Pictured Michael C. Hall on the cover of The Advocate. Also inside that issue, a news story on Chicago activist Deborah Mell.
'While millions of others around the globe are mourning the death of Ronald Reagan, and the media have gone into overkill praising the man and his life, his record on AIDS has been ignored. ... Let's ask and hope that the mainstream media soon end their fawning approach to his legacy and look critically at Reagan's shameful record on AIDS and how he did nothing until it was too late.' — www.mpetrelis.blogspot.com . Reagan died June 5 aged 93 of Alzheimer's disease on the 21st anniversary of the first official report of five gay men in Los Angeles who were suffering from a rare form of pneumonia—the first cases of what would later be called AIDS.
'I'm doing it [the sex] for more political reasons than titillation. I feel that we've all seen straight people having sex in 'R' rated movies since we were born, but we've never seen gay people having sex, so I think we've got about 35 years to catch up to. I think it's our turn to see us having sex. And if people don't like it, fuck 'em. ... I want straight people to keep seeing us having sex until they think it's absolutely boring, till it's so mundane and nothing that they don't care anymore.' — Queer As Folk co-creator Ron Cowen to 365Gay.com, April 23.
'You can't do this project and not go all the way. And it isn't even in the graphicness of the sex or the language; it's in the characters too—especially the character of Brian, who is so unapologetic, who is a gay character who has balls, who fucks, who takes drugs, who is not sick, and who doesn't need to apologize. This is a character unlike commercial gay characters, who are either eunuchs or clowns.' — Queer As Folk co-creator Daniel Lipman to 365Gay.com, April 23.
'Fifteen years ago when we did [An] Early Frost, we were not allowed to show the two guys even touch. They couldn't kiss, they couldn't even hold hands. Aidan Quinn played a character named Michael who had to tell his parents that he had AIDS and that he was gay. ... His grandmother was very supportive when he and his lover came to visit, and we had a line where Sylvia Sidney turned to her grandson and said, 'I like your friend.' But NBC's censor said, 'She can't say that line, because that supports the homosexual lifestyle.'' — Queer As Folk co-creator Ron Cowen to 365Gay.com, April 23.
'In the wake of an Oprah Winfrey show that included explicit talk about teen sexuality (and addressed topics such as rainbows and getting one's salad tossed), the Federal Communications Commission received more than 1,600 letters complaining about the racy March 18 broadcast and demanding that the talk show host be cited for indecency. And since most FCC correspondents were prodded to write by the agency's Public Enemy Number One, Howard Stern, and ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, the Oprah complaints are particularly entertaining and vituperative in their decrying of a double standard employed by the fine-happy FCC brass.' — The Smoking Gun Web site.
'I've spent six and a half years trying to build this local party. This was not an easy decision or one I came to lightly. But in the end I just couldn't see any way I could stay.' — Openly gay District of Columbia councilmember David Catania, who was removed as a Republican Party delegate after he said he could not vote for George W. Bush in November due to the president's backing of the Federal Marriage Amendment. To Salon.com June 3.
'Whether or not a few [gay] leaders stay with the party until they drop dead isn't the issue. The fact of the matter is, there ain't no there there anymore. The constitutional amendment issue is kind of a watershed moment. It reminds me of the 1964 election, and this is why: In 1960 Richard Nixon won 26 percent of the black vote. We forget that it was 44 years ago, but the Republicans were still winning a quarter of the African-American vote. That went from 26 percent in 1960 to 12 percent in 1964. What made that happen? [Nominee Barry] Goldwater was opposed to the 1963 Civil Rights Act, and the African-American community viewed that as a betrayal. For 40 years, we have never as a party recovered from that. In 2000 George Bush won 25 percent of the gay vote. You see the parallels? The president decided to trot out a constitutional amendment to remind us, even though we are already reminded daily, that we are second-class citizens. In case we harbored any illusions that we were equal, he wants to write this into the Constitution. He'll be lucky if he gets 12 percent [of the gay vote] in this election. Republicans may not care. Demographically, though, Republicans cannot continue to build the party by subtraction: no blacks, no Hispanics, no gays or lesbians, no abortion rights. Pretty soon your whole electoral base is the same complexion, the same orientation, the same socioeconomic level. Who would want a country that's governed like that?' — Catania on room for gays in the GOP, to Salon.com .Q:
'BUT sometimes people's eyes widen when they find out in one way or another that I'm not gay. All of a sudden, their praise for my performance gets ratcheted up. ... As if Peter Kraus isn't acting because he's playing a character who's straight. It's ridiculous.' — Michael C. Hall, who plays David on HBO's Six Feet Under, to The Advocate. The new season starts this week.
'AND I CAN appreciate that Matthew's a beautiful man. It's really not that big of a deal.' — Michael C. Hall, who plays David on HBO's Six Feet Under, to The Advocate, about his love scenes with Mathew St. Patrick, who plays Keith.
'I WASN'T surprised, because he was concerned about me. To people who don't really know him, it might have seemed out of the ordinary. But ever since I came out [in college], he's been totally supportive.' — Chicago activist Deborah Mell on her father, Ald. Dick Mell, once a staunch opponent of gay rights, to The Advocate, June 8.
'I KEEP TALKING to him. .. And my sister [Gov. Rod Blagojevich's wife] is working on him too. ... He's very powerful with his words, and so it makes me sad because he is someone who could make some progress on gay marriage, which I think is inevitable.' — Deborah Mell to The Advocate..
