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| Quotes & Quips |
| Compiled By Jack Nichols
What the World Needs Now?—Not Love Sweet Love?
"God Hates Fags" -- though elliptical -- is a profound theological statement, which the world needs to hear more than it needs oxygen, water and bread.
The Westboro Baptist Church -- "God Hates Fags" site: www.godhatesfags.com May 20 Changed Marriages in the Future In my utopia I would expect that marriage would change a lot. Couples would make a contract to be co-parents forever. I think we might formalize that and maybe make some beautiful ceremonies around the co-parenting contract. I would also want to see people get less of their need for sociality derived just through kin and the immediate family, which reflects the sad fact that we often have no other form of community in our lives. In general I would like to see us getting much more satisfaction from other people in all kinds of ways—forms of conviviality that are not really permitted or not available to us in this very fragmented, highly competitive culture we live in. Barbara Ehrenreich— "Who Needs Men?" –A Discussion in Harper's magazine, June Coming Between a Plumber & His Porn
Six people had to restrain a drunken plumber after he became violent at
being asked to turn off pornography on his computer, a court has been told.
Ian Bottomley was eventually sedated and handcuffed to his seat after
trying to head-butt and punch cabin crew on a British Airways flight from
Johannesburg to London's Heathrow airport, the jury heard.
BBC, May 20 Hey, Males, What ? Women now make up 56 percent of students in America's colleges and universities and, by the year 2007, having achieved parity or majority in such traditionally "male" fields as business and biology, will earn 200,000 more bachelors degrees annually than will men. What does such a disparity portend, given that there are already six women in the workplace for every seven men and that the percentage of women who never marry or have a child has risen steadily for a generation? Has a fundamental shift between men and women occurred in industrial society? What narrative accounts for Iceland's astonishing out-of-wedlock birthrate of 65 percent, the dramatic rise in the average age of Taiwanese brides, and the 23 percent functional illiteracy rate among England's young men? Could it be that males are in decline? Colin Harrison—Deputy Editor, "Who Needs Men?" Harper's magazine June 
No Nonpartisan Healing-Fest, Please!
I do not share the view that the appropriate response to the failed right-wing effort to drive Bill Clinton out of office is a nonpartisan healing-fest. Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.)—Letter to Campaign Contributors, March Secular Advice, Millenium-Style America does need to wake up—but not necessarily to return to a particular faith. We need to return to one another, to caring, compassionate lives of nonhurried living. We need to fill our lives with less activity and more thought, with less noise and more silence, with less empty distraction and more fulfilling companionship and contemplation. These things are not the sole domain of Christianity, they are the birthright of humanity and we should reclaim our heritage while there is still time. Theresa Willingham—"Morality is not the sole domain of Christianity"—Florida Today, May 20 From the Anti-War 60s to Boomer Bill
You recall how difficult it was to extricate ourselves from Vietnam after American lives were at risk, Mr. President. That is why your decisions to seek an alternative should be made now before American ground troops are committed, not to monitor a stable peace, but to become targets and pawns in a deepening
military campaign
Mr. President, your legacy should be as a President who improved the economy, education, the environment and the prospects for equality at home while being an international peacemaker rather than the policeman of the world. I have tried to support and deepen that agenda. But now it threatens to be toppled by a resurgence of the kind of thinking that led to so much trouble in the Sixties, when we spent billions of dollars and thousands of lives in frustrated pursuit of a freedom in South Vietnam which we couldn't secure in our own ghettos or barrios at home. Tom Hayden--California State Senator in an Open Letter to President Clinton Starting Early Shane Town, of Wellington, whose doctoral thesis looked at the secondary school experiences of young gay men, says it is still unclear whether life for gay students has improved since the 1980s. Young men are coming out a lot earlier, says Dr Town, many as young as 10 to 12 years, compared with the average of 17 to 18 years in the 1970s. Sarona Iosefa—"Cashmere High Sets Up Gay Support Group"—Christchurch Press, May 21 Back to the Future II The '70s are back. Especially in the Village, baby. And most especially here out in the old West, on Christopher Street. The decade of Watergate and the Fonz is big. From television shows (Fox's "That '70s Show" and the flashbacks on "Saturday Night Live" and "Friends") to movies ("Boogie Nights") to books (Pagan Kennedy's "Platforms, A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 1970s") to fashion-look through any issue of Detours or Wallpaper and see the London-based designers Lawrence Steele or the near-mythic FENDY with their '70s-based styles.
Link Yaco—The Greenwich Village Gazette, May 14 www.nycny.com Fitting In The reality is: we don't know what reality is. And that is precisely why we worship at the altar of public opinion, why hypocrisy is second nature. Because we don't know, we allow others to define who and what we are. And we are careful to present the proper images so that we can be acceptable enough to fit in somewhere. Ron Van Dyke— "Presenting Proper Images"—Paradox magazine, June |
Cast of That '70s Show
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