"I practiced kissing with my make-up artist Lisa. Every Thursday night we run through the lines and rehearse them at dinner, and she said, 'Show me how you're going to kiss Denise [ Richards ] .' But when it really happened, I have never felt such beautiful soft lips in my life. I fell in love." ... Actress Heather Locklear on her lesbian kiss on the TV show Spin City, to hollywood.com, Oct. 19.
"WHAT WOULD bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews." ... Ellen DeGeneres during her opening monologue for the Emmy Awards.
"I'm not going to talk about adolescent pregnancy because I don't think it's a problem in this room." ... Jane Fonda addressing the gay Atlanta Executive Network, Oct. 17.
"I know the damage [ that occurs ] when we buy into gender stereotypes. What we have experienced on Sept. 11 was the most flagrant kind of outcropping of what could be called patriarchy. Look at how these people treat women. Look at what their notion of a man is. I'm so glad that one of the heroes that went down on that plane in Pennsylvania was gay." ... Jane Fonda.
"I am a generation that is not patriotic. I was a little girl during the Vietnam War and so by the time I was old enough to care, to wear a flag was yuck. To put up a flag was gross and we mumbled through the Pledge of Allegiance. We didn't really know anybody that had been in war or going to war so to be patriotic also sort of meant redneck. Terrible but true. That's how I have been my whole life. Then all of a sudden in Los Angeles I am standing in line at a flag store for two and a half hours. No air conditioning in this line that would have just stunned you with all these other people and we were all just talking quietly and waiting to buy our flags. My whole life if you would have ever said to me that was going to happen, I would have said you were fucking nuts." ... Lesbian comic Suzanne Westenhoefer to Kansas City's Midwest Times, Oct. 16.
"I think he just made a bunch of statements knowing full well that everybody would turn and pay attention to him. The moment we did, his dick was hard and he got what he wanted. The only thing that upsets me is you think about the people that watch him and buy into his crap." ... Westenhoefer on Jerry Falwell's statement that gays and other groups he dislikes were responsible for God letting terrorists fly into the World Trade Center, to Kansas City's Midwest Times, Oct. 16.
"There is nothing horrible happening on this planet with the exception of people starving that isn't happening because of fanatical religions. I don't care if its Catholic, Protestant, born-again Christian, fundamentalists ... as soon as you get to the fundamentalist of any religion you have death, destruction, terror, people's rights being taken." ... Westenhoefer to Kansas City's Midwest Times, Oct. 16.
"I don't want people to think I'm some symbol of the lesbian community, because I'm not a lesbian myself. I don't want people to think that I'm saying I know more than they do about their own lives." ... Actress Michelle Clunie who plays Melanie on Showtime's Queer As Folk, to Curve magazine, November issue.
"Donny Osmond." ... Ellen DeGeneres when asked who her first celebrity crush was, to PlanetOut.com, Oct. 19.
"He was a very masculine, crazy kid who left his dirty dishes under the bed and dirty clothes behind the door in the bathroom. There was nothing about him that fit into any stereotype of what we perceive of as a gay person, which goes to show you we cannot rely on our stereotypes." ... Alice Hogland, mother of Mark Bingham, who is believed to have been among the passengers who fought the hijackers of United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania Sept. 11, to the Associated Press, Oct. 22.
"To me, a girl who's into pleasing men her whole life ... it [ my first time having sex with Ellen DeGeneres ] was a great orgasm, it was beautiful, I felt like I was exploring something new, which was awesome. It was not what I always thought it would be, which was touchy-soft love. It was masculine and feminine. It was everything." ... Actress Anne Heche to The Advocate, Nov. 6.
"I think she [ Ellen DeGeneres ] was threatened by me meeting men. I felt like I was not trusted. Which was offensive to me. I never, ever gave her reason to believe that she could not trust my love. I brought her to the premiere of Volcano; I went on Oprah; I stood by her side." ... Actress Anne Heche to The Advocate, Nov. 6.
"You should see the hate e-mail I get. We have met the enemy, and he can't spell." ... Cathy Renna of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to the Washington Post, Oct. 27.
"Singing Irving Berlin's 'Good Bless America' raises a number of issues for me. Like, for instance, whose God? And what kind of God blesses one nation over another? How far is this song from Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson's contention that a Christian god once kept a Christian America protected behind an invisible shield. And, besides, although it's not widely known, the royalties from 'God Bless America' go to the Boy Scouts of America!" ... Jim Baxter, publisher of the North Carolina gay newspaper The Front page, writing in the Sept. 28 issue.
"I suppose it's a defense mechanism, but the Sept. 11 attacks have made me more angry than ever before about the lack of legal recognition of our families. Seeing what our survivors have to go through now and will face in the years ahead...in addition to pain of losing the loves of their lives ...is nauseating." ... Matt Foreman of New York's Empire State Pride Agenda in an Oct. 16 interview with this column.