'The Republicans are now accusing the Democrats of being insensitive to gay Americans? Or to one gay American at least? After John Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney in the third debate, talk radio hosts finally found a lesbian they wanted to protect. Even the homophobic wing of cable TV rallied to the support of a family with a gay offspring. ... Remember way back in the 1980s, when Dick Cheney racked up one of the most antigay voting records in the House of Representatives? In 1988, he was one of 13 members who even voted against funding for AIDS testing and research when it was still called a 'gay plague.' Well, Cheney's come as far as many other Americans, and for the same essential reason. The more people in our families, workplaces, and communities come out of the closet, the harder it is to regard them as deviants who need to be cured or converted or jailed. Mary was by no means outed on national television. She was already out. She lives with a longtime partner, wears a ring, and has worked professionally marketing Coors beer to the gay community.' — Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe.
'As for Lynne Cheney, who called Kerry's comments 'a cheap and tawdry political trick,' what does she call the RNC mailing that warned evangelicals that if Kerry is elected, the Bible will be banned and gay marriage will be the law of the land? High-minded?' — Goodman.
'Let's be clear. This is not a genuine controversy, but an entirely new Republican invention—the 'contrived-versy.' A contrived-versy is inventing and embracing a counterfeit cause designed to distract voters from the administration's miserably failed policies.' — Wayne Besen, in the Falls Church News-Press, on Marygate.
'Political parrots with their poison pens want Americans to believe their synchronized screeds are mere coincidence. But we are informed by the striking uniformity of the columns that Marygate is probably not an organic reaction to what Kerry actually said. Instead, it is likely a revolting example of coordinated and calculated character assassination by conservative columnists shilling for the GOP.' — Besen, author of Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.
'IN the annals of election year 2004, Oct. 13 will be remembered as the day it rained lesbians in red America. That was when we learned that Andrea Mackris, an associate producer on The O'Reilly Factor, had filed her sexual harassment law suit, charging that her boss had an obsessive interest in vibrators, phone sex and, most persistently, erotic scenarios involving pairs of women. That night brought the final presidential debate, in which John Kerry's description of Mary Cheney as a lesbian so riled the Bush-Cheney campaign, not to mention the easily aghast Washington press corps, you'd have thought the vice president's daughter was accused of enlisting in a threesome with Bill O'Reilly. What's followed ever since is an orgy of schadenfreude and hypocrisy almost entertaining enough to take your mind off Iraq (as the Bush-Cheney campaign hopes it will). It's the kind of three-ring circus that makes me love this country.' — Frank Rich in The New York Times.
'Sooner or later this untenable level of hypocrisy is going to lead to a civil war within the Republican party. But this hypocrisy is not just about homosexuality—it's about all sexuality, as befits a party that calls for the elimination of Roe v. Wade and the suppression of candid sex education that might prevent teenage pregnancy and AIDS alike.' — Frank Rich.
'For more than a decade, many of us fought long and hard to bring gays into the Republican fold, to defend the GOP, to advance conservative ideas in the gay community. Bush reversed all of it. Bush has done to gays nationally what Pete Wilson did for immigrants in California.' — Gay writer Andrew Sullivan, on AndrewSullivan.com, Oct. 11
'I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.' — Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards in reference to Dick, Lynne and Mary Cheney, during the Oct. 5 vice-presidential debate.
'What these people [the Bush administration] are like is so beyond any writer's ability to exaggerate. Despicable. What we're learning over and over again is that the Big Lie works and it has worked since Goebbels. [Bush is] a criminal. He should be impeached.' — Gay playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) speaking at Yale University, Sept. 27, according to the Jewish Ledger.
'Another four years of George Bush would be disastrous for me and all the values that have pushed me to go into politics.' — Openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 4.
'Gays are the best audience in the world—they're the smartest, the brightest—they get it, whatever it is.' — Comedian Joan Rivers to London's The Pink Paper, Oct. 1.
'I was playing an Indian reservation in Montana somewhere. I looked out at the audience and it was just truly awful. Real American Gothic—the old strong farmers and wives, and I started the act by asking: 'Are there any gay men in the audience? I want you right up at the front.' And they made the show. Because they laugh.' — Comedian Joan Rivers to London's The Pink Paper, Oct. 1.
'I am fortunate to be under a wonderful doctor's care and thankful that this was caught early. I am looking forward to a quick and full recovery.' — Lesbian singer Melissa Etheridge announcing Oct. 9 that she has breast cancer.
