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"If all gay men settled down into pairs like animals clambering into Noah's ark, a world of possibilities would disappear. A culture that embraces nonmonogamy, casual public sex, erotic art, sex toys, costuming and a theatrical attitude toward pleasure is a national treasure, not a shameful anachronism. Twenty years ago, who could have predicted that any gay activist worthy of the name would be preaching the same values as Anita Bryant."

--Sex activist-author Pat Califia in the October POZ magazine, alluding to writers Larry Kramer, Gabriel Rotello, Michelangelo Signorile and Andrew Sullivan, among others.

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"The man who arranges himself in a sling, awaiting anointing with Crisco, has come in perfect love and trust like a child to baptism. Lust can be a sacrament that washes us clean of envy, pride and anomie, and returns us to daily life with a satisfied heart, renewed hope and greater compassion. The mouth is not the only orifice that generates poetry; we must learn to listen to the hymns of our other openings, other lips. If 'gay literature' did no more than rescue our genitals from revulsion, and celebrate them instead, it would be heroic."

--Longtime sex writer Pat Califia in the October issue of POZ magazine.

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"[It was] just not natural, unless maybe you're Barney Frank."

--U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Escondido, Calif., talking about a rectal procedure he underwent in conjunction with his prostate cancer, in a Sept. 5 talk to prostate-cancer sufferers at the San Diego Rehabilitation Institute.

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"Every time I hear one of these right-wing jerks say I'm only trying to get his approval, it's someone's approval you couldn't give to me as a gift."

--Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., as quoted in the Des Moines Register, Sept. 7.

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"The way you are not an extremist in the Republican Party today is you do not predict the heavens will rain hail on people who disagree with you. If you don't predict hurricanes or meteor showers on your opponents -- then you are a moderate."

--Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., as quoted in the Des Moines Register, Sept. 7.

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"If you gave me $1 million tomorrow and told me to promote homosexuality, I haven't the faintest idea what I would do. What do you do? Have a contest? Make up posters? Put ads on television? The notion of promoting homosexuality is preposterous. Our agenda is very simple: Please leave us alone. Please let us be what we want to be and live our lives with others."

--Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., as quoted in the Des Moines Register, Sept. 7.

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"The right wing love to hang onto a ridiculous notion of perfect families because it protects them from having to face the much more complicated reality of real emotions and real diversity. At least Bill and Hillary represent life as lots of people actually live it, rather than the behind-curtains hypocrisy of Republicans, whose pretence that only Slick Willy enjoys a blow job with someone he doesn't live with frankly defies belief. Clinton may not have been sensible, but at least he didn't sell arms to the Contras or illegally topple any regimes. That's what Republicans do, even gay ones."

--Simon Fanshawe, columnist for London's The Pink Paper, Aug. 28.

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"That's just angry queens [saying I shouldn't play a womanizer on the new NBC sitcom Encore! Encore!]. I should only play flamboyant gay roles? I have no desire to be a role model for anybody. But in a sense I feel like I have been because I've played a wide variety of gay characters. ... There are two gay characters on [Will & Grace] -- plenty for one network. They don't need me prancing around."

--Actor Nathan Lane as quoted in the Miami Herald, Sept. 6.

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"This much-touted new series [NBC-TV's 'Will & Grace'] about a friendship between a gay man and a straight woman is most definitely not 'Ellen: The Next Generation.' It's a retro sitcom that returns its gay characters to the safe and acceptable territory where they hovered until DeGeneres attempted to set them free."

--San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News Television Editor Ron Miller, Sept. 7.

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"My attitude is that the outing of living persons, who do not exist in isolation but belong to a complex web of family, friends and professional associates, is a fascist practice that belongs to Puritan Salem or Stalinist Moscow, not to a progressive civil rights movement. On the other hand, outing may possibly be justified in cases of gross hypocrisy, as when an elected or appointed official with real power to do harm may be condemning homosexuality publicly while living a secret gay life."

--Writer/academic Camille Paglia in her Sept. 15 Salon magazine column.

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"Though far from a gay liberationist in conservative Czarist society, [Russian classical composer Peter] Tchaikovsky never really tried to keep his sexuality a secret despite a brief, disastrous marriage he entered into for appearance's sake in 1877. His letters are full of cross-gender naming -- feminizing the names of men -- and he enjoyed cross dressing, once performing a drag show with another renowned gay composer, Camille Saint-Saens."

--The St. Petersburg [Florida] Times, Sept. 15.

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"Can't people respect that I went out there and told the truth about myself and Ellen [DeGeneres]? Let me alone. I can't fight stupidity. If I'm honest enough to go out there and say I'm in love with Ellen and that I'm the first openly gay actress in the movies, don't try to knock me down at the lowest level. Understand that I have a wife whom I care for. ... We're leaving for Massachusetts soon; she's doing a film there, The Love Letter. Ellen came with me to Hawaii when I filmed Six Days, Seven Nights. Now I'm the housewife. I've been cooking every day, preparing for that."

--Actress Anne Heche to the Miami Herald, Sept. 6.

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"They're not going to show us puking and farting. But almost everyone I know has had some kind of side effect from these [AIDS] drugs. And when that happens, the ads [that run in the gay press] make you think you're doing something wrong. It's performance anxiety. You feel like you can't compete. [I walked up to Merck's Crixivan booth at the AIDS conference in Geneva and said,] 'I'm doing pretty well on your drugs, but when am I going to look like a mountain climber?'"

--Clinton AIDS adviser Bob Hattoy to POZ magazine, October issue.

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"It was up in Sacramento [at an AIDS benefit] and someone yelled out, 'When are you coming out, Helen?' and I said, 'If there's a woman here with a hairy chest and a big dick, I'm hers!"

--70s megastar singer Helen Reddy to San Francisco Frontiers, Sept. 10.

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"Mayonnaise is the biggest social problem Baltimore has. Every meal is a medley of mayonnaise. And basically that is what causes everyone to be overweight. Baltimore is a fat city in a way that I don't mean badly, but many, many people here -- It's an ample city. It's a hefty city. That's why they should restrict mayonnaise here. They could save a lot of social problems!"

--Gay filmmaker John Waters to the Baltimore Alternative, September issue.

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"I'm not adverse to outrageousness for the spectacle of it all. In fact, I'm mostly in favor of it. But most of what passes for outrageous is just old to the truly outrageous. I mean drag queens? That's so over. What's interesting now is drag kings, but it will take a while for them to figure that one out."

--Gay filmmaker John Waters to the Detroit Free Press, Sept. 18.

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"For polygamous folks -- it is a religious belief and at least through their religious ceremonies they think they are married before God. Homosexuality is not part of somebody's religion. Polygamy has been blown totally out of proportion [in recent discussions in Utah]. These people out there living polygamous lives are not bothering anybody."

--Gayle Ruzicka, president of the conservative Utah Eagle Forum, to the Salt Lake [City] Tribune, Sept. 18.

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"We want a movement that fights for the rights of each of us. Even if we do not fit into the corporate image of an 'American family.' That these national organizations project white Christian middle-class representations and set the agenda accordingly is nothing less than institutionalized racism. Claims to diversity mean nothing if the sexual is sanitized and no genuine effort is made to include the perspectives and leadership of lgbt's [sic] from different races, classes, sexualities and genders."

--From a two-page ad in the Sept. 18 Washington Blade, placed by the Ad Hoc Committee For An Open Process which opposes the manner in which HRC and MCC are organizing the Millennium March on Washington.

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"At one point, the President inserted a cigar into Ms. Lewinsky's vagina, then put the cigar in his mouth and said: 'It tastes good.'"

--This column's favorite sentence from "The Starr Report."

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"He lies by being technically accurate. I wish he would stop it. He's not 14 anymore trying to outsmart the principal."

--Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on President Clinton, as quoted by AP, Sept. 15.

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"Gay and lesbian people, I think, can relate to persecution and attacks for private, consensual behavior. In that sense there is empathy with the president. At the same time, our community is part of the American public, and there is a sense of disappointment and disapproval with the president lying and misleading the American people."

--Tracey Conaty, communications director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, to the Washington Post, Sept. 20.