, we've been together for 18 years. So, I've been 'open,' but I have not talked to the press. In that sense, maybe that's another opening of the corridor there.' — Actor George Takei, Sulu on the first Star Trek series, to the L.A. gay magazine Frontiers, Nov. 8.
'I was a runner from my junior-high-school days. And at a bar, you see a paper, and you see a gay running club. 'Oh, I'll show up,' you think. People would see me and they were kind of astounded, but I ran with them, they saw that I'm George, not Sulu. So your frame of reference, your community broadens. ... And you start realizing that this is 'normal.' ... 'This is who I am. And by gum, I'm not going to let it be a constraint!' In the same way that I'm not going to let the fact that I am a Japanese-American, who was unjustly incarcerated [ in U.S. internment camps from age 4 to 8 ] and grew up with that, be a constraint.' — Actor George Takei, Sulu on the first Star Trek series, to the L.A. gay magazine Frontiers, Nov. 8.
'She's going to be 60 in March—March 12—and she still has more energy than anyone I know and remembers everything.' — Scott Schecter, author of The Liza Minnelli Scrapbook, on the non-stop career of Minnelli, to The Denver Post. Minnelli is touring, working on an album with Michael Feinstein, and she has written a screenplay for Katie's Blues, the working title of a planned film by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producers of the movie, Chicago. She's even on Fox's Arrested Development.
'Suddenly, people realize I have a sense of humor.' — Minnelli to the Denver Post.
'It bothered me until I learned not to read it. And the person who told me that was Elizabeth Taylor. I called her one day and said, 'Elizabeth, they're saying all these horrible things and what am I going to do?' And she said, 'You read that stuff?' I said, 'You don't?' And she said, 'Of course not. Let them write what they're going to write and you go have a hamburger.' And it was the best piece of advice I ever got.' — Minnelli on attacks in the media.
'Governor Mitt Romney leveled an unusually personal attack yesterday at the Supreme Judicial Court for legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, telling a group of conservative lawyers and judges that the justices issued the ruling to promote their values and those of 'their like-minded friends in the communities they socialize in.'' — From a Boston Globe report.
'Romney also took heat yesterday when he did not swiftly disavow the remarks of Federalist Society member Gerald Walpin, who introduced Romney by praising him for fighting against what he called the 'modern-day KKK ... the Kennedy-Kerry Klan.'' — The Boston Globe.
'A day after he accused justices on the Supreme Judicial Court of legalizing gay marriage to please 'their like-minded friends in the communities they socialize in,' Gov. Mitt Romney on Friday sought to portray his comment as a generic criticism of their legal approach. The Republican chief executive said the four justices who authored the 2003 majority opinion were not so much reflecting the views of their particular social circles, but of the community at-large. Instead, he argued, they should have rooted their opinion not in public opinion, but precedent and the four corners of the state constitution.' — The Boston Globe.
'Anne Rice has found God—and her legion of devoted fans will have to get used to life without her blood-soaked vampire novels. The best-selling queen of Gothic fiction told Newsweek her upcoming book, and all future works, will be written in the voice of Jesus Christ. ... Rice, 65, who returned to the Catholic Church after a life-threatening medical scare, now plans to write three sequels about the life of Christ. She knows it might not go over big with fans who ate up her chronicles of witches, warlocks and soft-core S&M encounters.' — The New York Daily News. Her new book is titled Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.
'Christ is 'the ultimate supernatural hero,' she writes in the new book's afterword. 'The ultimate immortal of them all.'' — The New York Daily News on Anne Rice.
'If a straight boy can learn to control his eyes, his hands, even to some degree his thoughts with a female shipmate, so can gay guys with men. I'd even bet gay guys, who have to do it all the time in largely straight society, are way better at it. ... Lifting [ Don't Ask, Don't Tell ] is going to produce problems. Are we willing to deal with these problems openly? That's the question at the end of the day.' — Bruce Fleming Nov. 8 on www.military.com . Fleming is a professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy and the author of Annapolis Autumn: Life, Death, and Literature at the U.S. Naval Academy.
