'Yellow alert! Orange alert! Who designed the terror warning: the Gay Men's Chorus?' — Comic Mario Cantone (Charlotte's gay friend on Sex and the City), performing at a benefit in New York. Cantone also noted that one of the most obnoxious images during the crisis has been a seemingly stoned Osama Bin Laden droning into a microphone, pinky aloft. 'Who does he think he is—Whitney Houston?'
'My girlfriend and I have been together a little over 10 years. We have absolutely nothing in common: She's a closeted 8th grade English teacher, and I'm an out lesbian comic.' — Suzanne Westenhoefer's opening line of her debut appearance last night on The Late Show with David Letterman. Westenhoefer's debut is significant in that she is the first lesbian stand-up comedian to introduce herself to the national network TV audience as an out lesbian from the get-go. (At the same time, Sabrina Matthews, Judy Gold, Elvira Kurt, and Wendy Liebman have all been making the Comedy Central stand-up circuit along with Westenhoefer for some time now).
'It's very hard to be with an English teacher. In the beginning of our relationship, I would write her all of these romantic love letters, and she would send them back corrected. ... My mother is totally cool about my being gay; she's very supportive and very OK about it. My girlfriend and I are even allowed to sleep in the same bed when we are at the house. Which is weird, because when my mother and stepfather visit us, we don't let THEM sleep together—because it's creepy and weird. We have very impressionable animals.' — Westenhoefer on Letterman.
'A proposed amendment to the Illinois Human Rights Act to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination ... has been stalled in the General Assembly for so long—about 25 years—that even supporters have lost exact count. ... Thirteen states, 240 local governments across the nation (including Chicago and Cook County); and 309 Fortune 500 companies have adopted various nondiscrimination policies with regard to gays. It has nevertheless been unsuccessful in Illinois, though not for lack of significant support. ... A 1998 University of Illinois poll showed that 66 percent of state residents favor protections against discrimination for gays. ... There is nothing 'special' about the rights extended by the proposed amendment. ... Two years ago, the General Assembly saw fit to approve legislation protecting motorcyclists from discrimination in public accommodations—but rejected the gay rights amendment. This time, finally, it looks like Illinois will get it right.' — Chicago Tribune March 19 editorial.
'It's hard to know about Virginia Woolf. She hardly had sex at all. She had sex with Leonard a couple of times after they were married, and she couldn't manage it. She had that big affair with Vita [Sackville-West], but she and Vita had sex only a couple of times with kind of the same result. She was a mess.' — The Hours author Michael Cunningham to The Advocate, March 18.
'I don't have very good memories about Dreamgirls. It was 21 years ago, and at that time it was very hard for me. I was very lonely, very miserable, and not knowing how to handle it all.' — Singer and gay-community diva Jennifer Holliday ('And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going') to Florida's The Weekly News.
'For me, who only had one hit record— and then there were many times when I had no work at all—it was the gay and lesbian community that got me through a lot of rough times, and fed me, and paid my mortgage, and helped take care of my family.' — Jennifer Holliday.
'Out[side] of a military environment, in a school, I think any act that suggests someone should be discriminated against or in some way stigmatized because of their racial background, ethnic background or sexual preference is not appropriate. Here in the State Department, sexual preference makes no difference; we have gay ambassadors and employees throughout the department. I don't know who they are and it's none of my business, as long as they do their jobs.' — Secretary of State Colin Powell to Teen Ink magazine, as quoted by the Washington Times, March 3.
'Religions shape people's worldviews and until religions accept gays as equal and gay sex as moral, we will always be regarded as socially and culturally inferior. Those of us who are not religious (as I am not) need to pressure (and help) religious gays confront doctrinal homophobia in their own sects. Rude though it seems to say, gays and lesbian who fail to confront the homophobia of their religious sect are complicit in grave moral evil. (Gay priests: please note.)' — Syndicated gay-press columnist Paul Varnell, March 2.
'Six months before my last re-election I signed a bill into law that made Vermont the first state in America to guarantee equal rights to every person under the law. ... That bill was called the Civil Unions bill. And it said that marriage is between a man and a woman, but same-sex couples are entitled to the exact same legal rights as I have—hospital visitation, insurance, and inheritance rights. ... This bill was at about 40 percent in the polls when I signed it ... 60% were against it, six months before the election. I never got a chance to ask myself whether signing it was a good idea or not because I knew that if I were willing to sell out the rights of a whole group of human beings because it might be politically inconvenient for a future office I might run for, then I had wasted my time in public service.' — Democratic Presidential candidate and former Vermont governor Howard Dean addressing the Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting, Feb. 21.
'I'm very antiwar. I think it's going to be, again, a whole thing [like] Vietnam, where people are going to stand up and say no, and they're going to be called unpatriotic. Like Sean Penn now is going to be put through the wringer for going to Iraq on his own accord to speak for peace, and I think he's brave for doing that, and courageous. ... I'm nothing but impressed by what he did.' — Rosie O'Donnell to And Baby magazine, March/April issue.
'Lesbians, of which I am one, have potlucks and garden clubs. Gay men, on the other hand, get to have sex with strangers in showers and cute little rooms with clean sheets and windows overlooking the spa. And it's a perfectly acceptable part of 'their' culture. What a wide Y in the road our sexual identities took on that particular path.' — Marty Davis, publisher and managing editor of the Portland, Ore., gay paper Just Out, in her Feb. 21 editorial.