"I was compelled to watch the [HBO] movie [And The Band Played On] by a lawyer who wanted to sue the writers and producers. And I watched it with my family. That was a horror. What can I say?"

--Key AIDS researcher Dr. Robert Gallo to POZ magazine, April issue.

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"You're catching me on a really weird, weird, weird time. We finished our show yesterday with no audience, with nobody to say goodbye to and we're not going to come back, I know it. I can just tell by the indications that I'm getting nothing, so I'm assuming we're not coming back. It's really hard. It's been five years, and it's a really hard time for me because there's no closure. There's no way of saying goodbye. We shot our last episode over the last three days and have had amazing support. The people who came out to do the show for us you'll hear soon enough. We had amazing people who came on the show this past week. When you take a stand for anything, you risk it. I wouldn't change a thing. ... I came out on the show and in my life, and the network that aired it wanted me to go back in the closet. The writers and I fought every single episode to do what we did. And thank God we did, and I think we had an amazing year, and I hope that we reached a lot of people. They may have won because we're not coming back and they have the power to cancel us, but they can't cancel me. I am going to be here, and I'm going to do as much as I can."

--Ellen DeGeneres as she received the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's Women's Night '98 Creative Integrity Award, March 10.

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"[When people criticize 'Ellen' for being too gay], what they're really saying is that it's gay, and they just don't want to see that. Not every episode is gay, and besides, how many shows on television have a gay lead character? One."

--Ellen's mom, Betty DeGeneres, to the Knight-Ridder news service, March 15.

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"GLAAD, which comes off sounding whiney much of the time anyway, is setting up grossly inaccurate and harmful expectations when it acts as if a possible 'Ellen' cancellation has more to do with homophobia than with untenable scripts and dismal ratings."

--Jeff Epperly, editor of Boston's Bay Windows, in a March 19 editorial.

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"I'm meeting more and more cool queer het people and, sad to say (or not sad, depending on your point of view), more and more what might be called straight lesbians and gay men. It seems they were right when they said they were just like straight folks except for who they slept with. Well, I'm not and neither are a lot of folks. I think who we sleep with has less to do with being queer. It's more of a value system, isn't it? And folks who are queer, or who want to be, are way in sync with the stuff I'm saying. Folks who are straight, or want to be, have a more difficult time with this gender-transgressing stuff."

--Transgendered writer Kate Bornstein to Chicago's Outlines, March 11.

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"I've ... had my share of STDs. And I'm not sitting down and crying, 'Oh, no! I've got herpes. How could this happen?' It happened because I've fucked a lot of people over the years. Seventy percent of Americans have it, right? I'm not sitting around crying about it, though, God knows, I get mad if I get so much as a yeast infection . ... I've taken a certain amount of risk. I also don't religiously use condoms or barriers ... but I feel really comfortable _to_ use them."

--Lesbian sex guru Susie Bright to Atlanta's Southern Voice, March 12.

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"I have this whole theory that out-of-the-closet bi women, like myself, are very flamboyant fems who are attracted to masculinity in a lot of different forms. You don't hear self-identified butch women calling themselves bi. For them it would be like saying, 'I'm a fluff.'"

--Lesbian sex guru Susie Bright to Atlanta's Southern Voice, March 12.

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"What I dislike about the push of organized gay activism into high schools is that it imposes a rigid political paradigm on a stage of life that is in rapid, painful transition for everyone, gay or straight."

--Lesbian author Camille Paglia in her March 17 column at http://www.salonmagazine.com.

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"I find very suspicious the statistics about teen suicides with which gay activists badger the media. If gay teens are indeed attempting suicide at a higher rate than straight teens, perhaps more questions need to be asked about the genesis of homosexuality. The intolerable sense of isolation may precede the homosexuality, rather than vice versa. I have written repeatedly about my theory that homosexuality is an adaptation, rather than an innate trait, and that it is reinforced by habit. With its cant terms of 'oppression' and 'bigotry,' gay activism, encouraged by the scientific illiteracy of academic postmodernism, wants to deny that there is a heterosexual norm. This is madness."

--Lesbian author Camille Paglia in her March 17 column at http://www.salonmagazine.com.

"As we learn about the origins of sexual orientation, we know that genetics plays a powerful role here as well. Thus, protections against discrimination based on genetic testing may in the years to come be an important issue for gay and lesbian Americans."

--U.S. Vice President Al Gore, writing in the March 31 Advocate.

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"I'd welcome it [a gay role]. There's nothing more irritating than watching someone play a gay character and swish it up. It's so rare when an actor does it in a subtle way, where not everything he touches turns into flames."

--Ben Affleck, costar of "Good Will Hunting" and "Chasing Amy", to The Advocate, March 31.

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"[W]hat Sex Panic! is against, it seems, is ... the emerging epidemiological reality of the AIDS era: That a culture of unbridled, multipartner anal sex directly contributes to the ongoing epidemic, which, far from abating, is threatening more-- and younger--gay men. With an estimated infection rate of up to 4 percent per year among young gay men in urban areas, some AIDS prevention experts warn that nearly half of today's 18-year-olds could be HIV positive by the time they are 30."

--Writer Michelangelo Signorile in his column in Out magazine, April issue. Sex Panic! is a group of activists and academics fighting against, among other things, crackdowns on gay cruising spaces by police and politicians. The group also is engaged in a war of words with gay authors Signorile, Gabriel Rotello, Larry Kramer and Andrew Sullivan, primarily over the issue of promiscuity.

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"I was raised to be perverse. I'll always try to make everyone as uncomfortable as I can."

--Lesbian author Dorothy Allison to Out magazine, April issue.

"Imagine what you would have done if three years ago you woke up and found that someone had handed you the [gay] movement. I'll bet you would have made most of the same decisions I've made."

--Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Elizabeth Birch to Out magazine, April issue.

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"We know more about this virus than any other microbe that causes disease. And at last we have practical treatments that benefit people with HIV. But many have failed on these therapies, and it's still too early to know about their toxicity over time. In addition, these regimens are obviously no answer for most of the world's HIV infected [due to cost]. The pharmaceutical industry can now target viral enzymes and proteins by specific assays in great volume. So they're set for discovering more new drugs. They don't need the academic researchers -- our focus should be on the continued study of the virus, the immune response and how we can manipulate it to make future therapies."

--Key AIDS researcher Dr. Robert Gallo to POZ magazine, April issue.

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"Like all males, transsexuals are: dangerous, abusive, intimidating, lazy and manipulative. Males masquerading as females (transsexuals) are polluting our communities worldwide with their lesbian-hating/womyn-hating poison. ... A male on hormones and/or in a dress is not a womyn."

--From a flyer inserted anonymously into copies of the Vancouver gay newspaper Xtra! West.

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"[Lesbians who want to exclude the transgendered are] living a small and disempowered life filled with fear and a self- definition that puts the emphasis on victimization. It's about picking at festering sores and setting up hierarchies of oppression. 'I'm more oppressed than you are,' the reasoning goes. 'You don't pass the purity test.' The Nazis had their purity test, too. Wrong genes, wrong religion on your mother's side, wrong sexual orientation or born in a travelling caravan-- and it was off to the gas chambers. The opposition to the inclusion of the transgendered is certainly more subtle, but just as vicious in its underlying philosophy. In an era when we know that gender is complex and traditional gender definitions are false, there is no excuse for excluding the transgendered from full equality and protection everywhere, including in women's and lesbian groups and organizations."

--Editorial in the Vancouver's gay newspaper Xtra! West written by Associate Publisher Michelle Clancey, March 19.

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"I get very annoyed with films like Love! Valour! Compassion! If that were a heterosexual film it would be laughed off the screenI mean come on boys, if you're going to make a film like that, then let's see a proper weekend not a sentimental piece of crap."

--Actor John Hurt (Love And Death On Long Island) to Vancouver's Xtra! West, March 19.

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"When inviting a lesbian out, it is necessary to use the actual word 'date.' Especially if you want her to know that it is one."

--From Shelly Roberts' new book Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Dating.

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"Like puppies, lesbian dates tend to follow you home. If you don't want to marry her, don't ask her to the movies."

--From Shelly Roberts' new book Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Dating.

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"Experts say, 'To stop smoking... half the battle is to keep your hands & mouth busy...' Well, we're always here to help..."

--Advertisement in the Vancouver gay newspaper Xtra! West by the F212 Steam bathhouse, March 19.

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