Pictured Graham Norton
'We won't be copying Elton John's example and getting married, no. That's one of the perks of being gay— you don't have to get married or have kids.' — Talk-show host Graham Norton to Ireland Online, Dec. 18.
'The distinction between 'civil unions' and 'marriage' is more than semantics. Only marriage can provide a family with all the support available under state and federal law. It's time for California legislators to confront and correct such discrimination.' — From the San Francisco Chronicle's Dec. 21 editorial.
'I worry about same-sex marriage because it could be a slippery slope for us to start imitating heterosexuals. ... I just don't know why people would want to, so desperately. I guess they want to be acknowledged, but I don't know why they want to be acknowledged as part of an extremely questionable culture.' — Lily Tomlin to the Palm Springs gay magazine The Bottom Line.
'I've been around an awfully long time and there was never any reason [ to come out ] or anything. I just came from another era and people just didn't write about anything, although most people were extremely conscious of my partnership with Jane. After a while it seems to be a bit anti-climactic or grandstanding.' — Lily Tomlin.
'You would've thought someone would've gotten wise by now and thrown us off the air, but no, we're still here. We thought at first we'd get a lot of protest from right-wing, conservative people in the States, but we get many more members of the gay community upset about it because they felt it wasn't realistic. Some people weren't clever enough to realize we weren't trying to represent every gay person's life.' — Actor Scott Lowell, who plays Ted on Queer As Folk, to the Sydney Star Observer, Oct. 14.
'We just finished a series in Dallas, which is supposedly so conservative. But the people couldn't have been warmer or more welcoming. It is a testament to the fact that people are way cooler than some people give them credit for. We've seen that in cities across the country, even in the South.' — Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Carson Kressley to the Houston Voice.
'I have a tremendous respect for activists and the changes that they affect. But just by being exactly who we are and being visible, we are leading by example. And just by doing that, we can often be more powerful than being directly politically vocal.' — Kressley to the Houston Voice.
'I've never seen it [ The L Word ] ! I don't watch that much TV, and I don't get that channel on my cable package. The only thing I watch is American football.' — Lesbian singer k.d. lang to the British lesbian magazine Diva, November issue.
'Researchers have found a number of same-sex pairs of penguins at aquariums in Japan, with an imbalance between the numbers of male and female birds suspected to be the cause, a report said.' — Report on chinadaily.com .cn.
'Many of the gay male pairs and two of the female pairs were seen performing mounting behavior.' — chinadaily.com .cn.
' [ T ] he equal protection clause states that 'No person' shall be denied the equal protection of the laws. The language is clear and unambiguous. 'No person' means simply that—there is no language in this clause excepting out of this guarantee gay and lesbians. At least our society has not come to the position that homosexuals are not even to be considered as persons.' — Judge James C. Nelson in his concurring opinion in a victory for same-sex couples. In a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that the state must provide lesbian and gay employees of the University of Montana System with the option of purchasing insurance and other employee benefits for their domestic partners.
'Regrets? I've had a few. But thanks to short- and long-term memory loss ( I drove a nail into my own head in fourth grade—really ) , I couldn't recall any off the top of my head. So just for you, OCD, I pulled the last 52 installments of Savage Love from the vaults. ... I regret three things about the column I wrote after George W. Bush won the election on November 2. I regret writing it in a drunken stupor. I regret uncritically accepting the 'gay marriage cost Kerry the election!' hysteria that was flying around the day after the election. ( That supposed fact, drawn from the same exit polls that showed John Kerry winning in a landslide, has been thoroughly debunked. ) Finally, I regret not making it clearer to my straight readers why, for gays and lesbians, contemplating or threatening a move to Canada after November 2 wasn't and isn't just sour grapes. We live in a country in which one political party—the one that happens to control all branches of the federal government—'activates' its base by demonizing, scapegoating, and actively persecuting homos, a tiny and relatively defenseless minority group. Republicans tell the fundies in their base that the existence of gays and lesbians is a threat to the American family, Western civilization, and as one bigwig R recently put it, 'the survival of the earth.' At some point, the Rs are either going to have to make good on their rhetoric and actually do something about all the homos out there imperiling the survival of the planet ( hey, maybe we're responsible for global warming? ) , or they're going to have to knock it off. I suspect and hope that they will. But the off chance that the Rs will one day decide to make good on their anti-gay rhetoric—by amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, say, or rounding us all up and putting us in camps ( I'd like to be sent to Boy Scout camp, please ) —makes the thought of moving to a big, sane, nearby country where gays and lesbians are full and equal citizens extremely tempting.' — columnist Dan Savage in his year-end piece.
'While we're on politics, I regret being so mean to Republicans in my column—even going so far as to say that people shouldn't fuck them—for two reasons: First, I have a lot of readers who are Republicans, as it turns out, and they send me long, wounded letters whenever I suggest that they're unworthy of sexual release. ( Dear Republican Readers of Savage Love: I trust you also send long, wounded letters to the prominent Republicans who suggest that I'm unworthy of equal treatment under the law. ) Second, Republicans rule the world now, and it's probably not a great idea to be on their bad side. So I take it back: We should all fuck Republicans—they're fucking us, after all, so why not?' — Dan Savage.
' [ Donald ] Rumsfeld was a hero when the Iraq war was going to be won at 30,000 feet. He was an icon of leadership when 'shock and awe' was something that would happen to an enemy, not an American family. Now that image looks about as authentic as his autograph [ he uses a machine to sign condolence letters to families of soldiers killed in Iraq ] . In the past year the rapid-strike war became an urban-slog war. We lost moral authority at Abu Ghraib. Questions about postwar planning multiply. When a soldier asked his chief about armor, he got an answer in Pentagon pentameter: 'You go to war with the army you have/ Not the army you might want/ Or wish to have at a later time.'' — Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman.