"Suspending enforcement of ( Don't Ask, Don't Tell ) which the president has the authority to dowould instantly shift the debate to Congress.It would take DADT off the president's plate. What to do about DADT would land on Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi's plate. Scrap DADT? Reform DADT? It's not the president's problem anymore, it's Congress's problem. And if Congress didn't actand that's a mighty small ifit would be a logistical nightmare for the next president, Democrat or Republican, to reverse Obama's suspension of DADT. So long as the president refuses to remove DADT from his own plateand I'm not holding my breathI don't have much sympathy for him where his plate is concerned. Yeah, there's a lot on his plate. No doubt. But until he takes DADT off his plate I'm not interested in listening to him or his apologists whine." Writer Dan Savage on his blog, Oct. 10.
"During the primaries, Hillary Clinton portrayed ( Obama ) as a slick salesman who could not follow through on his grandiose promises. In the general election, John McCain said Obama was an empty 'celebrity' who would not deliver. Standing on principle for GLBT equality would go a long way in diffusing and dispelling this still-potent line of criticism." Syndicated gay-press columnist Wayne Besen, Oct. 6.
"If you have been gay your whole life and feel that that's the way God made you, God bless you. But I would still say that that doesn't mean you should act on that. I would happen to say, for instance, that God made me with a pretty short temper. Now, I still think God loves me, but I can't act on that. I would think that God made me with a particular soft spot in my heart for a martini. Now, I'd better be careful about that." New York Roman Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan to New York magazine, Sept. 20.
"Marriage equality has nothing to do with gay marriage ... and everything to do with a lot of people in America thinking that being gay is bad, abnormal, sinful and not worthy of equal rights." Gay blogger Perez Hilton to the Oregon gay newspaper Just Out, Sept. 18.
" ( Being Perez Hilton ) makes getting laid hard, and I'm a big gay! I like getting my dick sucked just as much as any other gay. In real life, I'm not as loud, crazy and obnoxious as Perez is. In real life, I'm actually fucking boring. All I do is work and when I'm not working I go over to my friend's house and we play games, I go to concerts. That's all I do." Gay blogger Perez Hilton to the Oregon gay newspaper Just Out, Sept. 18.
"I would say the Mormon Tabernacle." Lesbian comedian Wanda Sykes in Passport magazine's November issue when asked, "Where should gay people visit as both a vacation destination and a political act?"
"One thing I have hated all my life are liars, and I live in a nation of them. It was not always the case. I don't demand honor, that can be lies too. I don't say there was a golden age, but there was an age of general intelligence. We had a watchdog, the media. ( Now ) they're busy preparing us for an Iranian war." Gay writer Gore Vidal to The Times of London, Sept. 30.
"He fucked it up. I don't know how because the country wanted it. We'll never see it happen." Gay writer Gore Vidal on Obama and health-care reform, to The Times of London, Sept. 30.
" ( America has ) no intellectual class ( and is ) rotting away at a funereal pace. We'll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn't realize how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is." Gay writer Gore Vidal to The Times of London, Sept. 30.
Assistance: Bill Kelley