"I DON'T live my life to be a role model. I realize that being open about my relationship has put me in that position, but I'm not going to not break up because I'm a role model." — Singer Melissa Etheridge to The Advocate May 8 issue.
"It's so funny being single and looking at what I'm attracted to and just laughing at myself. As far as Julie [Cypher, her former partner], I don't have anything bad to say about her. I spent 12 years with her, so there's a lot of good there. But when you get down to the bottom line, certain parts of her emotional life were unavailable to me." — Etheridge. Her new album, Skin, is full of songs of love and angst, what originally put her on the musical map.
"I timed it. It's like a 5 1/2-second mouth-to-mouth kiss. We haven't seen anything like this before on network TV. ... This is a huge leap and a huge kiss. We might now start seeing physical affection and romance between other gay characters." — GLAAD's Scott Seomin on the kiss between two male teens May 1 on TV's Dawson's Creek, to USA Today, April 30.
"I know that's the yuppiest thing imaginable." — Gay writer Andrew Sullivan to the Washington Post on the fact that his beagle went to doggie day care that day, April 19.
"I've decided to totally be a media slut just for the purpose of advertising the site." — Sullivan to the Washington Post in reference to www.andrewsullivan.com, April 19.
"I never had any romantic ideas about Paris at all. The notion of sitting in a cafe or taking moonlit walks beside the river doesn't interest me. It repels me." — Gay author and National Public Radio celebrity David Sedaris, who lives in Paris, to Atlanta's Etcetera magazine, April 13.
"If you want to be a writer, learn Latin." — Lesbian author Rita Mae Brown (Rubyfruit Jungle) to the Houston Voice, April 6.
"We have a president who was selected rather than elected. He stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities." — Barbra Streisand at BarbraStreisand.com .
"The five 'wise men and women' of the Supreme Court installed the President they wanted in the White House, ignoring the will of the people. In my view, that was the 'Supreme Coup.' Sometime this year, Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor will probably resign." — Streisand.
"The last time I was in Chicago with Champions on Ice, I walked into [the popular gay bar] Sidetrack and I was mobbed. People were asking me all kinds of things, mostly about skating, and you know, I love it, because I rarely get a chance to meet new friends." — Skating champ Rudy Galindo to the Windy City Times, April 18.
"Legally? Music, books, cycling. Being with friends—we're all pretty tight on the cast—is something I love to do to unwind. — Actor Gale Harold, who plays Brian Kinney on Showtime's Queer As Folk, when asked by the New York Post April 22, "What do you do to relax?"
"We live in a Toronto bubble, working 14-15 hours a day. We were just trying to figure out where the grocery store is and how to get there. Last week was our first trip to the states as a group and we felt the impact [of being celebrities now]. How did it feel? Amazing. People come up to me and say, 'I came out to my mother because of your show.'" — Actress Thea Gill (Lindsay on Showtime's Queer As Folk) in a March 22 appearance at American University in Washington, D.C.
"People already knew me from Talk Soup. It's a little different now knowing that when someone comes up and says, 'I've seen your show,' they've seen my bare butt—they've seen me naked. That's the peculiar part of it. But they're respectful." — Actor Hal Sparks (Michael on Showtime's Queer As Folk) in a March 22 appearance at American University in Washington, D.C.
"Amateur porn has gotten pretty hot since the advent of the Internet. ... I'm grateful to these boys for sharing their largesse with the rest of us, but don't these guys have parents? I mean, if your hard-on can be downloaded anywhere from Athens to Zanzibar, chances are pretty good it's going to find its way back to Peoria. And surely there's somebody you once dumped or just plain pissed off enough who'll make certain it gets there." — Columnist Marc Acito writing in the Portland, Ore., gay newspaper Just Out, April 20.
"To be forced back into the heterosexual cage of coupledom [via gay marriage] is not a step forward but a step back into state-imposed definitions of relationship. With all that we have learned, we should be helping our heterosexual brothers and sisters out of their state-defined prisons, not volunteering to join them there." — Lesbian author Jane Rule, who wrote the book that was made into the classic lesbian film Desert Hearts, to Toronto's Xtra!, April 5.
"I love my minivan. I'm thinking now of really souping it up and getting some, like, really hot rims for it. Make it some bitchin' Soccer Mom ride." — RuPaul to the Phoenix gay newspaper HeatStroke News, April 19.
"By now we've seen women kissing each other on everything from Ally McBeal to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. For Friends, the idea seems not only old-hat, it smacks of desperation." — New York Post columnist Adam Buchman, April 26.
"Pride marches went over the cliff a few years ago when we decided all that crap about rights and equality was cutting into our partying. In the early years going to pride was an admirable, courageous act, the equivalent of going on a firewalk. Today, pride marches are more like freak shows than rites of passage. And bad ones at that. My biggest beef against them isn't that they suck (they do—I've seen better floats in high school homecoming parades) or that they tear down everything we work for (we act out every offensive stereotype we spent the past year trying to break down). No, my biggest beef against pride marches is that they celebrate the wrong thing—being gay. Why? Because there's nothing intrinsically good about being gay. For every Walt Whitman there's a Roy Cohn. For every Elton John there's a Jeffrey Dahmer. For every gay hero there's a gay asshole." — Syndicated gay columnist Michael Alvear in an April 27 filing.
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