' [ One night while I was in the Air Force, ] a bag was put over my head. I was stripped of my clothes. I was forced to do things sexually with two other male cadets. That's when you start having suicidal thoughts, and that's when you start saying, 'Oh my God. I am so stuck in this situation. I can't go to anyone.' ... I think it's the first time that I've said that that happened. I've been ashamed of it.' — Reichen Lehmkuhl, former Amazing Race winner and current boyfriend of Lance Bass, to ABC News, Oct. 22.
'I was never certain what to call my boyfriend of eight years—ick, 'boyfriend.' I'm 35, not 15. But 'partner' sounds clinical, 'lover' sounds too '70s and 'longtime companion' sounds pathetic, evoking two old queens in cardigans watching Bette Davis movies. Nothing else sounds right because we already have a terminology for our better halves—spouses, husbands, wives. But because Michael and I couldn't marry, calling him my 'spouse' was a lie. So I always introduced him as my 'partner' and put my hand around his waist, to show we didn't just run a pet store or a restaurant or a Hollywood studio together.' — John Cloud writing at Time.com, Oct. 25.
'I'm sure I can't make a movie here [ in Hollywood ] with the same freedom that I'm used to in Spain. I was asked to do Brokeback Mountain but refused for that reason. Before that, I had asked for the rights for The Hours and The Human Stain, but they were already sold. If they had given me the rights, I would have made them.' — Gay filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar to Bloomberg News, Oct. 31.
'All that's been accomplished by this [ Mark Foley ] scandal is to call into question one of the central erotic archetypes of gay male tradition—the ephebic beauty of boys at their muscular peak between the ages of 16 and 18. It goes back through Western iconography from Michelangelo's nudes to Hadrian's Antinous and beyond that to Greek sculpture. It's a formula at the heart of Plato's dialogues, as in the Symposium, which shows Socrates in love with but also declining sex with the handsome young Alcibiades.' — Bisexual writer Camille Paglia to Salon.com, Oct. 26.
'What does it mean [ in the Mark Foley scandal ] for Democrats to be agitating over Web communications, which in my view fall under the province of free speech? It's a civil liberties issue. We can say that what Foley was doing was utterly inappropriate, professionally irresponsible, and in bad taste, but why were liberals fomenting a scandal day after day after day over words being used? And why didn't Democrats notice that they were drifting into an area which has been the province of the right wing—that is, the attempt to gain authoritarian control over interpersonal communications on the Web? It's very worrisome and yet more proof that the Democrats have lost their way.' — Bisexual writer Camille Paglia to Salon.com, Oct. 26.
' [ On my book tour ] I'm meeting these closeted men and women and gay youth who, in certain cases, are very much filled with the same fear that I confronted as a young man. In St. Louis, a man who came to the book signing told his wife that he was at the gym that night. ... I mean, it just happens every time. I'm loath to give advice because people have shared stories that they've come out and they've lost their job or they find themselves in difficult circumstances. I mean, I can only tell them what my story has been and how much healthier, grounded and spiritual I am now. Mostly, I listen without judgment. It's in every city, but in sort of the red states, if you will, there's many more.' — Former New Jersey governor James McGreevey to San Diego's Gay & Lesbian Times, Nov. 2.
'In a society which can be so casual about infidelity and so careless of the consequences, which does not quite know how to value friendship or affirm its importance, where so many children are given televisions in their bedrooms but are starved of time with their parents, and where the horrors and the prevalence of domestic violence are only beginning to be faced, the Church has enough that is challenging to say, enough hard words to speak, without condemning loving homosexual couples.' — Chester Cathedral vice dean Trevor Dennis writing in Britain's Guardian, Oct. 14.
'I left my home country, then-communist Czechoslovakia, to live in a country where I would be free to chase my dream without the specter of a faceless and menacing government watching my every move, spying on my family, controlling my travels, and confiscating most of what I earned. Ironically, today, in the name of protecting our democracy and freedom, my chosen country's government is behaving a lot like the totalitarian communist regime I left behind.' — Lesbian tennis great Martina Navratilova in a column published in Cleveland's Gay People's Chronicle, Oct. 13.
Correction: The quotes from Elton John's partner, David Furnish, in a recent edition of this column should have been attributed to the Sept. 28 issue of the Vancouver gay newspaper Xtra! West rather than to the Toronto gay newspaper Xtra!. The sister papers are both published by Toronto-based Pink Triangle Press.
Assistance: Bill Kelley
