Pictured Reichen Lehmkuhl, photo by ABC. Jimmy Somerville. Photo by ScotsGay. 'This story is perhaps one of the most precious, well-known mission stories of the last century. I believe it was bad judgement to cast one of Hollywood's foremost gay activists in the leading role ... . This would be like Madonna playing the Virgin Mary.' — Jason Janz, an assistant pastor in Colorado on gay actor Chad Allen portraying Christian missionary Nate Saint and his son, Steve, in the movie End of the Spear, as quoted in the Feb. 6 issue of Newsweek.
'I recently had a relationship with a network star no one would ever know is gay. We'd have a wonderful time when we were together privately, but it wasn't worth it. He promised everything would be great as long as I kept it quiet. With the money he makes, he's able to keep everything really quiet. But that's not me.' — Reichen Lehmkuhl, one-half of the gay couple who won the million-dollar prize on the fourth season of The Amazing Race ( they later broke up ) , to the Portland, Ore., newspaper Willamette Week, Jan. 18.
'I thought it was an opportunity to represent this form of love and to portray homosexual love ... as not being a disease or a plague or something that can be cured or a lifestyle choice.' — Brokeback Mountain actor Heath Ledger to the Australian gay newspaper Sydney Star Observer, Jan. 19. Ledger is Australian.
'This is what Brokeback Mountain implicitly asks of gay movie-goers: to love now, passionately, regardless of the cost. Seize the day, because one day, possibly before you know it, it will be too late.' — Novelist Brent Hartinger writing at AfterElton.com, Jan. 16.
'I finally got to see it on New Year's Day at the Magnolia and went with my 13-year-old. I cried several times. It was just an incredible film, one that will hopefully open some people's hearts and make everyone more tolerant. Love is love, pure and simple.' — Dallas Mayor Laura Miller on Brokeback Mountain, to the gay newspaper Dallas Voice, Jan. 6.
'The appeal [ of Brokeback Mountain ] is universal. As tragic on-screen lovers go, Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal have nothing on the two Brokeback cowboys. No wonder it seems to be turning into a date movie—for heterosexuals.' — Columnist Sue Hutchinson, San Jose Mercury News, Jan. 14.
'We are honored to be awarding both Jake Gyllenhaal and Ang Lee with the Human Rights Campaign's Equality Award. Their work on this film [ Brokeback Mountain ] has helped reshape the debate and changed the cultural fabric of our country.' — Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, Jan. 17.
' [ T ] his astonishing, pitch-perfect film is now considered a movie that, quite literally, changes minds. Shifts perceptions. That moves the human experiment forward and makes people truly think about sex and gender and love and not in the way that, say, Pride & Prejudice makes you think because that kind of thinking is merely sweet and harmless, whereas Brokeback [ Mountain ] slaps bigotry and intolerance upside its knobby little head and induces heated discussions of the film's dynamics and politics and ideas of love over a bottle of wine and some deep curious sighing.' — San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Jan. 20.
' [ T ] here is no progress forward—intellectual, spiritual, sexual or otherwise—without a concomitant blood-curdling scream from the power brokers and the religiously terrified to hold it all back. Change brings fear. Sexuality brings confusion. For every person who has his rigid homophobic ideology shattered by Brokeback [ Mountain ] 's emotional hammer, there is a confused neocon who redoubles his efforts to replant it.' — San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Jan. 20.
'My wife and I took our lesbian daughter to see Brokeback Mountain Friday night. Sorry to disappoint the moral purists, but we had a wonderful evening. A poignantly moving but genuinely sad story of two men who, by following society's advice, did what was, for them, unnatural. Their wives were 'sexy' enough, that was not the problem. The problem was that they pursued a path that was at variance with their natural order. With predictable certainty, these men soon discovered that society's idea of 'normal' was, for them, abnormal. ( You can walk an errant path for only so long — nature has a way of re-establishing homeostasis. ) ' — Guest columnist Kim Clark writing in the Salt Lake Tribune, Jan. 22.
'When Republicans gear up for a big election, one standard tactic is to drag out the homosexuals. Slap them in the public stockade. Reveal their plots and agendas. Stop them before they get married, before they adopt children, before they recruit children, before they claim the top bunks in our nuclear submarines. This supposedly motivates the base, which otherwise would spend election night at home, watching Pat Robertson condemn various cities and world leaders to unholy deaths.' — Mike Thomas writing in the Orlando Sentinel, Jan. 15.
'Elton John and David Furnish are such the face of gay respectability. It is like the dirtier side of homosexuality has to be swept under the carpet. It has become so sanitized and so chocolate box powdery, and that is really frustrating. The diversity of sexuality should be the beauty of it, but now there is so much focus on this new gay royalty and they are all so squeaky clean. Oh, it is so tedious!' — Singer Jimmy Somerville to the Sydney Star Observer, Jan. 12.
'Marriage ... is so redundant for heterosexuals and homosexuals in the 21st century. It should be about partnerships and everyone having the same rights, but I think leaving marriage to the extremes of the church is where it belongs. It is so sad we feel it is some kind of progress and we are now turning it into something else to celebrate. I am so disappointed. Of course someone should be able to celebrate their relationship and their love, but drop the marriage and move on and call it something else.' — Singer Jimmy Somerville to the Sydney Star Observer, Jan. 12.
