'When California passed Prop 8 ... I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked, our community was attacked. I got married Oct. 25. You know, I don't really talk about my sexual orientation, I didn't feel like I had to, I was just living my life and, not necessarily in the closet, but I was just living my life. Everybody that knows me personally, they know I'm gay. And that's the way people should be able to live their lives. We shouldn't have to be standing out here demanding something that we automatically should have as citizens of this country. And I got pissed off. They pissed me off. I said, You know what, now I gotta get in your face. And that's what we all have to do now. They pissed off the wrong group of people. They have galvanized a community. We are so together now and we all want the same thing and we are not going to settle for less. Instead of having gay marriage in California, no, we're gonna get it across the country. When my wife and I leave California, I want to have my marriage also recognized in Nevada, in Arizona, all the way to New York. ... I'm proud to be a woman, I'm proud to be a black woman and I'm proud to be gay.' — Comedian Wanda Sykes ( pictured ) speaking at an anti-Prop 8 rally Nov. 15 in Las Vegas, as recorded by The Strip podcast.
'It cannot be denied that this ( the passage of Prop 8 in California ) feels like a punch in the gut. It is. I'm not going to pretend that the wound isn't deep and personal, like an attack on my own family. It was meant to be. Many Obama supporters voted against our rights, and Obama himself opposes our full civil equality. The religious folk who believe that Jesus stood for the marginalization of minorities, and who believe that my equality somehow threatens their children, will, I pray, see how misguided they have become. And make no mistake: they won this by playing on very deep fears of gay people around kids. They knew the levers to pull.' — Gay writer Andrew Sullivan on his blog, Nov. 5.
'Gay people generally aren't the placard-waving, bomb-throwing, chaps-wearing, communion-wafer-stomping radicals we're made out to be by the Bills O'Reilly and Donohue. Most gays and lesbians are content to be left alone; many gays and lesbians go out of their way to ignore political threats and political activism and political activists. Only when gays and lesbians are attacked—only after the fact—do gays and lesbians take to the streets. Remember: the Stonewall Riots were a response to a particularly brutal and cruelly timed ( we'd just buried Judy! ) police raid on a gay bar in New York City; ACT-UP and Queer Nation were a response not to the AIDS virus, but to a murderous indifference on the parts of the political and medical establishment that amounted to an attack. Most gay people grow up desperately trying to pass, to blend in; most of us flee to cities where we can live our lives in relative peace and security. We don't go looking for fights. ... But once you get bashed, once someone else throws the first punch, then you fight back—what other choice do you have?' — Gay writer and national-TV talking-head Dan Savage, writing on his blog about the huge protests against Proposition 8, Nov. 12.
'I'm aware I have a responsibility to be open and available for people and their questions and to make them always understand that I don't represent the whole LGBT community; that I'm really just a person involved in music and who happens to be gay. It's very important to recognize that not one person can fully encompass the whole community because it's a very diverse community.' — Singer k.d. lang to Los Angeles' Lesbian News, November issue.
'Unlike other gay celebrities who have come out recently, like Neil Patrick Harris or Lance Bass, ( Clay ) Aiken denied that he was gay long beyond the point of ridiculousness, and he did it in a way that bordered on homophobic. When the Advocate asked him if he was gay during an American Idol press conference, he simply turned the other way, as if he never heard the question. In 2006, a sexually suggestive video of Aiken leaked from a gay dating Web site, but that same year, he gave a big interview to People where he implied he was straight. He even offered a cover-up for the video: it wasn't him, it was just somebody who looked exactly like him.' — Ramin Setoodeh writing at Newsweek.com, Sept. 25.
'Tom ( of Finland's ) big break came in the 1950s from Physique Pictorial, an underground, semi-legal gay American fanzine disguised as a straight men's bodybuilding magazine, which frequently put Tom's men on the cover. Half a century later, and 17 years after his death in 1991, the world is inverted: flesh-and-blood men who look like Tom's drawings appear on the cover of bestselling corporate mags such as Men's Health. Flick one open, and you'll find it full of advice on how straight men can turn themselves into something Tom-ish.' — Martin Simpson, writing in The Times of London, Nov. 3.
' ( A ) big chunk of blame for ( Proposition ) 8's passage has to go to the No on 8 campaign's initial arrogance, followed by their utterly limp reaction when the Yes campaign started attacking and gaining real steam. As one of my politically savvy Chronicle colleagues put it, 'No on 8 was a bad campaign. Bad bad bad. Inept, amateurish, incompetent and, above all, guilty of committing the first and worst sin of politics: taking the voters for granted.'' — San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Nov. 5.
'I've been out most of my life. I don't feel like I have a choice about it. I look gay.' — MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow to New York magazine, Nov. 2.
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
