"Guys who pressure you into having sex without condoms are no doubt having unsafe sex with other people, which means that they're either infected already or will be shortly. If you don't want to get infected, your best course of action when a guy pressures you into having sex without condoms is to hand him his pants and show him the door." ... Syndicated sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, Aug. 29.
"These days the debate is more muted, though an undercurrent of opposition persists. A commission appointed by the legislature is beginning to examine the impact of civil unions, and many Vermonters say the ceremonies have become almost routine. Civil union announcements appear in local newspapers, and a cottage industry has emerged of photographers, inns, florists and caterers that advertise themselves as gay-friendly." ... The Washington Post, Sept. 4.
"Relationships for me have been elusive. And I would say mostly it's been my fault. I was always more concentrated on my career. And yes, you do question people's motives. Is it just because I'm him...I'm Nathan Lane? It's a whole weird element." ... Openly gay actor Nathan Lane to The New York Times, Sept. 2.
"I was born in 1956. I'm one of those old-fashioned homosexuals, not one of the newfangled ones who are born joining parades. My family referred to them as 'fags,' and that was it. And yes, career-wise, I didn't want to be branded as a big fruitcake and that's all I could do. On a personal level, I don't immediately open up to anybody, even about what colors I like, much less something like this. I am my mother, OK? Just without the housedress and slippers." ... Lane
"One of [ Survivor 3's stars who are bartenders ] is Brandon Quinton, 25, of Ada, Okla., who was once married but is now avowedly gay. You can read his bio on CBS.com . There, you'll learn that one of his hobbies is 'smoking' and that he actually likes salt-and-vinegar potato chips. ... One thing you might conclude after poring over Brandon's two-paragraph life story: He doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of emerging as the winner." ... New York Post, Oct. 11.
"Richard Hatch is not like any gay man I know. He's 50 years old, he's got a kid, he's retired from the military. He's not your typical gay person. He is what a lot of conservative gay people want to represent." ... Brandon Quinton.
"Adolf Hitler was a closet homosexual and used his homoerotic charisma to gain power, [ German historian Lothar Machtan says in his new ] book Hitler's Secret: The Double Life of a Dictator. [ Machtan ] argues that an awareness of the Nazi leader's sexual orientation may help us understand his life. ... Hitler learned to manipulate his 'homoerotic potential' and used this 'erotic charisma' to gain power. ... [ Machtan said ] Hitler felt he could be blackmailed over this past ... and this fear led to the bloody purge of many gay comrades during the 'Night of the Long Knives' in 1934, including Ernst Roehm, the leader of the Nazis' SA stormtroopers. Homosexuals were brutally oppressed after Hitler took power in 1933. Tens of thousands died in camps ... . 'It does not explain many things such as the Holocaust,' he said." ... Reuters/Variety, Oct. 11.
"While it would be going too far to say that we have reached the end of sexual identity...reports of the ends of anything, like history or money or Cher, tend to be highly exaggerated...it seems that something different is emerging on the street these days, a new music coming out of the cultural radio. It is composed of, and heard by, ordinary women and men of all varieties who sleep with, fall in love with, live with and break up with both women and men over the courses of their lives, the current of desire flowing easily over the gender divide and leading them where it may. At the moment, these people tend to be artists, students and other cultural explorers, but they probably won't be lonely for long. This is not a movement, certainly not an identity; it is unnamed, unbannered... more like a space without a sign, filled with little lights. If pushed, some of these people, sighing, will call themselves bisexual or queer, but only as a political convenience, shorthand for 'not straight.'" ... Author Stacey D'Erasmo in the Oct. 14 New York Times.
"Jan Clausen, a longtime lesbian activist and writer, caused a minor scandal in lesbian circles when she published an article in 1990 about falling for a man. The break with her longtime female lover, her community and her sense of self was wrenching. In 1999, when she published a book about her experience of sexual complexity called Apples and Oranges ... . At the same time, she discovered that she'd lost her professional identity as a 'lesbian writer' as well as her primary audience. Suddenly, she says, she wondered: Who am I? Why am I writing? For the 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds who have come after her, however, that exile is apparently home. They like the hinterlands; they plan to stay there." ... Stacey D'Erasmo.
"On March 22, 1998, 18-year-old Abdul Sami and another young man, a 22-year-old named Bismillah, were buried alive...put beside a mud wall that was bulldozed upon them...inside a stadium in the Afghan city of Herat. The gruesome public execution was the young men's sentence, under Taliban law, of having been found guilty of engaging in sodomy. They were hardly the first to receive that kind of punishment for same-sex sexual transgressions: Just a month earlier three men found guilty of the same infraction had a stone wall collapsed on them in public just outside the city of Kandahar ( purported to have had a large homosexual community before the Taliban seized power in 1996 ) . Amazingly, all three survived and were taken to the hospital with fractures to most of the bones in their bodies; they were later given their freedom. ... The Taliban's treatment of homosexuality is pretty frightening stuff. But even scarier is that many of the countries being approached to join the U.S. in the fight against the Taliban don't treat homosexuals, and other citizens deemed second-class, in a drastically different way. Islamic fundamentalists and their fascistic beliefs have a grip, in varying degrees, on the leadership of many Muslim countries." ... Michelangelo Signorile in the Village Voice, Oct. 3.
