"It was probably easier for me to come out as a member of Congress because it's a federal offense to hit me. I had a little extra protection."

--Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to the Michigan gay newspaper Between The Lines, Oct. 2.

"Finding a new lover renews Martina; that's why she rolls them over cyclically. If she'd consider how she disengages from last year's model, she would hurt people less, including herself. No matter how she left me, no matter how she tried to publicly humiliate me, she did love me and I loved her. I can't change that, nor would I wish to. As I've said before, you can't judge the quality of love by its results."

--Rubyfruit Jungle author Rita Mae Brown in her new book Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser.

"When the character Ellen came out, millions of American were forced to look at sexual orientation in a more open light."

--U.S. Vice President Al Gore in a speech to the Hollywood Radio and Television Society, Oct. 16.

"I'm always surprised to hear politicians promoting the agenda of Hollywood elites. If there's anybody whose agenda needs promoting, it is the middle-class American family."

--Former Vice President Dan Quayle in a statement issued Oct. 17 in response to Gore. Quayle took much flak in 1992 after he criticized TV character Murphy Brown for choosing to be a single mother.

"I think it is wonderful, him pandering to that constituency. Here is the person holding the second highest office in the world talking about a lifestyle such as that in such glowing terms."

--More from Quayle, this time to New Hampshire's Union Leader, Oct. 24.

"The vice president spoke very forthrightly [in regard to Ellen]. The president obviously agrees with him."

--White House press secretary Mike McCurry, Oct. 20.

"Ellen DeGeneres is threatening to quit because of a parental advisory. She's heated because ABC warned viewers because there was going to be a same-sex kiss on the Oct. 8 Ellen. She should be upset at the obvious double standard placed on same-sex kisses, but she also should take a chill pill. Yes, heteros hop in and out of bed on sitcoms airing even earlier in the night, but the bottom line is that Ellen is conquering some incredible ground each week. Just treating her lesbianism so casually on each show is great progress. We should protest the warning, but Ellen should get on with the show. When it re-runs in syndication, no one is going to care (just like with Roseanne's kiss of Mariel Hemingway). What will matter is that more shows continue to be made. The episode was the 2nd highest rated show for that evening, on all networks. ... Viewers are obviously watching despite the warning--and parents who are bigots already weren't going to watch, no matter if ABC said 'No lesbians tonight--please watch.' Write a protest letter to Jamie Tarses, Entertainment President, ABC Television Network, 2040 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, CA 90067."

--Tracy Baim, editor and publisher of Chicago's Outlines, in the Oct. 15 issue.

"Ellen's homosexuality has become the show. Situation comedies have situations--a bigot lives with his left-wing son-in-law; coed buddies get by in the big city--but the premise should allow for a range of humor. Ellen, though, is now as one-dimensional as Bewitched, where every story line, every moment, every gag relies on the same device."

--Time magazine's James Collins, Oct. 27.

"Ellen ... keeps getting funnier, even as its star conducts the most relentless gay-empowerment campaign prime time has ever seen. So far, the triumph of the show's new season is that while the majority of its punchlines are about homosexuality, the subject hasn't become predictable or dull -- pretty amazing, given just how many jokes it takes to fill up a sitcom each week."

--Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker, Oct. 24.

"I know the extent to which the communities affected by AIDS are angry and disappointed and frustrated and grieving. But I do think it is difficult to say that this administration is doing nothing about AIDS. That's hyperbole. You come to that when after nearly 15 years--and God knows how many people dead--you still have this plague here. It makes you feel like 'Why the hell are we still living with this thing?' You then take out the frustration on there not being enough this and not enough that. There are not enough of a lot of things. But I can't say the president and the administration don't care about AIDS. Could we do more? Absolutely. But the president would say that too."

--Lesbian activist Virginia Apuzzo, President Clinton's new White House assistant for management and administration, to the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 19.

"There's a history [in the gay press] of editors' and advertisers' opinions filtering into every page of the paper. In the beginning, when people were fighting to be equal and accepted, advocacy meant that anything gay should be praised and that anything perceived as an attack should be condemned, in editorials, news and even features. I think [Washington, D.C.'s] The Blade went too far in the other direction [toward pure 'objectivity']. It's important for a gay newspaper that has a position of trust in the community to provide some leadership. It's a silly policy."

--Leroy Aarons, founder of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, to The New York Times, Oct. 22. The Blade, probably the most professional gay newspaper in the world, launched a New York edition Oct. 24.

"I seem to have burned out on S/M now, but I was very, very involved with it--mainly as a bottom--for years. Even now, when I jerk off I often think of those experiences. They were very powerful ways of discovering myself."

--Famed gay author Edmund White to POZ magazine, November issue.

"I like to go to a bathhouse here in Paris that is for bears and for guys who like bears. They're called nounours, which means teddy bear. On the door, there's a big picture of guys in leather with enormous bellies hanging over their belts, saying, 'Welcome.' It's funny because France is a country that's full of body fascism otherwise -- not the American buffed look, but the super-thin look. It's also a country where, if you go to the normal baths, you're turned away if you're over 40."

--Famed gay author Edmund White to POZ magazine, November issue.

"Feeling a man's dick inside me, condomless -- that's when the sex becomes spiritual in its intensity. Communion, in the truest sense. Integral to that closeness is the knowledge that he intends to leave a piece of himself inside me; his cum, like the sex itself, has a psychological value far beyond anything physical. Recognizing that power is one of the ways I defy this virus. I believe in exchanging bodily fluids, not wedding rings."

--Former porn star turned writer Scott O'Hara, in the November issue of POZ magazine.

--Jeff Epperly, editor of Boston's Bay Windows, in an editorial in the Oct. 2 issue.

"I'm single now and have seen that lots of younger guys don't really believe in AIDS. They're very willing to have unsafe sex and that just freaks me out. It makes me furious. I want to slap them around and say, 'Smarten up, you fuckers. It's not about you, it's about everyone.' There's no respect for wisdom or intelligence in our culture anymore. Only for big cocks and pumped up bodies -- I'm talking mainstream urban culture. I'm nervous about the future."

--Scott Thompson (of Kids In The Hall fame) to Vancouver's Xtra West, Oct. 16.

"Inside gay culture I see myself as the gnat, an irritating bug. I want to make people look at things differently, I like to piss people off, to make people think. I'm known as a loud mouth who's not helping the cause. I think I am helping. But I am not interested in selling lies to the public to make myself loved."

--Scott Thompson (of Kids In The Hall fame) to Vancouver's Xtra West, Oct. 16.

--Syndicated sex-advice columnist Dan Savage in the Chicago Reader, Oct. 17.

"I don't see why anybody of the same sex or the opposite sex in this day and age needs to get married. I was old-fashioned in that I always thought that I had to get married. But that's passe now, so I don't have to do that anymore."

--Elizabeth Taylor to POZ magazine, November issue.

"You know, it's seeming more and more like I'm a voice of reason against all the discrimination and disinformation out there about what homosexuals are. ... I hope to calm people down. They need to calm down about this. To just live and let live."

--Betty DeGeneres, Ellen's mom, to the Detroit News, Oct. 24. She is this year's spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign's National Coming Out Project.

"For all its artistic flaws, In and Out clearly is delivering a message that many moviegoers are ready, even eager, to hear. Equally revealing was Vice President Gore's recent tip of the hat to television's Ellen. Since Gore does not choose a breakfast cereal without assembling a roomful of pollsters to help him decide how Special K will play in 2000, it is safe to assume his endorsement of Ellen's sexual preference was supported by exhaustive focus-group research. Not only is being gay out of the closet, it's now becoming politically safe."

--From an Oct. 24 USA Today analysis of the gay movement.

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