THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

'Channel-flipping late at night brought me to Bravo and a new TV series I had already misguidedly determined to avoid—Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. ... But suddenly, I was enraptured. ... Some of my homosexual friends had already judged this show, saying it only offers gay males as stereotypes interested in fashion, decor, fine food, etc. But I didn't see it that way. The Fab Five are off-the- wall funny, sweet and sincerely helpful, tactful but firm, dropping cute trenchant one-liners as they go about changing their hopeless subject and opening doors to a new life for him. ... Never in a million years could I have imagined anything on reality TV to be quite so enthralling, so funny, so utterly appealing. ... I want the Fab Five to come and give my life a makeover even if I am not a guy. Most of us could use their talent, drive, humor and organizing capacity in our lives. This is one of the most inspiring shows I have ever seen on TV. If it can keep up the pace, it's a winner! So, OK, all gay men are definitely not into fashion and decorating and food and manners. But this Fab Five are, and they're wonderful.' — Columnist Liz Smith.

'CBS has just announced that they're renaming the new Nathan Lane series. It's going to be called CSI: FIRE ISLAND.' — Bruce Vilanch at The Outfest Awards in L.A.

'There he sits, face scrunched, eyes clenched tight, fists balled up like he's clinging to the last Valium on Earth, colon in tortured knots, soul shriveled into a tiny black speck of bile and nothingness, invoking God and sodomy and incest and quivering like he's sitting on the red-hot poker of divine enlightenment itself. You go, Pat.' — SFGate.com columnist Mark Morford on televangelist Pat Robertson, July 18. SFGate is the San Francisco Chronicle's Web site.

'Pride Week here starts July 28, for those who want to get married. And there's a couple of great bathhouses for those who want great threesomes during the honeymoon.' — Gareth Kirkby, editor of the Vancouver, Canada, gay newspaper Xtra! West, in a July 8 note to this column. British Columbia became the second Canadian province to legalize full marriage for same-sex couples July 8, effective immediately.

'I haven't determined yet whether the far right or the far left is more vicious when it comes to Log Cabin.' — Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans, to D.C.'s Metro Weekly, July 10.

'I happen to be a conservative Republican, but I define conservatism as government staying out of my personal decisions, and recognizing everyone as valued members of the American family. It was a conservative Supreme Court that just wrote the most significant legal decision in the history of gay and lesbian civil rights. It was Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Ronald Reagan, who wrote this decision that we're heralding as the greatest victory in the history of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. It's a reminder that you can be conservative in America and believe that gays and lesbians are an equal part of the American family.' — Guerriero.

'The reality is that Senators Bill Frist and Ted Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton have the same position on gay marriage: They're opposed to it. The real danger here is that it is still deemed politically acceptable to deny basic recognition of our relationships from both the far right and the far left. It should remind all of us that we have a lot of work to do with Democrats and Republicans.' — Guerriero

'Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. Homosexuals are for me human beings like any other with their qualities and their faults. I count some of them as my best friends.' — Former film actress and sex symbol Brigitte Bardot, 68, to the French gay magazine Tribumove, July 11. Bardot angered some gays earlier this year when she wrote in her new book, A Cry In The Silence, 'They [gays] jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through.'

'If it weren't for homosexuality, the 'mainstream' Christian churches would get barely any press at all.' — Columnist Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, July 13.

'People who go to Canada and take advantage of the new Canadian laws that permit gay marriage, when those couples come back to the United States, they are entitled through the legal principle of comity to the same rights that every other couple has.' — Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean at the Human Rights Campaign's presidential forum, July 15.

'I've never said that [I'm against gay marriage], as a matter of fact. What I believe in is equal rights under the law for every single American. We chose to do civil unions in Vermont because we believe that marriage should be left to the churches and that equal rights under the law is what the state owes everybody.' — Dean.

'In 1985 ... I became the original sponsor and author of the gay civil-rights legislation in the United States Senate—before Ellen DeGeneres, before Will & Grace, before anyone knew who Melissa Etheridge was, before there'd been a march on Washington, when it was radioactive. I was the only United States senator in 1996 who was running for re-election to vote against DOMA and to go to the floor of the United States Senate and say it was gay-bashing.' — Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry at the HRC event

'It may well be that if we achieve civil unions ... then we may—all of us—progress ... to a place where there is a different understanding [on same-sex marriage]. But I think that one has to respect the current cultural-historical-religious perception [against same-sex marriage], and I respect it.' — Kerry.

'The concept of 'separate but equal' was properly rejected as inherently problematic by the Supreme Court in the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. While I applaud the Vermont civil unions law, I am convinced that ultimately inequities will arise if there is one set of laws governing marriage commitments for heterosexuals and another set of laws governing marriage commitments for homosexuals.' — Democratic presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun on HRC's 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate Questionnaire.

'I have said that I'm against gay marriage, because marriage has special status in our culture, our society, our history. And yet, I've worked very aggressively to protect ... gay and lesbian couples step-by-step, practical-step-by-practical-step, real-inequity-by- real-inequity from the burden of those inequities, and that's exactly what I would do as president.' — Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman at HRC's forum.

'Progress is being made every day ... people's minds are being opened, and if we continue to work and we continue to advocate and continue to inform, I fully believe that civil-union laws can be expressed. I also believe that if states pass [same-sex] marriage laws, that the federal government ought to conform all of the federal guarantees and protections to those either unions or marriages that are recognized.' — Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Richard Gephardt at HRC event.

'The western definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman is a pretty new idea. The Bible may begin with talk of Adam and Eve, but it soon talks a great deal more about marriages like that of Abraham, Sarah and Haggar. Almost every marriage in the Bible is polygamous and history, legend and anthropology tell us that such was the rule on every continent. Despite our Judeo-Christian sensibilities, that is still the case in much of the world today.' — Gerald Plessner writing in the Los Angeles Times, July 18.