Stephen Fry.__________
'how my favorite young stud doing ... did any girl give you a haand [ sic ] job this weekend ... good so your [ sic ] getting horny ... did you spank it this weekend yourself ... I have aa [ sic ] totally stiff wood now ... is your little guy limp...or growing ... i am hard as a rock ... so tell me when your [ sic ] reaches rock ... get a ruler and measure it for me ... strip down and get relaxed ... do I make you a little horny.' — From AOL instant messages sent by U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., to teenage House pages, according to ABC News. Foley, who was outed in the gay press more than 10 years ago, resigned Sept. 29 after ABC read some of the IMs to his spokesman.
'The hypocrisy of the Republicans is that they have more concern for a gay man who misbehaves than for fair treatment of gays who don't misbehave. They told him to stop, but I think it was like they didn't want to know. It was wishful thinking—they were hoping the problem would just go away. Maybe there were gay Republicans who were afraid of what would happen if any of this got attention. Hushing it up was better.' — Openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the Mark Foley scandal, to Newsweek, Oct. 4.
'The difference between [ Mark ] Foley's scandal and mine [ with a male prostitute in 1989 ] is that mine didn't involve someone underage, and I wasn't abusing my power over someone who worked under me. And of course I wasn't the co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. But since I was in the closet at that time, I understand how I was looking for physical and emotional outlets, maybe how Foley was. Being in the closet doesn't make you do dumb things, doesn't justify you doing dumb things, it just makes them likelier.' — Openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to Newsweek, Oct. 4.
' [ T ] he closet corrupts. The lies it requires and the compartmentalization it demands can lead people to places they never truly wanted to go, and for which they have to take ultimate responsibility. From what I've read, [ Mark ] Foley is another example of this destructive and self-destructive pattern for which the only cure is courage and honesty. While gays were fighting for their basic equality, Foley voted for the 'Defense of Marriage Act'. If his resignation means the end of the closet for him, and if there is no more to this than we now know, then it may even be for the good. Better to find integrity and lose a Congressional seat than never live with integrity at all.' — Writer Andrew Sullivan on his blog, Sept. 30.
'The GOP has only one response when it's in trouble—'blame the gays.' First, they floated the excuse that past complaints about [ Mark ] Foley weren't pursued because Republicans didn't want to look like they were 'gay bashing.' Then, they dispatched henchmen like Tony Perkins and Pat Buchanan to offer the blood libel that gay men are prone to pedophilia. Now—in another signal of desperation—it is clear they plan to poison the debate further with allusions to a shadowy network of closeted gay Republicans who closed ranks to protect Foley. The parallels to McCarthyism are chilling. Here it is gays, not communists, 'operating at the highest levels of government.'' — National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman in an Oct. 5 statement.
' [ Mark Foley ] had an enormous need to be caught and punished. You don't send e-mails to underage pages unless you want to be caught, and that's directly related to impoverished self-esteem and the need to be punished.' — Richard Isay, a Weill Cornell Medical College psychiatry professor and author who has studied gay men, to ABC News, Oct. 5.
'I don't understand why you want to know [ if I'm gay ] . I don't understand why it's any of your business. At some point, [ the question ] becomes just really rude, you know? ... I've gotten to a point where I feel it's invasive. Forget it. What I do in my private life is nobody's business anymore, period. ... I'm not spending my time with this anymore. This is a waste of my time.' — American Idol star Clay Aiken to Diane Sawyer on TV's Good Morning America, Sept. 21.
'Unfortunately, I am single, yes, but I'm too exhausted for anything else and being gay is a young man's game. Now no one wants me. Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common, which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50-year-old? No one, let me tell you. I could set myself on fire in a gay bar, and people would just light their cigarettes from me.' — Actor Rupert Everett, 47, to England's Daily Telegraph, Sept. 19.
'I am enjoying not being in a relationship. Weirdly, I don't find it hard being celibate. I'm obviously entering some mature phase of my life, but it's probably just a phase. I sometimes get down but I find being in a relationship is more upsetting than not being in one. I look at friends in relationships and think, 'Hmm, I don't want to be them.' I prefer to go home to an empty house with a big furry dog than that. I used to go to clubs to meet people but I haven't been in one for ages because I have to go home to let the dog out.' — Openly gay British TV host Graham Norton to London's Mirror newspaper, Sept. 16.
