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"I really want to thank you for being here because your being here gives me the chance to help my daughter love whoever the fuck she wants."

--Actress Kathy Najimy (Sister Act, Veronica's Closet) from the stage of San Diego gay pride, July 25.

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"Much of the vocal criticism of muscle boy culture is being put forward by men who are approaching or who have entered middle age. Members of a generation of gay men who were in their twenties and thirties in the 1970s and early 1980s are now in their forties, fifties, and sixties. A generation gap has emerged and a clash is occurring -- baby boomers against generation Xers. Rather than address their own misgivings about aging, ageism, and the gay sexual cultures they inhabited in the 1970s and 1980s, some men may be transferring a powde keg of fears, disappointments, guilt, and rage onto young gay men and their emerging post-AIDS cultures."

--From Eric Rofes' new book Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures.

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"My concern with [author Larry] Kramer's guilt-trippy screeds is not only the profound hatred for gay men that suffuses his analysis and oozes out of his mean-spirited prose, but the ineffectiveness of constructing public health strategy around such harangues. Kramer performs as our community's neighborhood bully as he aggressively strong-arms lesbians to sever their ties to gay men, threatens AIDS organizations who dare lend their name to circuit parties, and attempts to coerce gay male youth into embracing his paranoid visions of apocalypse now."

--From Eric Rofes' new book Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures.

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"I want to be part of an effort that transforms the society in which we live from the ground up. That's like my passion. Like how to make change person-by-person, town-by-town, state-by- state, country-by-country. I don't like the world that we live in very much. I don't think it allows people to be whole or to live in any kind of authentic way."

--NGLTF Executive Director Kerry Lobel to Atlanta's Southern Voice, July 9.

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"I have to admit that I was one of those who initially found [lesbian writer] Camille Paglia -- college professor, professional loose cannon and author of 'Sexual Personae' – to be amusing. I found her fascination with Madonna to be interesting and quirky. Her bombast on other topics seemed genuine and harmless, despite entreaties from friends and colleagues of mine who warned that, while Paglia seemed dedicated to countering cherished PC dogma, she was really only about promoting Camille. Dear Everyone: I'm sorry. Sometimes one is so wrong, those two words are about all you can say – except perhaps to add emphasis: I'm sorry I was so _absolutely_ wrong. And to the critics of this newspaper who warned me about giving Paglia a platform: You were right. What an utter screwball Prof. Paglia has turned out to be."

--Jeff Epperly, editor of the Boston gay newspaper Bay Windows, in a July 2 editorial.

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"Recent Republican attacks on homosexuality point to an urgent need at the GOP homestead for some new electronics. When President Clinton seeks a picture of national attitudes, he uses his built-in satellite dish. He gets excellent reception. By contrast, Republican leaders rely on an old TV antenna. They get maybe three channels."

--Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin columnist Froma Harrop, July 16.

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"Being Jewish, would I have to go through a 24-step program instead of a 12-step program?"

--Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the full-page ads that ran in national daily newspapers featuring "ex-gays" who claim to have turned straight with Jesus' help, to the San Francisco Examiner, July 17.

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"They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who's getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn't know how to promote homosexuality. Do I hire Don King?" --U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on anti-gay activists, to the San Francisco Examiner, July 17.

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"Even the founders of these ex-gay ministries aren't 'cured' of anything, and often go right back to being gay. Ultimately, these groups have no interest in loving gays--they just want to exploit the hatred of homosexuals through fundraising. We are the modern- day 'red scare,' and the easiest buck in town."

--Tracy Baim, editor of Chicago's Nightlines, in her July 15 "Off The Cuffs" column.

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"Homosexuality is not a disease and needs no 'cure.' For all the tough-love sentiments, the real agenda of this $200,000 Christian Coalition-Family Research Council media blitz is not to heal but to divide Americans for political advantage. By pushing the false premise that homosexuality is not an innate human condition but a sinful choice that can be reversed through prayer and counseling, the ad's sponsors are putting it in the same category as kleptomania and alcoholism, much as did Senator Lott (whose name is invoked in the ads)."

--New York Times columnist Frank Rich, July 22.

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"Treating gay and lesbian people as if they are sub-human is a violation of the gospel. It is a dagger aimed at the heart of the gospel. We would have the church bless and the state recognize faithful, committed lifetime gay and lesbian relationships. Unless the church blesses gay and lesbian relationships and encourages them to be faithful, the church will encourage them to become promiscuous because that is the only alternative."

--Newark, N.J., Episcopalian Bishop Jack Spong at the once-a- decade gathering of Anglican bishops in Canterbury, England, July 20.

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"The Anglican communion has had gay archbishops, gay bishops and gay priests since the dawn of time. The only difference is that we are now being honest about it. I have got 30 out-of-the-closet gay and lesbian priests in my diocese, which is a minuscule one."

--Newark, N.J., Episcopalian Bishop Jack Spong at the once-a- decade gathering of Anglican bishops in Canterbury, England, July 20.

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"The use of the term 'practicing homosexual' is pejorative. That is almost as bad as using the 'N' word to describe colored people. Christian groups have insulted gays so often and for so many years with such negativity that my only hope is that we don't issue an insulting statement about gays at this conference. ... It is a justice issue that is just as compelling as being opposed to apartheid in South Africa or to genocide In Rwanda."

--Newark, N.J., Episcopalian Bishop Jack Spong at the once-a- decade gathering of Anglican bishops in Canterbury, England, July 20.

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"Man, I'm not talking about that. No. Why would I?"

--Chicago Cubs superstar Sammy Sosa when asked about gays in professional sports by a reporter for the Miami Herald, July 19.

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"This is a very touchy situation. I wouldn't think it would go over well, a player in this clubhouse saying he was gay. It would be uncomfortable, for sure. At least at first."

--Chicago Cubs second-baseman Mickey Morandini, when asked how a teammate would be received if he came out as gay, to the Miami Herald, July 19.

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"A gay person would probably get into a lot of fights in the clubhouse. Taking showers with people, having them look at you, it would cause a problem."

--Chicago Cubs center-fielder Lance Johnson when asked how a teammate would be received if he came out as gay, to the Miami Herald, July 19.

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"There's always Sigourney Weaver; I love a girl you can shimmy up. She's one tall drink of water, that one. She's my go-to girl, definitely. And I've been getting a thing for Uma Thurman lately. A total thing. Her and Cameron Diaz--I've just been losing my mind over her lately. ... It's hard for me to separate the talent from the beauty. Except for Sandra Bullock, because I don't find her talented at all, but I'd bang her in a second! I'd do her in front of my parents."

--Actress and comedian Lea DeLaria to Oregon's Just Out, July 17.

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"What's happened is I've become a Broadway star. Everyone is saying I'm the hot new thing. ... The industry is banging down my door. And when you get your start running around a stage swinging a double-headed dildo, you don't think anyone will ever give you a chance. Right now I'm like, I can do anything."

--Actress and comedian Lea Delaria to Los Angeles' Frontiers, July 24.

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"I've been where Ellen's been, I've been at that place where I thought I was doing good and that the world should thank me. And I got high and mighty. And I look back at that time, especially some of the work I did at the time, and I see it as flawed. As an artist, I see it as flawed: I see the politics overwhelming the comedy, and comedy is good on its own. I do have an agenda, I do have a goal, I'm not about nothing, right. I saw about three [episodes of 'Ellen'] this year and I think I liked one, and my feeling was that it was doing good."

--Gay actor Scott Thompson (Kids In The Hall) to Los Angeles' Frontiers, July 24.

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"My work turns over the rock and looks at the worms and the maggots underneath. Ellen's show turned over the rock and pretended there were candies underneath. A lot of that kind of work, to me, ignores the ugliness. I'm sort of a pariah because I try to tell the truth, and historically, people aren't always really interested in the truth. Not to shit on Ellen. I think she's hilarious. But I really do think the show got caught up in activism and became hijacked by those -- I don't even know how to describe those people -- by the fascists ... GLAAD."

--Gay actor Scott Thompson (Kids In The Hall) to Salon magazine, July 23.

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"Never, never work. I've lived in New York for 18 years and I've never worked. Like Blanche DuBois, I rely on the kindness of strangers."

--Gay writer-actor Quentin Crisp, 89, to the San Antonio Express News, July 13.

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"In England I was accepted by the gay people and frowned on by the real people. Here I'm accepted by the real people and frowned on by the gay people because, of course, I don't protest."

--Gay writer-actor Quentin Crisp, 89, to the San Antonio Express News, July 13.

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"The Pride committee ... needs to preserve the parade's community integrity. It's a Pride parade, after all, and it's not too much to ask that floats have a vague association with the event. Or perhaps, in order to have a float, corporate participants would be required to contribute to a fund for community floats. The parade could be truly stunning if some of the creative ideas you see at Pride -- obviously produced on a shoestring budget – had the resources for a grander production more befitting a parade."

-Editorial in Toronto's Xtra! written by Publisher David Walberg, July 16.