"We have not been engaged in witch hunts and have no intention to be engaged in witch hunts. The ['don't ask, don't tell'] policy that the president announced with the support of Congress several years ago is working, and I think working well."

--Secretary of the Navy John Dalton at a Honolulu press conference Dec. 17, according to the Honolulu Advertiser.

"Ellen DeGeneres is Entertainer of the Year because, at a time when an acknowledgment of homosexuality has entered all aspects of popular culture, when diversity and acceptance are the words of the day but by no means entirely the deeds, and when more and more of the sizable population of homosexual men and women working in the entertainment industry today are weighing the risks of coming out themselves, DeGeneres allowed herself to became a poster girl -- not for lesbianism, but for honesty. She did good, important work, work that continues to shape the public discourse."

--Entertainment Weekly magazine, Dec. 26.

"[The] new 'Ellen' ... is almost entirely about being gay in America. The result has made some heterosexuals queasy ('Can't she do a show that isn't about being a lesbian?'). But gay viewers are nearly unanimous, and plenty of heterosexuals agree with them, in the opinion that a candid 'Ellen' is much funnier than her confused and closeted predecessor, something critics have been saying in recent months as well."

--From The New York Times' "Television View" by Charles Kaiser, Dec. 21.

"I think the climate has certainly changed for gays since Ellen came out. I just went to the celebration of the 100th episode of 'Ellen,' and I stepped back and thought, this isn't just talking about it. She did it, and [the series] is still on the air, and it's 1997. It's a big thing, and we're right in the middle of it."

--Actress Kathy Najimy (Veronica's Closet) in a Dec. 21 commentary in the Los Angeles Times.

<><><5><><>

"Callate ... maricon." ("Shut up ... fag.")

--Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice of the pop group The Spice Girls) to reporters and photographers who were booing the group Dec. 18 in Madrid at the opening of the new film Spice World. The journalists were upset at being forced to sign over the rights to pictures and video footage they shot at a Spice Girls press conference.

"I'm gay and I'm proud."

--Six-term Ypsilanti, Mich., City Council Member Pam Cuthbert Dec. 10 at a gay-bar fundraiser for the city's gay-rights bill, which later passed.

"I was not making any announcement that anyone in the audience didn't know. I didn't have any intention to make my personal life a public story. ... I didn't want [this to result in] a [news] story at all. I don't think it's the public's business. My personal, private life is just that, personal and private. And now it's about to be public."

--Six-term Ypsilanti, Mich., City Council Member Pam Cuthbert to the Ann Arbor News, Dec. 24. Cuthbert said she spoke to the News because two gay publications were preparing to report that she mentioned her gayness at a fundraiser at a gay bar on Dec. 10.

"I think it's the glamour and the theatricality of it all. It's larger than life. It's the power of it, too; they like a strong woman, I think. Gay men are very creative and they admire creativity in others. They know when something is sincere, they don't just admire anybody. Look at Judy [Garland], she had a huge gay following. She was larger than life on stage."

--Singer Shirley Bassey in an interview with London's Gay Times, December issue.

"The leader of the British Conservative Party, Opposition Leader William Hague, has been sent congratulations by the queer rights group OutRage! on the occasion of his wedding to Ffion Jenkins today, 19 December 1997, in the St. Mary Undercroft chapel in the crypt of the House of Commons. Mr Hague married rather late, at the age of 36. The announcement of his engagement to Ffion coincided with his campaign for the leadership of the Tory party in May 1997. He previously shared a house with another top Conservative MP, Alan Duncan, who remains one of his closest political advisors."

--From a press release from the London direct-action group OutRage!

"The first gay person I saw on TV was a hero of mine, Liberace. Of course Liberace never said he was gay -- he didn't have to, did he, dear? ... And Liberace's glamour! My mother was enthralled! He was what every straight person wants to think gay people are like -- so camp, not at all threatening. In 1972 I did the Royal Variety Show with Liberace. We shared a dressing room, and I thought 'God, I'd better make an effort.' I had two fabulous lurex suits run up. Then he wheeled in trunk after trunk of costumes, including a suit covered with electric light bulbs. I knew I was outclassed. How could he play the piano with all those rings on? Maybe that's why he missed some of the notes. He had fun. He said 'fuck you' to everyone."

--Elton John to London's Gay Times, December issue.

"[Gay Times] Man of The Year? Well, obviously. But Elton John is the man of all our years. His life story has neatly mirrored that of all gay men: repressed in the Sixties, a model of Seventies hedonistic excess, a victim of the Right's homophobic backlash in the Eighties, then fighting his way forward to something approaching sainthood today. And he's done it all on pretty much his own terms."

--London's Gay Times, December issue.

"When I left the convent, like a lot of women, I came out. I was fortunate that it coincided with Stonewall and the feminist movement. Today, I am convinced that if I go to hell, it ain't going to be because I'm a lesbian but because of some deficiency in my character. Certainly not because I happen to love women."

--Presidential adviser Virginia Apuzzo to the Advocate, Jan. 20 issue.

"I understand from people close to him that he is not homophobic, but shit, he's the President of the United States. He's a lame duck. He could do anything he wants, so I question how deep the belief goes. I think he's soiled his own nest."

--Gay San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano on Bill Clinton, to Boston's Bay Windows, Dec. 26.

"In the case of marriage, we have always known it as between two people of the opposite sex and I think that is what it is. A door is a door and a marriage is a marriage, no matter how many names you call it."

--Canadian Member of Parliament Tom Wappel, Liberal-Scarborough, Ont., as he introduced the Defence of Marriage Act to ban gay marriage, as quoted in Ottawa's Capital Xtra!, Dec. 12.

"Marriage is not, whatever its enemies say, a means to tame or repress or coerce gay men and women. On the contrary. It is, in fact, the only political and cultural and spiritual institution that can truly liberate us from the shackles of marginalization and pathology. It is the critical institution in our culture related to the emotional and sexual attraction of one human being to another--guaranteed under the Constitution to anyone who loves another person, guaranteed to prisoners and rapists, to deadbeat dads and the mentally incompetent, to murderers and even aliens. And yet it is denied to gay men and lesbians. It is the institution more than any other that links the equality of politics with the intimacy of the heart. Which is why it is so strange--but so telling--that we have avoided it as an issue for so long."

--Writer-activist Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Jan. 20 Advocate.

"There are plenty of people--especially among a few activist elites--who prefer to chant mantras of decades gone by and pretend that somehow this is 1957 and straight America is initiating a Kulturkampf against sex in parks and that somehow this is the defining issue of our times. But this is nostalgia masquerading as politics. It is not a 'sex panic,' as they call it. It is a victim panic, a terror that with the abatement of AIDS we might have to face the future and that the future may contain opportunities that gay men and women have never previously envisaged, let alone grasped. It is a panic that the easy identity of victimhood might be slipping from our grasp and that maturity may be calling us to more difficult and challenging terrain."

--Writer-activist Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Jan. 20 Advocate.

"Sex with a condom is artificial sex. [But] I want people to stop calling me an advocate of unprotected sex. It's about respecting people's decisions."

--San Diego activist and key Sex Panic! figure Tony Valenzuela to the Advocate, Jan. 20 issue.

<><><18><><>

"I've been thinking about each of [my dead friends] so much recently. Sadly, they come to mind as I've listened to younger men advocating their right to fuck without condoms. A part of me wants to support these individual choices (and I do), but another part sees a generation pissing on the graves of my dead friends who have already learned the truth about AIDS: it is a terrible way to die. Last week, rubbing salt in my wounds, I bristled from the latest mental breakdown of Larry Kramer (see the New York Times op-ed page, December 12, 1997 ...) and found myself puzzled at how fate would silence so many good and positive voices, but leave us with hate-filled men like Kramer. ... [M]any of us have learned the need to be respectful of our gay brothers, even when we stand on opposite ends of issues. It is a lesson Kramer needs to learn desperately."

--www.cruisingforsex.com Publisher Keith Griffith, in a Dec. 20 commentary.

"If only he could be avoided. But it's impossible; every time we begin assuring ourselves that he has sunk forever into the gloomy miasma of his private demons, the manic half takes over and Larry Kramer thrashes and lashes to life, like a hungry, demented crocodile."

--www.cruisingforsex.com columnist John Fall, Dec. 20.

"I never cease to be amazed at the range of what are usually referred to as 'rules' by which gay men negotiate sex outside their relationships. There is the time-honoured route of dishonesty; don't ask, do it anyway. There's the sex with others is permitted, but don't ask, don't tell. There's sex with other men but only when both partners are involved. There are men in relationships who have other sexual lives entirely independent of their partners. There's sex with other men, but only when out of town. There's sex with other men, but keep it in the bushes, don't bring it home. And the list goes on."

--Sex Panic! supporter Steven Maynard writing in Ottawa, Ontario's Capital Xtra!, Dec. 12.

"The ANC [African National Congress] National Conference ... tasks its representatives in all levels of government to establish equality for lesbian and gay people in the following areas in particular:

"EMPLOYMENT -- Equal rights for all workers, including lesbian and gay workers in both the private and public sectors; The recognition of same sex relationships for worker benefits (e.g. housing, medical aid and bereavement leave). ...

"FAMILY RIGHTS -- Custody and access, maintenance, immigration and adoption rights for lesbian and gay persons and the recognition of lesbian and gay families; Establishing the equal right to marry for people of the same sex.

"YOUTH -- The appropriate inclusion of lesbian and gay youth in all youth programmes, policy and law; The protection of lesbian and gay youth from discrimination at home, at school, on the streets and in the media; Equalising the age of consent; Running programmes to counter anti-gay prejudice and inclusive sexuality education programmes for all scholars."

--From a resolution passed by South Africa's ruling African National Congress at their 50th National Conference, Dec. 20.

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