"There are ( gay ) expressions to this day, I don't really know what they mean. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine two days ago, and this was the two of us, literally sitting in the living room of my house saying, 'Well, exactly what is a sloppy pig bottom?' ... There are many of my gay friends that use expressions that are so shocking that I think they're trying to fool me into thinking that they know what they mean. And I still don't really know what a daisy chain is." — Comedian Kathy Griffin to the New York magazine HX, Feb. 5.
"The Bumbling One has left the building. The banal demon has been forcibly sucked back into the horror-movie canister from whence he escaped eight years ago, and reburied in the back yard of your darkest Ann Coulter nightmare. Dubya, W, Shrub, the Decider, Chimp, Junior, Boy King, Smirk, he ambles no longer across the stage of our collective outrage. The easy punch line is no more. It raises the ultimate question for anyone in my line of work: What's a left-leaning columnist ( or satirist, political cartoonist, opinionator, et al ) to do without the best and finest target in a lifetime? How will I ever survive without the Shrubster to kick around so effortlessly? Where, pray tell, will I ever find such a wicked wealth of material again? It is no trivial query." — San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Jan. 30.
"Ted Haggard and his wife Gayle appeared on Oprah yesterday and what a festival of nonsense and doubletalk it was. Haggard isn't straight, he isn't gay, he isn't bi, he's just 'got issues'. God made him this way, but God wants him to resist. Oh, and a monogamous heterosexual relationship is still the only way to go. For her part, Gayle trots out the old 'desire vs. behavior' theme—if ol' Teddy is only thinking about mansex, not doing it, then he's straight." — Popular gay blogger Joe Jervis ( Joe.My.God. ) , Jan. 29.
"I watched the whole thing ( Ted Haggard on Oprah ) . I feel for Haggard—because he is trapped between who he is and his internalized belief that God cannot love him for who he is. But God can love him for being gay. And does love him for being gay. This is hard, I know. Accepting God's unconditional love for me was the hardest part of keeping hold of my Christian faith. My childhood and adolescence were difficult to the point of agony, an agony my own church told me was my just desert. But I saw in my own life and those of countless others that the suppression of these core emotions and the denial of their resolution in love always always leads to personal distortion and compulsion and loss of perspective. Forcing gay people into molds they do not fit helps no one. It robs them of dignity and self-worth and the capacity for healthy relationships. It wrecks family, twists Christianity, violates humanity." — Gay writer Andrew Sullivan on his blog, Jan. 30.
"People like Ted Haggard, who have gay affairs, they say, 'I am not gay.' Because to them, 'gay' is dancing in your Speedo on Fifth Avenue in the Gay Pride Parade, living in Chelsea with your time-share in Fire Island." — Alexandra Pelosi ( daughter of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ) , who made a documentary about disgraced mega-church preacher Ted Haggard that is currently airing on HBO, to New York magazine, Jan. 29.
"The stereotypical boxes don't work for me. My story's got some gray areas in it. And, of course, I'm sad about that but it's the reality." — Ted Haggard, who resigned two years ago as president of the National Association of Evangelicals after being caught in an apparent gay-sex-and-drugs scandal, to the Associated Press on Jan. 9 when the wire service asked him to "define his sexual identity."
—Assistance: Bill Kelley
