Pictured 'I do consider myself omnisexual. ... I cannot really say that I will only always be with women or I will only always be with men.' — Singer Sophie B. Hawkins to the Palm Springs gay magazine The Bottom Line, March 19.
'It doesn't take a brain surgeon/rocket scientist/gas station attendant to conclude that driving is simply too risky and puts us all in great danger every day. The only safe way to drive is NOT to drive. Hello people. So, today I am staring my JUST DON'T DRIVE campaign. Over a million lives will be saved around the world every year (40,000 in the U.S.) and countless million more mutilations will most certainly be avoided if we JUST SAY NO to this HIGH RISK behavior.' — Chicago AIDS activist Jim Pickett responding to the World Health Organization report stating that more than 1.2 million people are killed in road traffic accidents around the world each year. Pickett is making fun of abstinence-only programs and their ineffectiveness at stopping the spread of HIV. The report warns traffic accidents could beat stroke and HIV as one of the causes of preventable deaths by 2020.
'Maybe gay people aren't as bad for our military as some of our military leaders would have us believe. Remember the big deal Pentagon leaders made a dozen years ago about how their world was going to end if the military did not keep gays and lesbians out of its ranks? Well, as they say in Tony Soprano's neighborhood, fuhgeddaboudit! The latest tally of people booted out of the military for exhibiting homosexual behavior shows a startling trend: After climbing for the past decade, gay-related discharges suddenly declined during the past two years, the years of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by almost 40 percent. So says the latest annual report on gay-related discharges by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.' — Clarence Page writing in his Chicago Tribune column Chicago Tribune, April 25, 2004.
'Why the sharp decline? Has war brought a sudden wave of tolerance to our troops and their commanders? One wonders. There are no bigots in foxholes, according to an old time-tested nugget of combat wisdom. Judging by recent military personnel figures, there aren't many gay-bashers in foxholes, either.' — Page.
'Nor should we be surprised if gay-related discharges drop again this year. The Army, the largest of the armed services, has been stretched enough by its missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere to invoke its 'stop-loss' authority, which prevents its soldiers from retiring or otherwise leaving when their service obligation ends. Hard up for troops, a commander will think twice before sending a good soldier home just for being gay, similar to Col. Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H having bigger things to worry about than Cpl. Maxwell Klinger's cocktail dress and pearls.' — Page.
'Trend-conscious candidates beware: Do not get caught courting soccer moms or NASCAR dads. They're so over. This year's hot new swing voter is the single woman. And with very good reason: Although single women account for one-fifth of the U.S. electorate, they historically turn out to vote in much smaller numbers than married women or, for that matter, married or single men. The stats are simply stunning: According to Women's Voices, Women Vote (wvwv.org), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to engaging unmarried women in the electoral process, 22 million unmarried women didn't vote in the last presidential election. If these single women had voted at the same rate as married women did, 6 million additional votes would have been cast.' — Arianna Huffington in her syndicated column.
'[R]esearch shows that single women tend to be more progressive than other voters. And what's more, they are seriously ticked off: Over two-thirds of them believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction and want real change. ... The vast majority of them find themselves living on the economic edge, radicalized by the struggle to provide for themselves, their children and their older parents, mostly on one income.' — Huffington.
'Throughout most of human history, a man married a woman out of desire—for her father's goats, perhaps. Marriage was a business arrangement. The bride was a commodity, her dowry a deal sweetener. And the groom was likely to be an unwitting pawn in an economic alliance between two families. A church may or may not have been involved. Government was out of the loop. There was no paperwork, no possibility of divorce, and —more often than not—no romance. But there was work to be done: procreation, the rearing of children and the enforcement of a contract that allowed for the orderly transfer of wealth and the cycle of arranged matrimony to continue.' — Chicago Tribune, April 25, article on the evolution of marriage.
'For much of its history, matrimony has been a matter of cold economic calculation, a condition to be endured rather than celebrated. Notions of marriage taken for granted today—its voluntary nature, the legal equality of partners, even the pursuit of happiness—required centuries to evolve.' — The Tribune.
'Marriage as Americans know it today didn't exist 2,000 years ago, or even 200 years ago. Rather than an unbending pillar of society, marriage has been an extraordinarily elastic institution, constantly adapting to religious, political and economic shifts and pliable in the face of sexual revolutions, civil rights movements and changing cultural norms.' — Tribune.
'Massachusetts should not become the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage. We do not intend to export our marriage confusion to the entire nation.' — Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
'My son, Jamiel Terry, was paid $5,000 by Out magazine to write a story about being Randall Terry's homosexual son. I am still in a state of shock. I love my son. He is incredibly gifted and articulate. He sings like an angel and plays the piano. He's a great cook and a great debater. I've poured 16 years of my life into him. In March 1988, my then-wife and I took Jamiel and his younger sister as foster children. He was 8 years old. We adopted them when he was 14. He came to us a wounded boy, from an incredibly troubled home. He was literally born in jail. By age 8 had learned a lifestyle of deceit and been a victim of treacheries that would mar him for life. His teen years were a mixture of happy times, half-truths and a double life. His behavior grew worse in college, culminating with the release of the story in Out magazine. Out magazine specializes in bringing homosexuals 'out of the closet.' Their agenda is shameless. They seduced my son with money to write a story about me, Jamiel's life with me and my family. The most horrifying part is Jamiel's admission: 'I did have numerous sexual encounters with my friends, usually during sleepovers at my parents' house.' He was 'in my old bedroom at my parents' house in Windsor, N.Y., where my friend 'Johnny' and I had just finished fooling around'—we had been having sex for ages.' I am grieved for those boys. Their parents believed their sons were safe at our home—so did I. I was wrong.' — Anti-gay activist Randall Terry in the Washington Times.
