Gay Today: Quote

Quotes & Quips

Compiled By Jack Nichols

Childhood Sex with a Church Mouse

When her father, Donald, a church choir director and closeted gay man, died of AIDS in 1983, Heche was terrified. "I thought," she told (Barbara) Walters, "I was going to die."

Anne Heche--"Anne Heche's Hellish Life With Father"--New York Daily News, September 2

Is the GLBT Political Movement Next?

From as early as the 1950s and right up until the 1980s the U.S. government directed the machinery of state against the African American political movement and, in so doing, effectively put an end to the civil rights movement inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King. COINTELPRO was in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution and a wide range of U.S. laws, as well as, in clear breach of internationally accepted standards for human rights and fundamental freedoms. That our government would turn its full resources against its own law abiding citizens is unforgivable and ranks us among those rogue nations of the world who have chosen to kill hope and sow misery in its place.

U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney-presenting verifying documents to Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, September 2

Stealing Election 2000 in Florida

A key player in the 2000 election in Florida, was the Choicepoint company. Using lists of misdemeanor offenders in Texas, Choicepoint "padded" the Florida list of ineligible voters to include more ineligible voters than there actually were in Florida. This resulted in thousands of blacks not being allowed to vote in the Presidential election. This, joined with the high number of thrown-out ballots and a Supreme Court decision that stopped the ballot counting, resulted in a Bush victory in Florida.

U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney- "Florida Republicans Not Interested in Election Reform: Don't Be Fooled by Kathy Harris Testimony" -April 26

Housemates in the Big Apple

Koeppel says the mayor accepts his new roomies for who they are. "Even though he's a devout Catholic, he doesn't see us as a gay Jew and a gay Chinese guy," Koeppel says. "He's never said to me: 'Couldn't you find a nice Jewish man?' Something my own relatives might have said."

Howard Koeppel- one of Mayor Giuliani's two openly gay rooomates- "At Giuliani Pad, Towels Say 'His,' 'His' and 'His'"--Los Angeles Times, September 2

Life Again with Mommy Dearest

The world is frightened by the new relationships that cloning will make possible in this world. One man has already saved his mother's cells for "possible" human cloning. The idea of raising your mother as a daughter is mind boggling. Would you be a better parent to your parent than your parent was to you? After all, who do we know better than our own Mother?

Randolfe Wicker-World's First Pro-Human Cloning Activist, September 2

The Basic You

It's all about what happens when you lose all the things you thought you wanted…Who are you without the things you think define you?

Alec Mapa-- who presents his one-man autobiographical show I Remember Mapa September 7-9-- "Gay theater festival casts a paradoxical spell" by Leslie Brokaw --Boston Globe, September 2

Trained by the Patriarchy

Even before they enter elementary school, boys learn male is better with taunts from other boys such as:

You look like a girl.

You act like a girl.

You sound like a girl.

You play girls' games.

You throw a ball like a girl.

You carry your books like a girl.

You have a name that sounds like a girls name.

You walk like a girl.

You run like a girl.

Robert N. Minor, Ph.D.-Chapter Four--"Boys are Best and Some Are Even Better"- Scared Straight: Why It's so Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to be Human Order book from the Fairness Project: www.fairnessproject.org

City of the Angels

The fifth annual report on domestic violence in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community released by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) July 31, showed that Los Angeles accounted for more than half the cases nationwide last year. Domestic violence involving LGBT people increased 30% with 4,048 total cases over 3,120 in 1999. A startling 2,146 of those, accounting for 85% of the national growth in cases reported, were in Los Angeles.

John Caldwell-" Violence Verified"-LA Frontiers-August 17

What's the Gay Couple Next Door Doing?

In the 16 years since they bought a house there, Caparco and Ferri have become just one more stitch -- no more or less extraordinary than the next -- in the fabric of suburbia…Caparco, 54, a store manager, and Ferri, 47, the owner of a bowling alley, invite many neighbors to backyard cookouts and Christmas parties. They helped the guy next door fertilize his lawn. They borrow tools from the family across the street. And they once organized the rescue of a neighbor when his boat ran up a sandbar on Narragansett Bay, whose waters glimmer just down the block.

Ariel Sabar and Scott MacKay-" Picket fences and gay neighbors"- Providence Journal, September 2

Even the Queen of the Fairies?

For 400 years, lesbians have been thought to be invisible in the works of William Shakespeare. But now a distinguished American academic has identified a bevy of Sapphic heroines in his plays. Hermione, Portia and Beatrice were apparently gay. And Cleopatra's household was a hotbed of same-sex affection. Not only the Egyptian Queen but the queen of the fairies, Titania, had lesbian tendencies too, according to the remarkable new insights of Dr Theodora Jankowski, a former professor of English literature at the University of Washington.

Ben Summerskill --"Shakespeare's hidden lesbians"-The Observer, September 2-Guardian.co.uk