'Gay guys are hot. I've really, really fallen for several! One thing like that just happened. Roberto Cavalli threw me a huge party for my record, and there were four of the hottest guys I've ever seen in my life. I was like, 'Oh, my God, get them in here, now!' They came in, and I was so excited, and then they were like, 'Omigod, we LOVE you, girl!' I was like, 'Hmm...'' — Celebrity socialite Paris Hilton writing in the September issue of Instinct magazine.
'I loved gays before it was chic! ... Gay men just adore their divas. There are a whole group of women of a certain age gay men just love. There's Liz, there's Liza and, of course, there's me!' — Comedian Joan Rivers to San Francisco's Bay Times, Sept. 7.
'One of the qualities that gay people can have is that out of defence, you start laughing the longest and the loudest at everything. In the end, it is fatal because once you start laughing at everything, you destroy the mechanism for taking anything seriously. Including yourself. — Actor Rupert Everett to England's Daily Telegraph, Sept. 19.
'Not having to hide—and to be able to come to an event like this, be able to hold hands [ with my partner ] and be proud—that's not something I could have done a year ago. It's [ coming out ] made a big difference in my life.' — Olympic gold medalist and WNBA Most Valuable Player Sheryl Swoopes to the national lesbian magazine Curve, October issue. The event was the National Center for Lesbian Rights annual gala.
'It's the largest step I've taken to be more active in the organization, and to interact with other gay journalists. ... No one advised me against doing it. I have no regrets.' — CNN anchor Thomas Roberts after he appeared on a panel called 'Off Camera: The Challenges for LGBT TV Anchors' at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's recent conference in Miami Beach, to AfterElton.com .
'My trainer married her girlfriend last weekend and we went. It was beautiful. I was so touched by their vows to each other, I totally cried. They have some disapproving family members who actually decided to be present for the wedding. Afterwards, I wondered, Did they get it? Did they see the love? I never get people that think [ being gay ] is some kind of choice. You might be able to suppress it, but why would you live life that way? It really saddens me.' — Singer Christina Aguilera to Advocate.com, Sept. 11.
'I was involved with someone who had a gay past. I was in the relationship knowing that. ... It was a paranoia at times, like when you walk into a room with a guy that you know has feelings for other men, you're like, Is he looking at the guy or the girl over there? I don't know if he's come to terms with it yet.' — Aguilera to Advocate.com .
'I felt sorry for my last boyfriend—a lot of people thought he was a gold digger because he's younger than me. But he so wasn't and I felt really bad for him. We split up and tried to stay friends but it got bad and we stopped speaking. Then we started speaking and it got good again. We remembered why we got together in the first place. We are friends again now. I talk to him on the phone all the time. If we see each other we just have fun and hang out without the day-to-day drear of being in a relationship. We are both single. I think if we got back together we'd take it much more slowly than we did. It was all a bit of a whirlwind.' — British TV host Graham Norton to London's Mirror newspaper, Sept. 16.
'We're one 85-year-old man away from losing most of the protections of individual rights that we have seen from the [ U.S. Supreme ] Court in recent years. The Lawrence v. Texas decision on consenting adult sex, the abortion decision, any serious effort to deal with race. They now have four extreme right-wingers. And we have four who aren't and one who is sort of in the middle, Justice Kennedy. Justice Stevens is 85. That's why Democratic gains in the Senate are so important. If Justice Stevens were to become ill or die—and he's 85 years old—and Bush could replace him, you would see a real diminution of constitutional rights and protections against discrimination.' — U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to San Diego's Gay & Lesbian Times.
'We don't ... believe that we lost because of gay issues. We think we weren't sufficiently vigorous in supporting our turnout efforts in rural communities and we weren't sufficiently vigorous in defending a Democratic point of view. Unlike some other folks in the party, my view is if you want to win, you've got to behave like Democrats, and not Republican-light. It's a fundamental difference in how we approach elections since I've been chairman. We believe we can't win if people can't tell the difference between parties.' — Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean to Los Angeles' IN Magazine.
'There's tremendous anti-gay animosity that's built up because of this push for gay marriage. I'm a lapsed Catholic, but I respect religion [ and ] I think there's something really wrong trying to argue that religion needs to accommodate itself to people's expectations and desire. Gays should not be asking for marriage but for some new sort of contract that we could induce dissenting heterosexuals into also.' — Bisexual author Camille Paglia to the British national lesbian magazine Diva, October.
'My experience has been bisexual but my love life has been entirely lesbian—that is, I've never fallen in love with a man, but I am equally attracted to men and women, always have been. We need to promote a model where it's free to move back and forth between borderlines.' — Paglia to the British national lesbian magazine Diva, October issue.
