Pictured: Britney Spears. 'They'd better think long and hard before they push this [constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage] because they're going to have a war on their hands. A real movement for an amendment will electrify this community and bring about an entire new generation of dissent and civil disobedience.' — Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) to The New York Times, Nov. 23.
'The fight against the Federal Marriage Amendment, as this ugly piece of work is nicknamed, is the Gettysburg of the gay rights movement. It's all or nothing. Because, if the right to marry is preempted by this constitutional travesty, our life partnerships will remain second-class, morally suspect, extra-legal, unrecognized and unequal for the indefinite future.' — Texas Triangle news writer Ann Rostow, Nov. 20.
'A wife is legally responsible for any debts that her husband runs up, on the theory, I guess, that she got to enjoy the DVD player and plasma-screen TV he put on his credit card. Unmarried gay couples, however, can't be forced to pay off each other's debts. Is this something we want to give up?' — Author Dan Savage writing at Salon.com, Nov. 20.
'Every court in the country eventually will rule that committed gay partnerships deserve the same legal protections as traditional marriage. But the inevitability of the social transformation does little to blunt its use as a divisive political issue.' — Eleanor Clift writing in Newsweek, Nov. 21.
'I'm very sad that young gay men are seeing so many people with HIV and are beginning to be unsafe and reckless with their lives. They just don't know, and we have to tell them the stories. We have to be the voices of those who have already gone. I don't want us to lose another generation of leaders for this movement to AIDS.' — Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Elizabeth Birch to Baltimore's GayLife, Nov. 14.
'They can easily connect with intensity and emotion—whether it is about love or enjoying life or anything that comes from the gut. I think they can feel that my music comes from that place. It comes from my gut.' — Britney Spears on her gay-male fans as quoted by uk.gay.com, Nov. 24.
'This [same-sex marriage] is a civil-rights issue. My relative, my aunt, married a white man in the 1950s when their marriage was illegal in half the states of this country. Indeed, my uncle, had he taken his wife across the wrong state line, would have been guilty of a criminal violation. It seems to me that if people want to marry a person of a different race that's no different than somebody wanting to marry someone of the same sex. And, indeed, we should be celebrating the fact that these people are talking about forming solid relationships, families, because families, in the end, will keep the community stable and are the basis upon which our country has been built and will survive. And so I think rather than allowing the panderers to fear and division to use this as a wedge issue in this election, I think and I believe the American people will rise to a level of saying, 'Wait a minute, it's no skin off my back in terms of the law if somebody marries the person they love and that person is of the same gender.' Civil unions falls short. It's not the same thing. It doesn't give the same rights.' — Democratic presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun during the Nov. 24 candidates' debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
'I think that what you're talking about here is civil rights. And what I favor is everybody being treated equally. ... If it's your children and you love them, you want them to have the same rights regardless of their sexual orientation. So that's why I said I welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court in the state of Massachusetts. I think we need to move forward with this issue. I think that people who want same-sex relationships should have exactly the same rights as people who are in conventional marriages. I'm talking about joint domicile, rights of survivorship, insurance coverage and all those rights. I think that's essential in America today.' — Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark during the Nov. 24 candidates' debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
'I would urge the [Massachusetts] legislature to do precisely what the [state] Constitution requires. ... It is a matter of equal protection under the law. And the court in the decision drew a distinction between church-sanctioned marriage and what the state has to provide in terms of rights. And what we're talking about is somebody's right to be able to visit a loved one in a hospital, somebody's right to be able to pass on property, somebody's right to live equally under the state laws as other people in the country. I think the term 'marriage' gets in the way of what is really being talked about here.' — Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards during the Nov. 24 candidates' debate in Des Moines, Iowa.
'Few if any Democratic, Independent or Republican swing voters (most of whom are moderates) are going to look at the Democratic candidate for president and say: 'Okay, I like his economic policies, and I like his foreign policy positions, and I like his views on this and this and this. But I don't know, I'm not into his support of gays now that the same-sex marriage issue is in the media, so I'm voting for Bush.' If anyone is voting on that one issue, they're already voting for Bush and are part of the religious right.' — Journalist Michelangelo Signorile, New York Press, Nov. 25.
'Having a queer eye for a straight guy once meant a 6-pack of cheap beer stood in the way of your hungry wet lips wrapping around your best bud's pulsating hetero cock —nowadays it means you've got your queer eye sculpting the perfect arch over a straight guy's eyebrow, which is pretty damned fucked, if you ask me.' — Columnist Paulo Murillo in L.A.'s fab!, Dec. 5.
'Over a decade ago I came out to my family at Thanksgiving. This year, as they pass the cranberry sauce, they're in for an even bigger surprise. I'm going back in. I'm not planning on breaking up with my partner of five years or even turning in my collection of Kylie Minogue dance mixes. I've just realized that being gay isn't what it used to be. Prime time [television] has done to homosexuality what Disney has done to Times Square. What was once decadent and expressive has become sanitized and boring.' — Columnist PG Kain, Houston Chronicle, Nov. 25.
'When I was a boy, the only role models I had were Liberace and Charles Nelson Reilly. I couldn't play the piano and I wasn't much good at Match Game so I felt doomed. Now there are countless more images of gay people on television and I am grateful for every one of them, but they don't represent that many more options. The message I hear is that it's OK to be gay as long as you are effortlessly stylish, hysterically funny or both.' — Columnist PG Kain, Houston Chronicle, Nov. 25.
'I remember joining grass-roots political groups and marching in the streets for equal rights and respect during the early '90s. We argued that being gay wasn't just a lifestyle choice—it was also a political identity. We chanted: 'We're here. We're queer. Get used to it.' The good news is, they did. The bad news is, now they want makeovers.' — Kain.
'At least it doesn't look like an airport in Des Moines anymore.' — Queer Eye's Carson Kressley on the group's earlier makeover of the set of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, during a Nov. 21 repeat appearance on the show.
'I'd been drinking for years, but certainly what brought the curtain down was the crystal meth. I'd go on these three- or four-day binges. So I checked myself into rehab. I had a lot of help. I consulted other performers who'd been through the same experience and the general consensus was, yes, I should put everything on hold. I was very fortunate.' — Singer Rufus Wainwright to Montreal's Hour newspaper, Nov. 27.
