Pictured San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Photo by Rex Wockner
‘I may not agree with the [gay] lifestyle. And I don’t. But that has nothing to do with the civil rights of that member of our—that part of our constituency…. Housing and employment are not special rights…. I think the right to live somewhere and to live where you please or to work where you please, as long as you’re not bothering anybody else, is a basic right, not a—not a special right…. Civil rights for all Americans—black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera—is not a liberal or a conservative value. It’s an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on.’ — Antigay activist the Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, on MSNBC’s The Situation with Tucker Carlson, Aug. 5, according to Atlanta’s Southern Voice, Aug. 24.
‘I promise my audience at least one shocking gay scene this year. People will write about this once I’m done with it.’ — Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry to Out magazine, September issue.
‘I think there’s such a strong archetype there for gay people—that secret self. It’s that hidden self that’s not about being defined by secrets or by sexuality, but being defined by your heart. So many of us have to hide our lives in order to make other people comfortable. And when you stop hiding your life to make other people comfortable, you begin to love yourself.’ — Actress Lynda Carter discussing her Wonder Woman character with D.C.’s MetroWeekly, Aug. 25.
‘The fight over gay marriage was nothing compared to this.’ — San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on his battle with business interests over creation of city-run free or low-cost wireless broadband access, as quoted by Infoworld.com, Aug. 16.
‘Jodie Foster should just come out. She’s not an ingénue anymore. You know, it really saddens me because Jodie Foster could do so much good…. There are just some people—the classy ones—who don’t get beat up in the press. They mostly do that by keeping to themselves.’ — Lesbian comic Suzanne Westenhoefer to the Dallas Voice, July 29.
‘Mostly I stay on the road because I don’t like to be home much where I might meet somebody and marry another idiot. I never stop working because I’m afraid I might want sex if I do. I have closed the store and zipped it up.’ — Actress Debbie Reynolds in an appearance at San Francisco’s Castro Theater, as quoted by the San Francisco Bay Times, July 28.
‘There was a minute [in my youth when] I was sort of good with basketball, but I could never deal with nasty attitudes [on the court]. Those boys can be nastier than the meanest queen.’ — RuPaul to syndicated Canadian gay columnist Richard Burnett.
‘I always say six gay men in the front row will make an audience. I don’t care who’s behind them—I know we’re gonna have a good time…. It has to be gay men. Generally I find gay women are into politics and are more serious. Oh Please!’ — Comic Joan Rivers to London’s The Pink Paper, Aug. 4.
‘ [F] undamentalists desperately want creationism and [intelligent design] to be true because they fear that if evolution is true and God did not create humans beings, then human life, including their individual lives, have no purpose whatsoever and there is no cosmic basis for their or anyone’s morality, so the world will decay into lawlessness, violence and chaos.’ — Syndicated gay press columnist Paul Varnell, Aug. 21.
‘They [my parents] were cool with it from the get-go, really.’ — Gay-porn star Colton Ford on his porn career, to the Dallas Voice, Aug. 19.
‘Gay folks are taking on all the trappings of mainstream heterosexuality, and losing their sexual edge in favour of china patterns and divorce lawyers.’ — Brenda Cossman of the Pink Triangle Press board of directors in an editorial in Toronto’s Xtra!, Aug. 18. Same-sex marriage is legal in Canada.
‘I recently attended my 20th high school reunion up in the evergreen wilds of mild suburban white-bread middle-class Spokane, a peculiar but ultimately pleasant event wherein almost everyone looked unexpectedly good and most seemed reasonably well-adjusted and only a few got aggressively drunk and tried to draw me out for being a happily unmarried neo-pagan liberal sodomite godless heathen yoga teacher when it’s almost illegal to be from Spokane and be an unmarried liberal anything.’ — San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Aug. 24.
‘For his entire adult life, John Roberts has been a disciple of and promoted a political and legal ideology that is antithetical to an America that embraces all, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. He has denigrated the nature and scope of the constitutional rights to privacy, equal protection and due process as well as federal government’s role in confronting injustice. I have no doubt he’s an accomplished lawyer and an affable dinner companion, but that doesn’t make him any less a mortal danger to equal rights for gay people, reproductive freedom and affirmation action.’ — National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman, Aug. 25.
‘Amazon.com is selling sex toys. A lot of sex toys…. Amazon has added this massive array of delicious adult goods quietly, effortlessly, with zero fanfare and zero marketing and zero apparent intolerant outcry (so far as I know) from the right-wing Christian sex tormenters, and with absolutely no children anywhere in the nation spontaneously combusting or being struck by lightning and/or converting to wanton paganism (yet) by viewing any of these items (which they easily can)—which, as we all know, is just fabulously encouraging and good.’ — San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Aug. 19.
‘Gay Shame calls on you to resist the sham of NGLTF’s Creating Change Conference in Oakland, CA November 9-13 using direct action, infiltration, sabotage, redecoration, performance, disruption, transformation and anything else your delicious imagination concocts…. Each year, Creating Change recruits hundreds of fresh faces for corporate ‘nonprofit’ jobs instead of challenging the career activist industry that serves to pacify threats to the status quo…. We’re sick of the Creating Change money machine…. [I] n reality NGLTF prevents change by strengthening people’s allegiances to violent institutions like marriage and the military.’ — Screed from Gay Shame San Francisco. To read it all, visit www.gayshamesf.org/index2.html.