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"I got followed into the restroom and then this cop -- I didn't know it was a cop, obviously -- he started playing this game, which I think is called, 'I'll show you mine, you show me yours, and then when you show me yours, I'm going to nick you.' ... Actually, what happened was once he got an eyeful, he walked past me, straight past me and out, and I thought, that's kind of odd. I thought, maybe he's just not impressed. And then I went to walk back to my car, and as I got back to the car, I was arrested on the street. ... If someone's waving their genitalia at you, you don't automatically assume that they're an officer of the law. ... I've never been able to turn down a free meal."

--Gay singer George Michael in a live interview on MTV Nov. 4. Michael was arrested by undercover police at a cruisy Beverly Hills toilet last April 6. His new single and video, "Outside," is all about public sex and police repression of its practitioners.

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"I'm not saying that I have an open relationship with my boyfriend but he knows who I am. He knows that I'm generally oversexed, so he's been very, very good. ... We love each other and he understands that it was a stupid mistake and he's forgiven me, I hope."

--Gay singer George Michael in a live interview on MTV Nov. 4. Michael was arrested by undercover police at a cruisy Beverly Hills toilet last April 6. His new single and video, "Outside," is all about public sex and police repression of its practitioners.

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"I really thought to my fans I outed myself with the last album. ... [M]y ex-partner's death was reported very widely, so when I dedicated the album to him and wrote the album for him, I felt like I was coming out to my fans, and I didn't really care about people who weren't interested in my music. So, I certainly wasn't gonna go to [the journalists in London's] Fleet Street and say, 'Yes, I'm gay.' The main point is that I outed myself in my life about eight or nine years ago and I've been out with everyone in my life -- even casual acquaintances, my family, friends -- anyone who's met me within that time has known that I'm gay, just not the press. So, really, this doesn't feel like an outing, this is just public outing. But any gay person who comes out realizes that the tough bit is your friends and family and that was a great thing -- it was a great, liberating thing and I did it a long time ago. I don't know if I would have come out to the press. They would have got me, some way or other. This is how it ended up because I wouldn't give it to them."

--Gay singer George Michael in a live interview on MTV Nov. 4. Michael was arrested by undercover police at a cruisy Beverly Hills toilet last April 6. His new single and video, "Outside," is all about public sex and police repression of its practitioners.

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"Many Americans would probably be shocked to discover how many men have sex with other men in public or semi-public places and how often they have it. Across urban, suburban and rural areas of the United States, some public toilets, parks, wilderness areas, truck stops, rest stops, adult bookstores and other places serve as venues for masturbation, oral and sometimes anal sex."

--New York Post columnist David Morrison, Nov. 6.

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"Before you expose yourself or touch the other party say, 'You know, I really love to kiss. Let me just kiss you first before we do anything else.' If it is a cop, he will run like the hills before he lets a gay man's tongue slither down his throat."

--Chicago lawyer Larry Rolla on how to avoid being entrapped by cops while cruising for sex in "public" places, to www.cruisingforsex.com, Nov. 6.

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"My favorite trial tactic is to bring to court a cardboard cut- out of a bathroom wall complete with gloryhole. I have the police officer get down on his knees in open court and peer through the hole to demonstrate how he observed the defendants. I then inquire whether the officer's wife is aware of how he spends his days."

--Chicago attorney Larry Rolla who defends cruisers entrapped for engaging in "public" sex, to www.cruisingforsex.com, Nov. 6.

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"We've turned the other cheek and held our heads high, but now it's offensive and we are going to sue over it. It gets to a point where you have got to protect your children. Our kids have got to go to school, their parents love each other, and it's as simple as that. Anyone who wants to say otherwise can go to court."

--Nicole Kidman on the rumors that her husband, Tom Cruise, is gay and their marriage is a sham, to Ladies Home Journal, November issue. The couple's two children are adopted.

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"It is the last recourse against those that published vicious lies about me and my family. I have to protect them."

--Actor Tom Cruise Oct. 29 outside a London courtroom where he won a reported $584,000 settlement against the Express Newspapers which had said he is gay, impotent and sterile.

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"Despite the way things turned out [AIDS], I'm still proud of those days [when I got my start singing at the gay bathhouses in New York City]. I feel like I was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement, and I hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of 'Bathhouse Betty' with pride."

--Singer/actress Bette Midler to the Houston Voice, Oct. 23.

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"Remember Arthur Bell? He wrote for The Village Voice, and he was very influential in that crowd in the '70s. He wrote that I was the first female drag queen. He said I was a woman imitating a gay man imitating a woman. I was highly insulted until I realized he was right."

--Bette Midler to The Advocate, Nov. 10.

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"I think gay people have been very proud of me, unless I'm missing something. They're proud I was there at the beginning of the gay rights movement. You know, when I talked about doing a gay liberation benefit, which is what it was called in those days -- on national television, on the Johnny Carson show! -- it gave them a real jolt. I didn't realize it at the time because I was in the middle of it."

--Bette Midler to The Advocate, Nov. 10. Midler performed at the first gay-lib rally, in New York's Washington Square Park in 1971.

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"The ugly formulation 'womyn' (a punitive extraction of 'man' from the noun 'woman' by etymology-challenged ideologues) has thankfully not survived except among drearily isolated, lesbo holdouts of ultra-PC paleofeminism."

--Writer Camille Paglia in her Oct. 28 Salon magazine column.

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"'Queer' got bandied about for a while by nerdy Foucault followers in academe and by screeching pseudo-skinheads in ACT UP, but that old slang term has too many twisted implications of insanity and eccentricity to do gays much good."

--Writer Camille Paglia in her Oct. 28 Salon magazine column.

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"The whole story is tragically infantile. She comes across as a lovesick teenager, flappin' her panties at him from the first day they met. And him, a grown-up man, making up stupid rules about not going all the way. I thought to myself, this is not how grown-ups behave."

--Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin on the Monicagate scandal, to Michigan's Between The Lines, Oct. 15.

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"I'm proud of having been open about my sexuality, but I hate the fact that the label 'gay writer' can imply I write only for gay people. My audience is much broader. Remember, 'Tales of the City' started in a mainstream newspaper. I think my message about gay sensibility plays better because it is aimed at everyone. The message seduces the reader before they realize it may call upon them to change their attitudes."

--Author Armistead Maupin to Michigan's Between The Lines, Oct. 15.

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"Where we have had a fair day in court, most notably in the historic Hawaii trial of 1996, it is clear that the government does not have a good reason for denying the freedom to marry to same-sex couples. So fearful are our opponents of having to show -- and being unable to show -- a reason, that they have proven themselves willing to tear holes in the constititution in order to avoid having to defend their discrimination. But the record is clear: when forced to show a reason, they do not have one that can stand up in the cool, clear, dispassionate light of a court of law."

--E-mail from Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund lawyer Evan Wolfson Nov. 3 after Hawaii voters amended the state constitution to allow the legislature to define 'marriage' as between one man and one woman.

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"It's a black mark on our Bill of Rights, and I think the Legislature that proposed this will not be remembered well, as George Wallace was not remembered well standing in the schoolhouse door. And I think the general public will ultimately come to realize this is a mistake, and it will be corrected."

--Dan Foley, attorney for the three gay couples who sued Hawaii for the right to get married, speaking Nov. 3 after Hawaii voters amended the state constitution to allow the legislature to define 'marriage' as between one man and one woman.

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"They're not family-oriented. What do they have to produce? They're noncontributors to society. They might contribute as far as business goes, but not family. It's about sexual gratification."

--Alaskan William Brown, 78, explaining to the Anchorage Daily News why he cast his vote to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. The measure passed.

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"It's a false profession ... a complete deception. It's not as if there's any subject matter to what they're talking about. It is a series of obfuscating gestures ... a kind of ballet of non sequiturs."

--Author Daniel Harris (The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture) on the academic field of queer studies, to Salon magazine, Nov. 9.

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"What's 'gay enough?' Will's certainly gay enough for my parents at the moment, but he's probably not gay enough for a lot of the gay community."

--Eric McCormack, Will on NBC-TV's Will & Grace, to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 9.