'They [ conservative Christians ] hate us. They really hate us. They are honestly fearful that if the world isn't a hostile place for gays and lesbians, their children who are gay will come out. This is all about Alan Keyes, for example, preferring Maya Keyes being closeted and miserable and 'right with God' than Maya getting it into her head that she can live a full, ethical, open and out life as a lesbian.' — Syndicated gay columnist Dan Savage to The Advocate, Sept. 27.
'We will win the argument around [ marriage ] ; we just have to make the argument. We have to engage. We have to fight and scream and yell and organize and give money to groups we think are effective.' — Syndicated gay columnist Dan Savage to The Advocate, Sept. 27.
'The groups that want to preserve second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians like to howl about 'unelected judges' at every ruling that goes against them. Let the record show that, in 2005, a majority of the duly elected members of the California Senate and Assembly voted for AB849 to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. Let the record show it was the governor's decision to let the courts resolve this matter of civil rights.' — The San Francisco Chronicle in a Oct. 3 editorial.
'Apparently, Governor Schwarzenegger has ripped a page from President Bush's re-election playbook. Rule number one in the 'Bush-Rove Guide to Running on a Record of Failure' is to demonize groups of people and use them to divide the electorate by rallying the extremists in your base. It's the only way to explain Governor Schwarzenegger's promise to veto the California marriage equality bill after pledging just last year to support equal rights and responsibilities for California's LGBT families if approved by the courts or the legislature. ... Traditionally, states have decided how best to achieve equality for all of their families. Sadly, now that Californians—through their duly elected state legislature—have made their decision, Governor Schwarzenegger and his right-wing allies are thwarting their will for electoral gain.' — Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, in a Sept. 23 statement.
'Homosexual men who step out of their homes in polo shirts with the collars flipped skyward need to be publicly lashed with a wet whip. Turned-up collars looked so damn stupid in the 80s and they look even more stupid today, cuz today we know better—unless of course you're a lesbian, but they've been slicking back their mullets and flipping up their collars since God created them. And Lord knows lesbian fashion is a fashion no-no.' — Columnist Paulo Murillo in L.A.'s FAB!, Sept. 9.
'You look at gay people and all studies show we drink more, we smoke more, we do more recreational drugs. Gay people are more likely to take extreme ill-advised sexual risks. There's a certain self-destructive streak that I don't think has anything to do with homosexuality per se, but has everything to do with the pain that gets wedged into your soul when you internalize the bad things you are told about being gay and punish yourself all your life. I would add voting Republican when you're gay to that list, along with doing crystal meth and having sex with 40 guys in one weekend. They're both dumbass, self-destructive things to do. A certain number of people are stupid enough to off themselves.' — Syndicated writer Dan Savage to CampusProgress. org, Aug. 26.
'Cities that matter went for Kerry. I don't feel estranged from my country. I don't live in the United States of America; I live uptown in Island America. For gays and lesbians it's not a contiguous land mass that stretches from sea to shining sea—it's a chain of islands—it's Indonesia. It's an archipelago. You can hop from the island of Chicago or the island of New York or the island of San Francisco or the island of Seattle, but there's a lot of places where you just can't go. Just like there are a lot of places in America where it's not great to be black.' — Syndicated writer Dan Savage to CampusProgress. org, Aug. 26.
'For the better part of two decades, I have spent much of every summer in the small resort of Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod. It has long attracted artists, writers, the offbeat, and the bohemian; and, for many years now, it has been to gay America what Oak Bluffs in Martha's Vineyard is to black America: a place where a separate identity essentially defines a separate place. No one bats an eye if two men walk down the street holding hands, or if a lesbian couple pecks each other on the cheek, or if a drag queen dressed as Cher careens down the main strip on a motor scooter. It's a place, in that respect, that is sui generis. Except that it isn't anymore. As gay America has changed, so, too, has Provincetown. In a microcosm of what is happening across this country, its culture is changing. Some of these changes are obvious. A real-estate boom has made Provincetown far more expensive than it ever was, slowly excluding poorer and younger visitors and residents. Where, once, gayness trumped class, now the reverse is true. Beautiful, renovated houses are slowly outnumbering beach shacks, once crammed with twenty-something, hand-to-mouth misfits or artists. The role of lesbians in the town's civic and cultural life has grown dramatically, as it has in the broader gay world. The faces of people dying from or struggling with AIDS have dwindled to an unlucky few. The number of children of gay couples has soared, and, some weeks, strollers clog the sidewalks. Bar life is not nearly as central to socializing as it once was. Men and women gather on the beach, drink coffee on the front porch of a store, or meet at the Film Festival or Spiritus Pizza.' — Andrew Sullivan writing in The New Republic, Oct. 24 issue.
'For what has happened to Provincetown this past decade, as with gay America as a whole, has been less like a political revolution from above than a social transformation from below. There is no single gay identity anymore, let alone a single look or style or culture. ... Slowly but unmistakably, gay culture is ending. You see it beyond the poignant transformation of P-town: on the streets of the big cities, on university campuses, in the suburbs where gay couples have settled, and in the entrails of the Internet. In fact, it is beginning to dawn on many that the very concept of gay culture may one day disappear altogether.' — Andrew Sullivan in The New Republic, Oct. 24 issue.
