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"So he had a puppet show in his pants? It's not like he hurt anybody. He just went out cruising at a place that was known for that. What did the police think they were going to find? I think the whole thing is ridiculous."

--Comedian Judy Tenuta on singer George Michael's tea-room arrest, to Atlanta's Southern Voice, July 30.

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"It's time for the sex police to shut down and go home. You have succeeded in humiliating the President, his wife and daughter and the American people have had enough! I say to those of you who have nothing better to do than focus on the President's sex life and the sex life of gay Americans, get a life of your own. Stop worrying about the President and Monica, stop worrying about what gay people do in the privacy of their homes and start worrying about the real problems our nation faces."

--Eric Bauman, president of Los Angeles' Stonewall Democratic Club, in an Aug. 18 press release.

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"Now, if you can help gay people become not gay, could you help Mr. Clinton become gay and then save the country?"

--Rock legend David Crosby (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; and the Byrds) to Family Research Council Cultural Studies Director Bob Knight on TV's Politically Incorrect, Aug. 12.

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"When you were gay and then you're not anymore, do you still like Broadway shows?"

--Actress, screenwriter and comedian Rita Rudner on TV's Politically Incorrect, Aug. 12.

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"It is important to be honest about why and when people have unsafe sex, but that does not mean we should elevate it to some trendy fetish. Yet now, with smarmy smirks and swaggers certain self-styled activists are garnering their 15 minutes of infamy through turning their dangerous peccadillo into a 'politicized' media circus."

--Columnist Dominic Hamilton Little in Chicago's Outlines, Aug. 12.

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"People are always disappointed when they meet me. I'm not as funny or as interesting in person."

--Dykes To Watch Out For cartoonist Alison Bechdel to Toronto's Xtra!, July 30.

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"I think most of my problems personally came from my childhood and without the gay world I wouldn't have been able to overcome these problems."

--Porn superstar Ryan Idol to Miami's The Weekly News, Aug. 5.

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"When I came in[to] the [gay-porn] business I started requesting anyone that I would be working with to have HIV tests and if they didn't they just wouldn't be performing with me ... and actually now I request that the whole cast -- even if I'm not working with them -- anyone who works on my set gets HIV tests ... and if they choose not to take the test that's as guilty as taking the test and it coming up positive. [HIV-positive persons] shouldn't be in the adult video industry."

--Porn superstar Ryan Idol to Miami's The Weekly News, Aug. 5.

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"We enjoy the support not just of straight Republicans and straight Americans, but gay and bisexual Americans as well. We want their support. They want lower taxes, they want a balanced budget, they want to take people off welfare and give them jobs. We're doing that. And we welcome their support."

--Republican National Committee spokesman Mike Collins to the San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 13.

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"[Anti-gay sentiment within the GOP] is a sign of the bankruptcy of the party. There are so many issues they could be taking on and now they are taking a position that is directly contrary to the principles of the Republican Party."

--Conservative pundit Arianna Huffington at the gay Log Cabin Republicans convention in Dallas, Aug. 16.

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"I can't stand it when people in the media make up trash about me and/or Ellen. The rumors and nonsense they make up about us are unbelievable. They've gone from the not-so-evil 'I'm pregnant' to 'Now I am straight and having an affair with Vince Vaughn.' Give me a break. The words that many people write are harmful. The stories should be laughable, but in essence show how stupid and insane some writers can be."

--Actress Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' lover, to Chicago's Outlines, Aug. 12.

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"Everyone needs to understand one thing. I have a wife and I love her dearly. We live together and we love each other more than anything in the world. I am an entertainer as is Ellen and we both push ourselves and strive to be the best that we can at what we do. I hope people stop writing about our sex life and start to concentrate on our acting abilities whether they like them or not. My challenge right now is to shock people with my creative ability on screen. That is my challenge." --Actress Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' lover, to Chicago's Outlines, Aug. 12.

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"[AIDS] patients should be able to put their information on the Internet [so they and their doctors can log in and find out, in real time, how patients are doing on particular drug combos.] We're all waiting for someone to tell us what drugs to take. That's not going to happen. We'll have to find these answers for ourselves. It's time to hit the keyboards like we hit the streets."

--AIDS activist Larry Kramer whose HIV Treatment Data Project begins a test-run on the Internet next month, to the Village Voice, Aug. 25.

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"After Billy['s Hollywood Screen Kiss], I'm sort of gayed out. The film is labeled a gay film, and I'm labeled a gay filmmaker. But the film is trying to make it a non-issue. It's so exhausting being asked about being gay all the time. This doesn't mean I'll never do another gay film. But it will be nice to do something that's not gay."

--Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss writer-director Tommy O'Haver to Atlanta's Southern Voice, Aug. 13.

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"The Qstudy-L [Internet mailing list is] so mean-spirited, so ornery, so contentious, and yet so, so righteous. The minute someone slipped and blurted out a white-middle-class-gay-male concept like 'the gay community,' someone else would feign indignation, taking the offender to task on the grounds that such a grossly insensitive phrase excludes blacks, women, and other persons of color from what one writer called the 'semiotic salad.' List subscribers exploited any occasion that arose -- the use of an innocuous, yet in their view, bafflingly complex, word like -- don't tell them I even said this -- 'gay' or -- worse yet -- 'heterosexual' -- to show how ideologically pure, how racially and sexually 'correct' they were. It was all very Maoist-youth- league kind of stuff. It was immediately clear to me that this was just another example of the privileged classes making love to themselves, wallowing in their own virtuousness, demonstrating to the world how deeply they commiserated with the poor downtrodden masses, whom they basically despised (as became immediately apparent whenever anyone complained about the elitism and insularity of postmodern theorists, accusations they countered by raising the specter of populist anti-intellectualism)."

--Author Daniel Harris in an interview with Echo Magazine, Aug. 16.

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"The bi-level, the regulation lesbian haircut, is the ultimate non-do. It's short and spiky on top, cut straight across the top of the ear and left longer in the back. Considering the bi- level's dominance, I used to think that maybe the bad hair gene was on the same string as the gay gene. There is, however, considerable peer pressure to conform in this area. ... This haircut was not designed to be flattering. It was designed to make the following statement: 'We don't conform to whole white- male-dominated ideal of beauty.' This is an offshoot of the 'We are a bitter people' philosophy that many lesbians have. These are the women who think people like me are too happy to be gay. Intentionally bad hair also makes lesbians easily identifiable. It's a visibility thing, like those rainbow stickers on our cars. ... It seems as though all lesbians have the same haircut because the only lesbians people can readily identify are the ones with the bad haircut. ... Meanwhile, those of us who don't do the 'do are accused of trying to 'pass' as straight. I am not a stealth lesbian traveling under a cloak of femininity, I'm just one who thinks that being attracted to other women doesn't mean I have to quit looking like one. Not only do I prefer dressing up to dressing down, not care for camping and lack softball skills, I dare to be satisfied with my lot in life."

--Chryss Cada writing in the Washington Post, Aug. 9.

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"At different points, Diana's life story was a fairy tale, a horror story, a soap opera, a grand opera, a drama, a romance and a tragedy. But it was also, ultimately, a retelling of the greatest gay fable of them all -- The Wizard of Oz. Just like Dorothy Gale, Diana, Princess of Wales was an innocent little girl who found herself caught up in a cyclone that took her some place she never felt she really belonged, and so she had to start on a life-changing journey down the long and winding yellow brick road. Hell, she even managed to pull back the magic curtain that exposed the 'wonderful' Wizards of Windsor for what they really are -- i.e. nothing special. And most important of all, somewhere along the way, Diana discovered that she already had the three most important things in the world: a heart, a brain and courage. Unlike Dorothy, just as Diana looked like she was ready to click her heels together three times and say 'there's no place like home', she was taken away from us. But even though Diana's story doesn't have a happy ending, no Gay Icon of the past ever got quite as close as she did to finally getting over that rainbow."

--Richard Smith in London's Gay Times, August issue.

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"I believe that the steady erosion of oft-denigrated 'family values' has resulted in a disaster for our children and society. Never before have we had so many children in broken or never- made homes; children into drugs, violence and sex; children killing themselves and others; children raised by institutions instead of by parents; children killing their own infants; children being molested by Mom's many boyfriends; children not doing well academically and children lost emotionally. You have to be in serious denial not to see the connection between these maladies and the undermining of what structure and behavior best supports the raising of children. On my program, for example, I've seen a terrible trend of people getting married, having children and then deciding they are gay and abandoning their obligations for their sex life."

--Syndicated columnist Dr. Laura wigs out, Aug. 12.

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"Kenya has no room or time for homosexuals and lesbians. Homosexuality is against African norms and traditions, and even in religion it is considered a great sin."

--Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi to the Daily Nation newspaper, according to the Sapa-Panos news agency, Aug. 14.

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"Taking into account other modes of transmission of HIV/AIDS, homosexuality is negligible, and should not take up our resources and time. We have other, far more pressing areas which affect the majority of our people and therefore need urgent attention."

--Kenyan Ministry of Health spokesman Maina Kahindo to the Sapa- Panos news agency, Aug. 14.