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"If you watch the news on TV and you see the things that go on [at gay-pride events] -- not that I'm against them. But it does beg the question, are they hurting their cause? Because we've always heard from gay activists that, you know: 'Hey, our sexuality is just one part of our life. You should just take us as people.' But then we see them in leather butt-thongs passing out penis Popsicles. ... Guys dressed as nuns kissing in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. It seems to me, just forcing people to hate you."

--Host Bill Maher on TV's Politically Incorrect, June 29.

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"Most Pride parade participants are pretty mundane in their appearance--gay bankers, lesbian mommies, gay and lesbian doctors, etc. If all someone sees is flamboyance and aggressive sexuality, they're clearly seeing the event through the prism of their own hang-ups. It is true that the media tend to focus on the colorful types, but that is the nature of the news business. Look closely at coverage of any festival or parade ... and the media always concentrate on the people who look like they're having the best time: the celebratory types who actually get into the spirit of any event."

--Jeff Epperly, editor of Boston's Bay Windows, in a June 11 editorial.

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"I was just in Washington, D.C., for gay pride, and there were very few people marching. But there was a huge street fair. I think in a lot of ways, we've become less a movement and more a marketplace. We've seen that happen in other civil rights movements, getting coopted by the dominant culture. There's a kind of conservatizing aspect of capitalism that we become an equal sign [the Human Rights Campaign logo]. We now have a logo instead of a really active agenda."

--Comedian Kate Clinton to Atlanta's Etcetera magazine, June 26.

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"The Advocate recently published two cover stories ... on monogamy and ... 'sexual addiction.' The subtext here, of course, is that as gay people drift more to mainstream acceptance, we must join the criminalization of unconventional sexual relationships, clean up our own act for the disapproving straight folks -- as if they are all monogamous and don't act out. Of course, what we're really talking about is buying a value, the appearance of conventionality, not a behavior. Promiscuity with guilt is okay but unconventional sexual relationships are not, according to the way this gets lived out."

--Columnist Cliff Bostock in Atlanta's Etcetera magazine, June 26.

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"Some individuals choose monogamy out of a deep faith in a relationship and their desire to pursue a deeper spiritual communion with the one they love. Others demand a monogamous relationship because of their own insecurity and possessiveness. Some choose to be polyamorous because of their strong self- confidence and their amazing capacity to love. Others choose to be nonmonogamous out of immaturity and selfishness."

--Letter to the editor of the Advocate from Christopher Brown of Indianapolis, July 21.

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"If you are going to love someone of your same sex, then do it. Do it responsibly, do it beautifully, do it with commitment, do it deeply. Promiscuity, both homosexually and heterosexually, is dangerous, and if you're going to be doing that, you really have to protect yourself. I wouldn't have a problem with it [if my son were gay]. I don't have a problem with it now. A lot of my friends are gay. I just think you've got to love who you feel you've got to love. If not, you're living a lie, and that's a total waste. The whole purpose of life is to try to be happy."

--Singer Gloria Estefan to the Texas Triangle, June 25.

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Every time I say a kind word about gays I hear from people, and some are damn mad. People throw Leviticus, Deuteronomy and other parts of the Bible at me. But it doesn't bother me. I've always been compassionate toward gay people. People are shocked by some of the things I discuss in my column, but that's their ignorance. You can't help that."

--"Dear Abby" columnist Abigail Van Buren, 80, to People magazine, July 13.

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In gay men's early development, there is usually a painful wound from lack of acceptance by other males -- father, brothers, schoolmates -- and then a driving need to gain that attention and acceptance, eventually taking sexual form. There is also, most of the time, some smothering female presence, either too hot or too old, from which the boy will escape to other men, where he can breathe free. Archetypally, the mawlike female genitalia threaten both claustrophobia and castration and can seem to men as fetid as mulch. Hence male homosexuality is ultimately about human freedom from nature's power -- which is why I have celebrated gay men for advancing the cause of civilization."

--Camille Paglia in her July 7 "Ask Camille" column at Salon magazine.

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"When we look at the emerging cultures that gay men are creating at the end of the 1990s -- from rural men's networks to urban circuit parties, black men's discussion groups to conventions of bears, cruisy coffee shops to huge church revivals -- we know they rise out of the ruins of a painful past but offer hopeful visions of community beyond crisis. ... The everyday lives of gay men throughout the nation make clear one thing: AIDS-as-crisis, as defined by epicenter gay men in the 1980s, is over."

--From Eric Rofes' new book Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures.

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"It may be time for gay men to abandon the acronym 'AIDS' altogether. For many of us, these four simple capital letters are permanently stained with the blood of our lovers and comrades in gay liberation. The meanings of the 1980s -- quick death, sexual repression and shame, cataclysmic loss -- will cling to the term forever. Efforts to recreate and revive community may be assisted by letting go of this term, eradicating it from our daily lives, and using the phrase 'HIV disease' or creating a new acronym, one that is invested with the meanings of the new millennium."

--From Eric Rofes' new book Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures.

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"I see myself as a role model and I am gay so that makes me a role model for gays. I feel like I can be a role model for everyone, but I guess it's better for gay kids because they don't have many role models in sports. It can give someone more confidence if he or she has someone to identify with."

--Tennis star Martina Navratilova to the Associated Press, July

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As for that aesthetically deadly, socially tedious, politically pointless, contemptible fad of political correctness, I'm very pleased to say that this, too, seems to be going the way of outing, and good goddamn riddance. Of course, in its place there are always new fads to scream about and devote glossy gay magazine stories to, such as circuit parties, bareback sex and the alleged neoconservatism of our supposedly turncoat leaders."

--Writer Daniel Reitz in a July 10 column at Salon magazine.

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"This is what the Dick Armeys and the Trent Lotts of America fail to grasp: that beyond the 'it's sick/special rights/AIDS is all their fault/they just want to recruit our young' spiel, there's nothing more to say, and they've been saying it for years and years now. It's an endless dance mix of the same tired song, and these lazy bastards had better start funking it up with a new beat if they want anyone to keep listening."

--Writer Daniel Reitz in a July 10 column at Salon magazine.

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"Perhaps fucking raw appears much more common because it has become much more acceptable. This really is the new twist in unsafe sex -- it is no longer considered wrong. Fucking raw has come out of the closet. The quantity of the activity has not changed much in the '90s -- what has changed is the prevalent opinion about it. Unlike fairly recent feelings among practitioners of unsafe sex, many raw fuckers today have no shame, no qualms, no concern about their role in the spread of HIV. Can an unsafe-fucking pride flag be far behind?"

--Columnist John Fall at www.cruisingforsex.com, July 10.

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"When you ask police departments why they go after gay men having sex in parks they will almost always tell you that it is because of complaints from neighbours. ... The fact of the matter is that if those neighbours could figure out ways to complain about those men having sex in their bedrooms, they would. They are uncomfortable with men having sex together anywhere on the planet. It's not just in a park or a shopping mall. It's anywhere."

--Keith Griffith, owner of www.cruisingforsex.com, to Ottawa, Ontario's Capital Xtra!, June 26.

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"We were drawn to each other like a magnetic force. ... It was a chemical change. Completely. My entire body changed in her presence. My energy changed. It was amazing. I went home with her that night. We were done. We've been inseparable ever since."

--Actress Anne Heche on the night she met actress Ellen DeGeneres, to The Australian newspaper, June 25.

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"If you're asked if you're gay, you have to say yes. And if you're not asked, don't mention it. People are always asking me if they should tell their mothers. Never tell your mother anything! Your parents are not your friends."

--Gay author-actor Quentin Crisp to Seattle Gay News, June 12.

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"Now gay people want to get married. This is nonsense. First of all, marriage is a sacrament and the people who believe in it don't think it should be offered to people they regard as sinners. But you ought to call it something else. What is needed is a law that protects the dependent party, because when Miss Stein died, her family came from New York to Paris and removed all the pictures from the walls and Miss Toklas nearly died of starvation. If they'd left her one Picasso, she could have lived on it forever and she did live to old age. She'd done nothing with her life but look after Miss Stein -- which must have been a full time job!"

--Gay author-actor Quentin Crisp to Seattle Gay News, June 12.

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"I don't really think I do [believe in God]. It's obvious of course that we invented him rather than he invented us. I don't really take any notice of him. What I particularly don't believe in is a god susceptible to prayer. That seems to be absurd. The idea that god's going to stop turning the spheres in the heavens in order to give you a bicycle with 21 speeds because you didn't eat sweets -- such rubbish. I would never teach a child to pray."

--Gay author-actor Quentin Crisp to Seattle Gay News, June 12.

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