'The painful but rewarding process of reconciling his deepest self with his public persona.' — News bite about the content of actor Richard Chamberlain's book, Towards Love. The actor, who lives in Hawaii with manager Martin Rabbet, starred in, among other shows, Dr. Kildare and The Thorn Birds.
'[Associated Press] employees will conduct informational picketing and return hundreds of company trinkets Thursday, Jan. 16, 2003 to protest continuing discrimination by the world's largest news organization. ... Members of the News Media Guild have been demanding domestic partner benefits for a decade, saying it's time for the AP to join other major news outlets in providing the benefits. [T]rinkets—key chains worth $1.79 —were sent to most of the company's 1,700 U.S. employees to 'celebrate' diversity, but workers see them as a slap in the face to the domestic partners of unmarried, gay, and lesbian staffers. The Guild is also fighting for better recruitment and equitable pay for women and minorities.' — The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America.
'I grew up in a very middle-class, melting pot area of Long Island. I thought I had a very ordinary childhood. It was only when I'd tell stories about it to my partner that I learned that not everyone was sniffing glue and having sex at the age of 12.' — Veteran gay writer Felice Picano to the San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 27.
'In the mid-30's, [veteran gay activist Harry Hay] had fallen in love with a charismatic young actor named Will Geer and followed him into the [Communist] party. But the man who would one day be known as television's Grandpa Walton just didn't understand his lover's growing obsession with homosexual organizing, and most of Harry's straight comrades were openly aghast at his shamelessness. They finally bullied him into choosing a bride, though neither she nor the children they adopted could turn the tide of Harry's desires.' — Author Armistead Maupin writing in The New York Times, Dec. 29.
'No artist has made as many references to gay sex in their songs as Eminem has. [Without Me] is, I'm fairly sure, the only number one where you get to hear a man asking another man if he can suck his cock. On the unedited version, Eminem asks, 'Moby, you 36-year-old boy fag, blow me, it's over, nobody listens to Techno.' Obsessed? Maybe just a little.' — Richard Smith listing his top 30 queer number-one songs in London's Gay Times, January issue.
'In [the U.S. version] of 'Queer [As Folk]' almost everyone has sex. A lot. And there is absolutely no doubt that the characters are homosexuals. Now 'that' is what I call a gay TV series. There have been lots of criticisms of 'Queer', some of which are founded. At first the series was a bit cartoony and the lesbians were particularly boring. Now the lesbians are behaving badly at times as well and the actors inhabit their characters fully. The result is really good television.' — Reviewer Sophie Cunningham in the Australian daily newspaper The Age, Dec. 28.
'I had a wonderful time [in the Army from 1965 to 1967]. Back then there was no 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' They didn't care if I was openly gay, as long as they didn't see me in bed with anybody in my barracks.' — Metropolitan Community Churches founder Troy Perry to the Houston Voice, Dec. 27.
'There are ineffable but deep aspects to maleness and femaleness that are best learned from one's father and mother, and society is right to continue treating opposite-sex parenting as the ideal. ... The vital importance of both motherhood and fatherhood leads me to the uncomfortable conclusion that engineering a new baby purposefully conceived without a Mom or without a Dad is a selfish act bordering on cruelty.' — David Bianco, founder of the gay-press syndication service Q Syndicate, in his Jan. 2 Over The Rainbow column. Bianco recently announced that he no longer has sex with men for religious reasons. He is Jewish.
''A condom every time' is over, fear tactics are over, slogans are over, even the 'crisis' is over. You can't live in terror of HIV forever, after all.' — POZ magazine Editor in Chief Walter Armstrong, writing in the January issue.
