"It's one of my most common fantasies. ... Absolutely, all the time. ... I think it's one of the most beautiful things, two women that are lovers. I guess I just haven't found the right woman at the right time yet."

--Actress Cybill Shepherd to Los Angeles' Lesbian News, January issue.

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"We're still open. We're waiting for the tanks to come in. It's going to be our Tiananmen Square."

--Dennis Peron, gay founder of San Francisco's Cannabis Buyer's Club for people with AIDS, on his ongoing battles with state officials. Peron is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, going head-to-head with his chief nemesis, Attorney General Dan Lungren.

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"Once in a while I'm in a situation where I end up having sex with a woman who wants to and I think, 'Try it; I can try this,' and it feels good and it really is no big deal for me."

--Gay record mogul David Geffen as quoted in the Dec. 28 Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal.

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"Perhaps our collective inability to talk about moral actions and judgements without feeling like, if not sounding like, the enemy, is the reason why we seem to be having such a hard time speaking out against barebacking (intentionally fucking without condoms). It's not simply that barebacking might cause one or both participants to become infected with HIV, changing a life or two forever. Barebacking purposefully increases the number of vectors of infection, thus increasing the chance that other men, men who likely have no desire to become infected, will become infected with a deadly virus. That's immoral."

--www.cruisingforsex.com columnist John Fall, Dec. 29.

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"We're like any other couple. If I'm going to an event, I want my partner to be there, as anybody else would, because that's howyou celebrate things. I think it's going to be cool when there's a time in our lives when people graduate from going, 'Ooh, do they have to hold hands?' to 'Wow, they're still holding hands.' I look forward to that time."

--Actress Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' lover, to The New York Times Syndicate, Dec. 30.

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"It goes beyond our holding hands or being affectionate. What really bothers us is that some people would take their criticism to an extreme. They suddenly spread rumors that we kissed in front of the president when we met him. We never did. We never once kissed in front of the president. It kind of drove me crazy to see that people would take something that is sweet and loving and blow it out of proportion. It's one thing for us to be affectionate. To turn that into kissing and making out in publicis just ridiculous. But as far as us loving each other, we want the world to know it."

--Ellen DeGeneres to The New York Times Syndicate, Dec. 30.

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"I am showing that love is more important than a career. That's a beautiful thing. Just as people were starting to get comfortable with me on this rise to celebrity, I said, 'I'm in love with a woman. Celebrity is not the most important thing in the world.' If you're telling me I'm going to lose my celebrity to be in love, I say love is the most important thing. I'm blessed and honored to be a movie star. But if you don't have love in your life, what's the point."

--Actress Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' lover, to The New York Times Syndicate, Dec. 30.

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"With her penchant for fifties bowlingwear and her predilection for pawing and groping her lover in public, Ellen DeGeneres is running the risk of evolving into some kind of macho cartoon character, a blonde Fonz for the nineties."

--Barbara Lippert's "The Image" column in New York magazine, Jan. 5.

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--Actress Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' lover, to the Fairfax Journal of Springfield, Va. . Jan. 2

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"I never thought it [falling in love] would be in the form of a woman. ... It hit me like a ton of bricks. I wanted to fall over. I was always that one who said, 'I'll never be in love at all.'"

--Actress Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' lover, to the Fairfax Journal of Springfield, Va., Jan. 2.

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"Put that rumor to death. If it's an immaculate conception, maybe."

--Actress Anne Heche on the rumor that she and Ellen DeGeneres are planning to have a baby, to the Fairfax Journal of Springfield, Va., Jan. 2.

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"I asked Ellen to marry me on day four [of knowing her]. But we can't legally get married. That's my next fight. That's my political stance. I would certainly like to see that legalized. I don't know what's changed about me that I don't have a choice to get married."

--Actress Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' lover, to the Fairfax Journal of Springfield, Va., Jan. 2.

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"I remember being in high school and talking with my friends about gay and lesbian issues. If you had told us that six years later there would be a sitcom with a gay character who was confident and happy ('Ellen') we would have said you were crazy. There was no hope for us."

--Actor Wilson Cruz (Ricky on 'My So-Called Life') to The New York Times, Jan. 1.

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"Indiana becomes the 25th state to bar something that doesn't exist -- gay marriages."

--From an AP story on new laws that took effect Jan. 1.

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"We weren't intimates but we knew each other. I said to him once, 'I don't see why you want to be elected. I'll never do anything like that.' Famous last words."

--Gay San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano recalling a conversation with (assassinated gay San Francisco Supervisor) Harvey Milk, to Boston's Bay Windows, Dec. 26.

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"You [the Democratic Party] have an image of unmanliness. Overcome your terror of guns, your loathing of the military and your hetero-phobia. Fake it, if necessary. ... Stop whining. But if you must whine, find some women to do it. It is unbecoming to see men pout and complain. This is women's work; we are better at it. The Democratic Party is full of girls who have perfected the art of the nag, for example, Carol Moseley-Braun, Barbara Boxer, Maxine Waters, Barbara Mikulski and Barney Frank."

--Syndicated columnist Linda Bowles, Jan. 1.

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"I don't tell you a finely strung-together narrative because I don't think the outlets that print me allow it. Some print Ethan every week, some every month and some when they can afford it."

--Eric Orner, who draws "The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green," to Chicago's Windy City Times, Jan. 1.

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"Right now, my primary concern is being with my family. Of course, I am deeply saddened by the loss of my father and hope the media will respect my family's privacy during this difficult time. Although my father and I differed on some issues, he was very supportive of my personal life and career and was a loving father. I will miss him greatly."

--Lesbian activist Chastity Bono Jan. 6 after her father, Congressman and former singer and TV star Sonny Bono, was killed in a skiing mishap.

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"The debate of guilty versus innocent 'AIDS victims' that raged during the late 1980s and early 1990s may again alienate gay men, branding them suicidal sexual outlaws for their refusal to conform to proven safer sex guidelines. And yet some queer theorists, predicting America is on the brink of a moral crusade to stifle gay male sexuality, are arguing for more freedom to explore public sex and polygamy. As if that weren't enough, others say sex without a condom is more gratifying and insist on the right to do it with public approval. It doesn't take apolitical scientist to know taxpayers aren't going to feed andhouse gays who refuse to have safer sex and later become too sick to work. How long will it really take politicians to vilify this new 'welfare queen?'"

--Don Johnston, news editor of Miami's gay The Weekly News, Dec.31.

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"Predictions for 1998: Barebacking will be discussed on the floor of the United States Senate. AIDS funding will be jeopardized by this so-called 'movement.' ... Thousands of men will be listed as sex offenders after being caught in toilets and parks. A few hundred will kill themselves. Most of this will go unnoticed bythe gay news media. ... Some small band of men, in some Americancity, will say 'enough.' This group will organize resistance to entrapment [in cruising spots] and, almost overnight, the cops will back down."

--www.cruisingforsex.com Publisher Keith Griffith in his regular column, Dec. 30.

Rex Wockner's "Quote Unquote" is archived from mid-1994 onward at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/wockner.html