'I'm sure some people will criticize me for coming out so late. To them, I say simply, I wasn't ready until now. If gay rights is about anything, it should be about letting people come out on their own timetable and on their own terms.' — LPGA golfer Rosie Jones writing in The New York Times, March 20.
'I know that coming out in today's politically supercharged environment surrounding gay issues has the potential to spin into something I do not intend. I have strong feelings about gay and lesbian rights: I vote; I have my beliefs. I support causes and I support people, gay and straight, who have inspired me through the years. But first and foremost, I am a proud and blessed member of the LPGA and a professional athlete, not an activist.' — LPGA golfer Rosie Jones writing in The New York Times.
'Civil rights issues should not be put on the ballot. ... How is my marriage under attack if two gays or lesbians down the street want to make a lifelong commitment to themselves ... Love is bigger than government. Government should not have the right to tell you who you fall in love with and who you want to spend your life with. ... I don't like it when I see human rights violated. ... We are not the Hetero States of America. America should be inclusive, not separating.' — Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura speaking against the proposed Massachusetts constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, in an appearance at the Massachusetts Statehouse, March 22.
'Marriage to me—whether it is man to man, woman to man, dog to man, or whatever, is so damn old school; it's for the old or the old-fashioned. It's what people do when they run out of things to talk about. It's how people conform. It's what people do to hold up appearances. It's what they call settling down (and boy do they settle). They call it tying the knot (and boy, do they get tied down).' — Columnist Paulo Murillo writing in Los Angeles' Fab!, March 26.
'Gay marriage is simply not a civil rights issue. It is not a struggle for freedom. It is a struggle of already free people for complete social acceptance and the sense of normalcy that follows thereof—a struggle for the eradication of the homosexual stigma. Marriage is a goal because, once open to gays, it would establish the fundamental innocuousness of homosexuality itself. Marriage can say like nothing else that sexual orientation is an utterly neutral human characteristic, like eye-color. Thus, it can go far in diffusing the homosexual stigma.' — Shelby Steele writing in The Wall Street Journal, March 18.
'Thomas Herndon wrote on March 6 that allowing same-sex marriage would 'further erode the moral fabric of America.' I have been in a same-sex relationship for 28 years. The sacredness of this relationship has taught me to open my heart to love and my mind to truth and maturity. Learning to love another person more than myself has been an astonishing liberation. Where is the immorality in this? I have a hunch that Christ would be pleased.' — Actor Richard Chamberlain (Dr. Kildare) in a letter to the Honolulu Advertiser, March 18.
'Every Democratic candidate for president who has a chance to win the nomination took the same position, namely, 'I'm against same-sex marriage, I'm for strong civil unions.' I wish I thought it were possible for someone to be explicitly for same-sex marriage and get elected president. I think that will probably be the case four years from now. That is not the case now.' — Gay. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to Los Angeles City Beat, March 19.
'They [same-sex marriages in Massachusetts starting May 17th] will happen, and no matter what happens in 2006, they will not be invalidated retroactively. The worst that would happen, and it's bad, is no new ones, and I think we can stop that. But that's why I am so focused on Massachusetts, because unlike all these other efforts, we are going to have real marriages. The reality of real same-sex marriages in Massachusetts is going to be the best refutation of this argument that there is something about same-sex marriages that destroy society.' — Rep. Frank to Los Angeles City Beat, March 19.
'I don't think you can get elected president if you say you are in favor of gay marriage. ... I don't think that Franklin Roosevelt should have come out for full interracial marriage in 1932. ... The country and all his liberal values were better off for his not having done so.' — Frank.
'Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.' — Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., in a March 23 speech at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.