Quotelines

"Had Versace been a married heterosexual man, his wife would have been bombarded with reporters and photographed continuously-as were the wives of the two heterosexual-identified victims of Cunanan. In the case of [Versace's lover, Antonio] D'Amico, much of the media seemed to have suddenly decided they needed to respect the privacy of the murder victim's closest survivor, just as The New York Times decided that, in the case of Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche [hugging in the presence of Bill Clinton], the paper needed to speak out against public displays of affection." - Author Michelangelo Signorile in New York Newsday, Aug. 16.

"[Britain's] Channel Four [production company] felt that the only way to keep the standards up [during the filming of More Tales of the City] was to insist that I be on the set at all times and offer myself as a resource to whoever was making the movie. You know writers really have to fight for the right to maintain control over their own work, and most don't succeed. I've been very lucky in that regard." - Armistead Maupin to No. Carolina's The Front Page.

"I think more people meet through the Internet than without it. You meet people in more different ways. It's not a physical interaction but you meet by expressing ideas. You can go to places on the Internet where people of the same interest hang out. You can make a connection with someone there and then meet them in real life later. You are not tied to geography. I guess there would be a problem if you found someone who was wonderful and they lived in Burkina Faso." - Ron Buckmire, founder of the Internet's Queer Resources Directory, to Virginia's Our Own Community Press, September issue.

"Another thing that really disturbs me is the AIDS organizations benefiting from and hosting the Circuit parties. They should not be hosting parties where a lot of destructive action is going on. They need to pull away from these parties and say, 'As AIDS service and prevention organizations, we must distance ourselves from this scene.' Instead, they are celebrating and promoting them." - Author Michelangelo Signorile in the AIDS magazine Art & Understanding, August issue.

"In contrast to the gay body, the straight man's body has an extremely short period of perfection, coming to fruition for a few brief years in his teens and early twenties and then quickly sliding into a state of irreversible decline in which he gains weight, loses muscle tone, and then, within months, spreads and sags into premature old age. The speed with which the heterosexual's body goes to seed testifies to his lack of vanity and self-preoccupation, the girlish narcissism that leads the homosexual to mummify himself in the quack cures of consumerism. In contrast to the careless blue-collar slob, gay men are timeless vampires, Dorian Greys who flaunt their perennial good looks even as their once youthful portraits, locked away in their attics, shrivel and turn to dust. Having become the slave of consumerism, which fed his fears of getting old, the gay man launches a restless, lifelong effort to rid himself of his guilty sense of fakeness, of artificiality, and to recover his 'naturalness,' which he restores through a series of elaborately costumed impersonations." - From Daniel Harris' new book The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture.

"Despite the hushed tones of reverence with which we are supposed to discuss this unassailable artifact, the Quilt represents the very pinnacle of AIDS kitsch. It evokes the archaic innocence of nostalgic folk traditions straight out of a pastoral world of buggies and butter churns. Those in charge of marketing the disease have attempted to place its primary commemorative monument within the context of a wholesome tradition of American history, to turn it into a kind of faux antique, an artifact from a phantasmal Arcadia. In this mythic, prelapsarian America, AIDS is stripped of its stigma as the scourge of depraved homosexuals and endowed instead with the integrity of a bucolic community in which good-natured rustics of unspoiled simplicity produced their handicrafts in a utopic atmosphere of democracy and cooperation." - From Daniel Harris' The Rise and Fall ...

"At first it was a surprise to hear that people were throwing a loopy slant on it just because two women were traveling around together with no visible means of male support. We kind of laughed and played along with it. That was a long time ago, and since, we've moved on. I think the characters transcend labeling, just like gay people don't want to be identified solely by their sexuality. They contribute so many things to society that to limit it to their sexuality is unimaginative." - Lucy Lawless, Xena, Warrior Princess, to US magazine, October.

"There are those people who wish to make us, quote unquote, palatable to the mainstream. That's how they think we are going to be able to gain our rights. I don't believe that. I believe that we have our culture and our own way of doing things. I also think that if we had spent half as much time dealing with the government as we've spent yelling at each other, we would have had our rights 20 years ago." - Comic Lea DeLaria to The New York Times, Aug. 20.

"[Lesbian comic Lea] DeLaria said the only time she went too far in public was during a performance at the 1993 March on Washington for gay rights in which her use of a profanity in connection with the White House was broadcast over C-SPAN. Ms. DeLaria mistakenly believed her performance was being carried by CNN, which has a seven-second delay. She found herself attacked by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators. But she wasn't too upset. 'My pat answer has always been, if I offended you, you probably needed it,' she said." - From The New York Times.

"Without public recognition, gay weddings just seem like kids playing pretend." - Rachel Giese, features editor of Toronto's Xtra!.

"This is a very cool time to be queer. I think even five years ago my appointment wouldn't have happened. I was impressed he [Mayor Paul Helmke] had the guts to do the appointment. The political shift has allowed more people to come out. As more people come out to family and friends, fewer folks can say they don't know any gay people." - Fort Wayne, Ind., gay activist Leslie Raymer on her appointment to the Metropolitan Human Relations Commission, to the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel, Aug. 27.

"Anonymity has never been the problem; indeed the only issue has ever been unsafe sex-and perhaps the drugging and drinking or the self-hatred and nihilism and fear of old age that might lead to it. The moralizing so endemic to Americans may even have cost quite a few lives, since it's been argued that gay male couples, fired with love and a longing for total intimacy, are more likely to take risks than normally cautious casual partners." - Author Edmund White writing in Out magazine, September.

"Straight men have always said to me, 'Gosh, it must be great to have all that sex on the hoof,' whereas straight women have always shrieked, 'Ick, how can you do ... all those things with people you don't even ... know?' Men and women, of course, are brought up differently. Maybe there's even a biological difference determining behavior (eggs are dear, sperm is cheap, or so the argument goes)." - Edmund White writing in Out magazine.

"I've heard little jokes about the league and its lesbian population, but I think that's foolish and silly. We've progressed too far for that." - Isiah Thomas, former NBA basketball star, to Newsweek, on the Women's NBA league.