I was wondering if anyone noticed the subtle irony.—Out singer Melissa Etheridge, on receiving her Academy Award from John Travolta and Queen Latifah
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'I have talked to several of my sources in the Senate, and this came as a huge surprise to me. ... They knew about it. They knew that he [ Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho ] had this problem, and it was in the closet. And it was not just a homosexual relationship. It was this weird, weird conduct. They didn't do anything about it. So the Republicans, again, as in the case of Congressman Foley, their coverup is coming back to haunt them.' — Conservative political commentator and TV personality Robert Novak on Bloomberg Television, Oct. 6.
'When [ Sen. Larry ] Craig said, 'I am not gay,' he might even have believed it. That wasn't him in the men's room. That was another guy with whom he happens to share the same body and consciousness. And that guy is bad! There should be laws to stop that guy! And yet, no matter how many laws Craig votes for or against, that guy, that doppelganger, keeps appearing, interfering with his simple attempts to use the bathroom of a large regional airport.' — Columnist Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 4.
' [ T ] he last minority with at least a modicum of influence in the [ Republican ] party's power structure seems to be closeted gay men. As an alternative to cruising men's rooms, the least they could do is use their clout to stay the manifestly unjust execution of Larry Craig.'—New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Sept. 23.
' [ O ] ne [ thing I haven't figured out ] is what causes homosexuality. I admit, I am curious—but the real importance in getting to the bottom of this question is that the answer would be helpful to the homosexual community. I suspect that the cause is genetic, which would mean all those people who say that gays and lesbians can change to become heterosexual would have to sing another tune. Instead of trying to 'fix' a situation that doesn't require fixing, they would have to learn to accept homosexuals. But I am not a scientist, so I can't set about finding out the etiology, the cause of homosexuality. All I can do is act as a cheerleader to encourage scientists to come up with the answer.' — Sexpert Dr. Ruth Westheimer to Slate.com, Sept. 26.
'Yeah, he [ my 4-year-old son ] definitely has a good chance there [ at being gay ] . He likes singing and musical theater already. It's all good, but I know it can be hard to be gay or different, and you always want your child to have everything perfectly easy, so I like to make sure he's playing with a truck every now and then.' — Actor Matthew Broderick to The Advocate, Oct. 9.
'At the age of about eight I had a head injury. [ I ] t was quite a bad bang. I had it stitched up and stuff, but all my interests changed, everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy crawlies, I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up. Suddenly, all I wanted to know about was music, it just seemed a very, very strange thing. And I have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident, this whole left-brain right-brain thing. Nobody in my family seemed to notice but I became absolutely obsessed with music and everything changed after that.' — Out singer George Michael to the BBC, Sept. 29.
'I was wondering if anyone noticed the subtle irony [ of my receiving my Oscar from John Travolta and Queen Latifah ] . And you know who I saw backstage after I won? Jodie Foster. I was like, 'What is the universe telling me?' And you know they're all looking like, 'Congratulations, loudmouth!'' — Out singer Melissa Etheridge to syndicated gay press writer Lawrence Ferber, in early September.
'I've had older women come up to me: 'Could you tell your writers I can't deal with those gays kissing all the time!' And I'm like, 'How do you feel about a black person and a white person kissing?' They're like, 'Well, that's all right.' And I'm like, 'Well, you know what? Your mother probably would have been uncomfortable with that. So you just have to get with the program.''—Actress Rachel Griffiths of TV's Brothers and Sisters to Entertainment Weekly, in its fall-TV-preview issue.
'The gay community must begin asking whether today's pride parades aren't doing more to maintain gay segregation than helping the move towards a truly equal society. To begin with, one must consider what the parades actually glorify. While on one hand they glorify the virtue of being oneself and the joys of diversity, there are also more corrosive idealizations of concepts such as promiscuity. The latter is particularly debilitating as the very association of homosexuals with heightened promiscuity is a throwback to an era of persecution in which loving, stable, visible same-sex relationships were impossible. The average demographic in the gay villages of Toronto and Ottawa is aging: many gay youth no longer feel the same pressures to congregate as previous generations. The gay community must realize that, as a culture matures, so must its traditions.' — J.S. Tannahill writing in the Ottawa ( Ontario ) Citizen, Aug. 24.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
