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"[ABC is saying to me,] 'OK, you're gay, and we're tolerating this, but don't show us how you really would be, don't kiss a girl on the lips.'"

--Ellen DeGeneres to TV Guide, Oct. 11.

"Now I'm glad we're back [on the air this year]. But I didn't want to do it. I was hoping I could just move on, because I didn't want to have happen what sort of has happened. Ellen Morgan and I are in very different places in our lives: She has just discovered she's gay, but I've known this for a long time, and believe me, I can go a whole day without having a single gay reference. I can't just be the gay girl all the time."

--Ellen DeGeneres to TV Guide, Oct. 11

"No one knows what we have together, no one. ... I always used to be so envious of married people. Now this is it for me, for both of us, forever. ... Anne's taken a lot of flack for what she's done, but in 25 or 30 years, when we're still together and out of this business, we can look back and laugh. Maybe it's a horrible thing to say, but Anne and I both had the same reaction when Princess Di died, that she had just found the man of her dreams and then he died, and how could you go on living after that without that person? If Anne goes, I want to go, that's how strongly I feel."

--Ellen DeGeneres on her lover, Anne Heche, to TV Guide, Oct. 11.

"I hope I live to see the day when you can have one child who's gay and another who's not, and it's all just part of who they are."

--Betty DeGeneres, Ellen's mom, to the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, Oct. 3.

"To expect a person who is homosexual not to act on that sexuality is absurd to some people."

--Marc Mutty, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine, to the Portland Press Herald, Oct. 3.

"I get very irritated with all the discussions about letting down one's guard toward safe sex. I mean, when people talk about unprotected sex as the ultimate sign of love, I think that's just pure folly. I'm not at all for any of that. But I'm also not for fidelity. It seems to me that they are entirely unrelated issues. Either safe sex works, or it doesn't. If it doesn't work, then the only solution, logically, is to be totally chaste. If it does work, it doesn't make much difference whether you're having safe sex with one person or 10 people. If the rate of infection is creeping up again, it's probably because there's a younger group that feels that somehow they're not going to be touched by this or they don't care."

--Author Edmund White to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 4.

"I think that promiscuity has gotten a very bad name and some of the most intense and poetic and intimate experiences of my life were one-night stands. People who have never lived that life like to imagine that it is very heartless, cold, mechanical and so on -- which it can be. But Jean Genet, who had a lot of casual sex in his life -- I mean, as much as I have -- once said, 'I have never experienced my sexuality in a pure state.' By which he meant he'd always been a little bit in love with everybody he'd been to bed with. And I can say as much. [Y]ou have a kind of fantasy that you could imagine that if things clicked with this person, that you could live with him forever. Or you're fascinated by the way he looks, by the way he moves, by his vulnerability, by his homeliness. ... I mean, there's something touching and human about this other person that you have between your hands, suddenly, and who is so vulnerable and exposed – as you are."

--Author Edmund White to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 4.

"[I]n the future, if young people grow up in a much more tolerant society, maybe it would be a mistake for them to embrace a gay or straight identity. I think it would be more amusing and mysterious and interesting and coquettish and seductive to leave everything kind of vague."

--Author Edmund White to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 4.

"While exploring the challenges and rewards of intimacy [on her new album The Velvet Rope, singer Janet] Jackson drops a few hints that nasty boys aren't her only interest. One interlude finds her flirting with a girlfriend, and on a delicate version of the Rod Stewart chestnut 'Tonight's the Night' she leaves the original lyrics intact, suggesting that the object of her affection may be female."

--From an Oct. 5 review in the Los Angeles Times.

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"The physical appearance of gay men is determined by considerations of sexual attraction. A new breed of gay men is being shaped by its aversion to 'femmishness.' The trend is toward a body with tight muscles formed by machines that will not disturb hairstyle. The walk is becoming a strut in equal parts Madonna and Clint Eastwood. Hands increasingly cling to the hips in horror that idle hands may relax into a limp wrist, that hips may swish. The laughter, consciously brusque, often breaks into a shriek in the late hours of nonsexual contact. If that direction is pursued, there will emerge a figure of effeminate masculinity, a new, conforming 'stereotype' as identifiably gay as drag or leather -- created to avoid 'looking gay.'"

--Author John Rechy writing in the Advocate, Oct. 14.

"When I look ahead 30 years, my instincts tell me that gay literature as a category will have run itself into the ground. Internal squabbling will have riven it from within, while that brand of self-interest that masquerades as piety will have driven most serious writers to flee its strictures. Worst of all, the very adjective _gay_ will be perceived negatively -- not because of homophobia but because so many readers will be fed up with a term that has increasingly come to connote hackneyed sentimentality, propaganda, rage without issue."

--Author David Leavitt writing in the Advocate, Oct. 14.

"I've answered what it's like to kiss Kevin Kline in every way I know how while still tap dancing and trying not to ruin it for the audience. We tried it many times, worked on the scene for two days. It's a tricky scene. I've had very few kisses ever in the movie business that were actually really passionate, and this one certainly wasn't, but it had the look. So mostly what we're concerned about as actors, is; does it look real? Does it look appropriate? Length and timing in a movie, a director has to decide how long the audience is going to laugh, and when you get on with things. It's not like a sitcom, where you're waiting in front of a live audience. We shot it a lot, and it seemed, sometimes interminably long, the way we're kissing, but we both have been around the block enough to know that they're going to have to decide how it's playing. Every time I've seen the movie, or heard people who've seen the movie, it seems to just do it. It's a gasp and then this laugh that starts and goes on and on. So I think they did a real good job."

--Tom Selleck on In and Out to Boston's Bay Windows, Sept. 18.

"Equating monogamy with love is a terrible, terrible mistake. Confusing the two reveals a profound misunderstanding of love and freights sex with an unsustainable meaning and profundity. Love is not a sentiment nor emotion. Love is a _decision_ to respect another's needs and desires on a par with one's own, a commitment to treat another with honesty and compassion. Love values freedom and celebrates another's happiness. Jealousy and possessiveness do not, as imagined by romantics, signal love. Just the opposite -- they mean that love is _not_ present. The jealous suitor who wants to possess his love object as his exclusive sexual property denigrates the freedom that is the basis for real love."

--From an editorial in the October issue of the Boston-based gay publication The Guide.

"While romantics often interpret the loss of sexual fireworks to denote the death of a relationship (and thus move on in search of 'true' love -- i.e., hotter sex), those who understand love better accept such sexual evolution. With sex, as with other matters, they enjoy the comforts afforded by familiarity and shared history while not foregoing the stimulus of new people and experiences."

--From an editorial in the October issue of the Boston-based gay publication The Guide.

"Easy access to porn for kids is one of the _benefits_ of the Internet -- no more enforced ignorance, no more lonely nights wondering if anyone else is into sheep in jockstraps, etc."

--From Dawn Ivory's column in the October issue of the Boston-based gay publication The Guide.

"I am going to attend the Sex Panic! Summit in San Diego [which coincides with NGLTF's Creating Change conference]. A group of men (and a few women) seem angrier about the right not to be able to fuck in public toilets--and parks--than about the fact that in this country we do not have the right to work, to choose to marry, to serve in the military, to adopt, etc. I believe there is a difference between sexual liberation and sexual addiction.

.. We are not just a movement from the waist down. This is not a movement about crotch politics. This started as a movement about 'the right to love.' Of course there are these attacks on [so- called 'neo-con' writers] Mike [Signorile] and Gabe [Rotello] and Larry [Kramer]. Have you ever tried taking a needle away from a heroin addict! Addiction is a disease of denial. ... To say that 'liberation' means 'anything goes' and we get to do anything, anyone, anywhere we want, is not courageous nor daring, nor innovative. If you kill someone while driving drunk, it is murder. If you kill someone because of unsafe sex, it is also murder. We can pop Prozac, drink, do drugs and fuck. Or, we can become healthy, and allow ourselves feelings. Self-esteem is the essence of any revolutionary movement."

--Lesbian comic and event producer Robin Tyler, in an e-mail interview with this column.

"[The ongoing 'neo-con'/Sex Panic! debate] is a germane matter of a community coming out of its adolescence and wondering in which direction to grow. I think Signorile/Kramer/Rotello/Sex Panic! are each sides of the same coin. They all want us to be better people, but some of them want to force us to grow up, i.e. stop thinking with our dicks, while the others want to make us believe that everyone wants to be sex renegades rather than whitepicket- fencers. It's time to acknowledge that we are more than the sum of our organs, but also to acknowledge that our sexual dynamic -- often exciting, sometimes out of control -- still serves to teach this Puritanical society a needed lesson."

--Jay Blotcher, director of media relations for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, in an e-mail interview with this column.

"On the beach where I live [in central Florida] non-intellectuals fail to grasp arguments about libertinism in sex. Instead they complain about slim pickings, declaring that only the nearest big town offers reasonable respites from the awful drought. The Neo- Cons vs. Sex Panic! armchair feud, is, I fear, lost on them and appears to be a media creation fueled by a coterie of current celebrity authors armed with their mainstream columns and pushing romantic but unworkable ideas their new books celebrate. These include green lights for marriage and monogamy and red lights for sex freedom and promiscuity. Do they really think their books will affect this centuries-long rupture? Neo-puritans assume that monogamy is the norm. Let them read Adam Phillips' new book Monogamy, to be disabused of this fantasy. Their energies could then be better spent creating a more palatable condom or finding a cure for AIDS."

--Jack Nichols, author of The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists, and editor of the World Wide Web site Badpuppy's GayToday, in an e-mail interview with this column.

"Q: How can I build a Gloryhole?

"A: If you have access to a public restroom at a time when you will not be caught, bring a cordless drill with a hole-saw hidden under a bulky coat, or in your parcels, and take a newspaper with you. Place the newspaper open on the floor between the two stalls (end stalls are popular) to catch the dust, and flush. Drill only while the flushing sound is loudest (have a friend or two help by flushing multiple toilets) so the drilling noise is covered. This will work well for any wood and most plastic composite stalls. It will work on some steel stalls (painted), but will only make a tremendous noise if tried on stainless steel. You may want to try a small peep-hole first (for looking through only), to see what the local management does to cover it up. A peep-hole may be enough to stir up all the action you can handle under the stall. Leave the area neat! Do not leave dust and scrap on the floor, or the hole will be noticed that much quicker by the maintenance people, and probably closed."

--Just one of the many bits of fascinating information at http://www.cruisingforsex.com

"Please note the following error ... in yesterday's GLAADLines. .. Brian Bond of the Lesbian and Gay Victory Fund was erroneously identified as Brian Bland. We apologize for an confusion this may have caused."

--An Oct. 14 correction from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

"Who are now the most square people on earth? Who are the only people left who want to go into the army and get married? Homosexuals."

--Humorist Fran Lebowitz in the October Vanity Fair.

"Sending a message to AOL to inquire or complain is like trying to communicate with the President of North Korea."

--Letter to the editor of Time magazine, Oct. 13 issue.

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