'Well, first of all, I made a statement when I was governor and I stand by it today. Love is bigger than government. Who the hell are we as a government to tell people who you can fall in love with? I think it's absurd—the fact that it's even being debated. We can solve the problem simply. Government only acknowledges civil unions, then you don't have to put your sex down. Let the churches acknowledge marriage. They're the private sector. If they don't want to acknowledge it, they have every right to do so. How on earth can we even entertain the fact that government should have the ability to tell you as an individual who you can fall in love with? Ridiculous. ... You can't take a civil rights issue and put it up to a vote. If you did that, we might still have slavery if it was allowed to be voted on.' — Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura discussing the California voter initiative to amend the constitution to undo the Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage, on MSNBC, May 22.
'I'm 66. If they had let me get married 10 years ago, I would have been 20 pounds lighter and I wouldn't have needed airbrushing.' — Veteran lesbian activist Robin Tyler as she married Diane Olson, granddaughter of former California Gov. Culbert Levy Olson, June 16 in Beverly Hills, to the Los Angeles Times. Tyler and Olson, 54, have been together 15 years.
'Gay men and lesbians have prospered because they've refused to acquiesce to the notion that they should hide their lives from public view. Two by two they've adopted children, bought homes, volunteered in their communities and slogged through life together just the way hetero couples do, except without preferential tax codes, inheritance rights and the automatic assumption that they can make decisions for one another in emergency situations. Too often, without legal protection, they have found themselves dependent on the kindness of those who were not kind, like the man in Indiana who became severely disabled and whose parents prohibited his partner of 25 years from visiting him in their home.' — Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen, June 9 issue.
'My brother's gay—we're both gay—and it was a source of great, uh, pain for my mother. Not that she didn't love us and was devoted to us, but it was awkward for her with her Southern family. She was just happy not to read it in the paper.' — Lily Tomlin to the Oregon gay newspaper Just Out, May 30.
' ( We're ) going to wait until it's legal everywhere, because otherwise, I said to Kelli, we'll be going around touring the country on the marriage tour every state by state. Once it gets to be at the federal level, once every state recognizes the marriages of every other state, I think that'll be the time we would do it.' — Rosie O'Donnell on getting married, to the Associated Press, June 5.
'I certainly owe my beginning to gay men because I started out in Greenwich Village and gays were the first ones who thought I was funny.' — Comedian Joan Rivers to the Pittsburgh gay newspaper Out, June issue.
'No one in a bar is cruising these days! ( And I don't just mean they're not cruising me. ) The reason for this hideous turn of events is quite simple: They already got laid 80 times that day thanks to Internet hookups! ... Manhunt has completely destroyed the sexual frisson in once-alluring nightspots!' — Village Voice columnist Michael Musto on his blog, June 13.
'Listen, Anderson Cooper reports on hard news in places like Karachi. And in Pakistan, they'll kill you if they find out you're gay. So I'm not going to be the one who asks Anderson Cooper if he's gay, OK?' — Comedian Kathy Griffin to the Dallas Voice, June 6.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
