"I've lasted so long because I get up every morning, even in the difficult times, and I thank God that I have been able to do this work at all. No matter what happens, wherever I end up, there will never be anything as magnificent as this job is. I will always feel like I [ had the opportunity ] to try to make a difference." ... Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Elizabeth Birch to D.C.'s Metro Weekly, Oct. 4.
"She's very athletic and androgynous in her physical capabilities but...this is always the curse of gay moms...she loves pink and makeup." ... Birch on her two-year-old daughter, to D.C.'s Metro Weekly.
"Life is a work-in-progress. ... I've had therapy, I've hugged trees, I've chanted. I've done all that. What that does is it helps you control your responses to situations, but I don't think you can ever change who you are." ... Boy George to London's Gay Times, October issue.
"I play the queerest character on the queerest show on television. Of course I thought about the ramifications before I took the part, but I really wanted to do this show. It is absolutely unapologetic. It has changed the way people...gay people as well as straight people...think about gay life." ... Actor Peter Paige, Emmett on Showtime's Queer As Folk, to Montreal's Hour, Oct. 4.
"I have always been out but I don't judge other actors for being closeted. They have their own lives and reasons for living their lives the way they do. If someone just doesn't talk about it, I don't mind it. But those who deliberately lie about it, that's just disgusting." ... Peter Paige.
"I think they are a bunch of assholes. Sorry, guys. I wouldn't have [ worked with Eminem ] if he was homophobic, and if he was, he wouldn't have asked me." ... Elton John on the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, to MTV News, Oct. 5. GLAAD vehemently denounced John's duet with Eminem at this year's Grammy Awards. The group claims Eminem's lyrics are anti-gay.
"I don't think [ Eminem is ] homophobic. ... We ended up hanging out for three days. He's a brilliant lyricist. If a person writes a novel and there's a homophobic scene in it, you don't say that the novelist is homophobic. I thought he had a bad rap, and because I'm gay I came out and defended him. I'll defend his right to say what he wants to. I don't think he's hateful." ... Elton John to the VH1 cable channel, Oct. 11.
"Because of our own history, we as gay men and lesbians are particularly well suited to the task of skepticism, of questioning authority, of looking beyond facile public perceptions and asking the more difficult but ultimately more productive questions about the topsy-turvy world we now inhabit." ... Syndicated columnist Mubarak Dahir, Oct. 10.
"HIGH JACK THIS FAGS" ... Graffiti on a bomb attached to the wing of an aircraft on the fight deck of the USS Enterprise in the Arabian Sea, as captured by Associated Press photographer Jockel Finck, Oct. 11.
"Atheists are far less politically dangerous than fundamentalists of any stripe." ... Conservative gay Catholic writer Andrew Sullivan at andrewsullivan.com, Oct. 12.
"The transmission of American culture into the heart of what bin Laden calls the Islamic nation requires only two responses...capitulation to unbelief or a radical strike against it. There is little room in the fundamentalist psyche for a moderate accommodation. The very psychological dynamics that lead repressed homosexuals to be viciously homophobic or that entice sexually tempted preachers to inveigh against immorality are the very dynamics that lead vodka-drinking fundamentalists to steer planes into buildings. It is not designed to achieve anything, construct anything, argue anything. It is a violent acting out of internal conflict." ... Gay writer Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times, Oct. 7.
"The English language provides us with 40,000 words, and yet the best we can come up with to describe any person or situation we don't like is 'gay.' You spill your coffee. That's gay. The bookstore delays your order. That's gay. Somebody scratches your car in the parking lot. That's so gay. Are we homophobic or just lazy?" ... Columnist John Audelhelm writing in the University of Kansas' Daily Kansan, Oct. 12.
"The unique advantage of gay-male sex ... is that you can, without props, be both pitcher and catcher." ... Out magazine editor Brendan Lemon writing in GQ, October issue.
"Since only the act of sodomy differentiates an active homosexual from a heterosexual, homosexuals want government and society to affirm that sodomy is morally equivalent to the marital act. 'Coming out of the closet' can only mean an assent on the level of moral principle to what would otherwise be considered morally disordered. If sodomy is a moral disorder it cannot be legitimately advanced on the legal or civil level. On the other hand, if it is a highly moral act, it should serve as the basis for marriage, family ( adoption ) , and community. ... A society can withstand any number of persons who try to advance their own moral disorders as public policy. But it cannot survive once it adopts the justification for those moral disorders as its own. This is what's at stake in the culture war." ... Robert Reilly, who President Bush has named the new director of the U.S. shortwave radio service Voice of America, in a 1996 article he wrote for the National Review, as quoted by the Washington Blade, Oct. 12.
"If it means more money, sure." ... New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, agreeing to appear in drag on Showtime's Queer As Folk to raise money for disaster relief in the form of pledges from members of the Empire State Pride Agenda, as quoted by the New York Post, Oct. 12.
"Divine and I decided a long time ago that there are things our parents should never see, even though they financed some of them, and were paid back with interest." ... Filmmaker John Waters to Cleveland's Gay People's Chronicle, Oct. 12.
"One month later, life is both utterly normal and utterly not: I walk past tattered flyers with pictures of the missing, I buy fresh milk and bread, I pass the local firehouse with memorials to five dead brethren, I do my laundry, I learn daily of more friends and acquaintances who saw it all and still cannot sleep, I take the risk of buying a new appointment book for 2002 on the assumption I'll be around to use it, and I am taking Cipro, twice a day, because 'Erin M. O'Connor, 38,' as The New York Times called her on the front page, is my colleague and my friend and happened to handle a letter full of brown powder addressed to Tom Brokaw. Every day, I think to myself, I can't prevent the terror, but I sure wish I knew when it was going to happen so I could at least plan. If I'm going to die within the week, I need to spend all my money and get really fat and at least die happy." ... Lesbian network news producer Barbara Raab in an Oct. 14 interview with this column.
