'For the third year in a row this man ( Mayor Yuri Luzhkov ) has deprived me and my fellow activists of the right to go on the streets with human rights slogans in support of sexual minorities, openly branding us as satanists and weapons of mass destruction. Two years ago, as part of the first Moscow Gay Pride, I tried to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier next to the Kremlin wall as a sign of our fight against fascism. I was allowed to go no further than the closed doors of Alexandrovskiy Garden where fascist extremists of contemporary Russia pulled the flowers out of my hands and crushed them while I was arrested by militia as a criminal. The next day Mayor Luzhkov said that gays wanted to be irreverent about our sacred place and 'they were justly beaten.'' — Pioneering Russian gay activist Nikolai Alekseev writing in London's Guardian, May 8.
'Occasionally I don't like the probing and the questioning. But I put up with it because I grew up in a time when there were no role models. To be gay and lesbian was to be a failure. The good gay people killed themselves. And the others were drug addicts and bums. There was no possibility for a life of integrity or respect. So I feel called to be as open as I can be about my life so that young lesbians and gay men will understand that they can have wonderful relationships, be mothers and fathers and make a real distinction for themselves in their careers. I owe it to those who come after me.' — New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson to Britain's Telegraph newspaper, April 29.
'There's A's and there's B's. The A's are guys like me, the B's are homosexual faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases.' — Canadian federal Tory MP Tom Lukiwski caught on a 17-year-old amateur videotape unearthed April 3 by an opposition political party. Lukiwski said of the recording: 'I am sorry. I am ashamed.'
'I've never seen a worse job of lobbying done by the transgender community ( than on the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, ENDA ) . They seem to think that all they had to do was to get the gay and lesbian community to say 'OK.' I think they thought that this was a train, and that they were a car on the train. I said to them, 'You've got to work this, you've got to lobby people.' They did a terrible job of lobbying, and so we didn't have the votes.' — Openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to the Oregon gay newspaper Just Out, May 2. A GLB-only version of ENDA has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is pending in the Senate.
'I'd be upset ( if my boyfriend came out as gay ) because I want to be with him. It's so funny because I joke with him that it drives me crazy to be a girl sometimes, so in my next life I'm going to come back as a guy and ( he's ) going to be my bitch. But if he liked guys, I would be crushed.' — Singer Janet Jackson to E! Online, April 22.
'Marry me. I mean it. I don't wanna wait. I don't wanna—I wanna make this official. ... I'm completely, completely in love with you. I even love the things about you that I hate. Because you make me feel like I don't have to be anyone other than who I am. And, to me, that feels like family, and that's what I want us to be. I want us to be a family, because that never ends. ... Scotty, I am asking you, Will you please marry me?' — Character Kevin Walker to character Scotty Wandell on the hit ABC-TV series Brothers & Sisters, May 4. Scotty said yes.
'It's a milestone, and I was really quite pleased that I got to be a part of it.' — Brothers & Sisters actress Calista Flockhart on the show's May 11 season-finale gay wedding, to USA Today, May 9.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley