"My goal is to be the first out lesbian on Bay Watch. I'll do anything to get on Bay Watch. I'll even get a boob job. But I want to be careful about the risk factor, so I've found a lesbian clinic that uses tofu implants."

Dyke comic Marga Gomez to Kansas City's Pitchweekly, Oct. 23.

"A study done in the Des Moines public schools showed that the average high school student hears anti-gay comments like 'dyke' and 'faggot' a stunning 26 times a day, and that teachers who witness such incidents do nothing a shocking 97 percent of the time. The results of this kind of behavior for gay and lesbian students is terrifying."

--Martina Navratilova addressing the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network Oct. 25 in New York City.

"In too many schools, students find little or no information about lesbian or gay people in their libraries or in the curriculum. It's time that schools told the truth about some of the greatest leaders of our nation -- people like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin -- so that young people will realize that those of us who are lesbian or gay have always been part of America, and always will be."

--Martina Navratilova addressing the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network Oct. 25 in New York City.

"Hi, I'm Ellen DeGeneres. I can't tell you the plot of this week's show, but it's titled 'Ellen Kisses a Girl and Upsets the Network.'"

--A plug for Ellen that aired during Monday Night Football Oct. 27.

"Country music fans might give me goosebumps, but what really frightens me is the Martha Stewart collection from K-Mart. I've had nightmares where Martha tries to get me to cross over and shop in the K-Mart Zone. 'Come into the blue light,' she beckons. 'It's a good thing!'"

--Columnist Michael Beaumier in the gay Windy City Times, Oct. 23.

"I didn't use a stand-in. But it's a trick."

--Actor Mark Wahlberg (Marky Mark) on the scene in the film Boogie Nights where he displays his large penis, to the Associated Press, Oct. 30.

"Vulgar commercialism. All you have to do is look around you, it's all about things, lots of things. That's where I think the pinpointed the spiritual anemia. ... I do think this country is grotesquely materialistic. I'm not opposed to good things -- I'm sitting here in jeans and a nice shirt. But there's a point at which it's grotesque when people just keep getting more and more things. To what purpose?"

--Lesbian author Rita Mae Brown to North Carolina's The Front Page, Oct. 24.

"We listen to our HIV positive friends talk about how their lives gradually came together after their diagnosis. We watch as those on disability spend hours a day working out and pumping up until they look healthier than the uninfected ever did. Our community offers them people to clean their homes, listen to their problems, deal with their anger and pain, do their shopping, get their medication, help them fill out their forms, distract them when they're depressed, network with other people facing the same challenges, and to get on with their day to day lives. We see them meeting other positive men, negotiating consensual unsafe sex and leading a carefree lifestyle most of us haven't tasted since the early eighties."

--Columnist Brad Fraser in the Canadian national magazine Fab, winter 1997 issue.

"Those who are HIV positive are given all the energy and resources our community has at its disposal. Those who are not HIV positive are given condoms and pamphlets."

--Columnist Brad Fraser in the Canadian national magazine Fab, winter 1997 issue.

"According to the General Accounting Office, the cost of discharging gay service members from 1980-1995 was $606,346,192, not adjusted for inflation. If we had changed the rules in 1980, we could have built new barracks, bought more jets, upgraded our communications equipment and outfitted our Marines with top- quality packs, helmets, sleeping bags and boots."

--From a Nov. 10 commentary in the Navy Times by Buster Pittman, a "pseudonym for a captain in the ground community with 10 years in the Marine Corps."

"Because of insufficient federal funds, activists were forced to turn the disease [AIDS] into a commodity and sell it to the public like any snack food, compensating for the lack of government support with private support, with charitable contributions, which they extorted from the public by arousing pity for the victims, by packaging the epidemic in sentimental cliches that reduced potential donors to a state of maximum susceptibility."

--Daniel Harris, author of The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, in an interview taped by Visual AIDS for World Without Art Day, Dec. 1.

"My first objection to the Quilt is simply this: placing the epidemic within the context of this mythically pure colonial history is part of the way we sanitize the victims of AIDS, enshrining them within this cluttered museum of tacky folklore so resonant with wholesome patriotic feelings and nostalgia for a simpler agrarian America. This whole process of purification implies that AIDS victims are indeed truly guilty of something, namely, for having sex, and need to be sanitized, need to be cleansed in a warm bath of colonialist kitsch. Few of your readers, I hope, are going to buy this. In short, there is a very thin line between the Quilt and guilt."

--Daniel Harris, author of The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, in an interview taped by Visual AIDS for World Without Art Day, Dec.1.

"I look at 'Ellen' and I see the sitcoms of the mid to late '70s that were just 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' in blackface. That's supposed to be progressive television? I'm not sure what the point of any of this is, except to say, 'We're just like everyone else,' when in fact we're _not_. We're _different_ ... but on 'Ellen,' it's Dick Van Dyke in lesbian-face, and I'm not sure how much longer I can stomach it."

--Sean Martin, author of the "Doc and Raider" gay comics, in an e-mail interview with this column.

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"The Ellen DeGeneres coming-out campaign reminded me of the 'Classic Coke' campaign. That is, it left me wondering: was there some major Madison Avenue mindfuck going on? Some elaborate hoax to win HetAmerica's hearts through reverse psychology? That is, saturate 'em with Ellenmania, until phobic America becomes so desensitized that they finally say, 'Oh, what's the big deal?' .. Now, the soap opera continues into its next season. ... Frankly, everytime Ellen dukes it out in public against the censors, I feel this is a strategy mapped out in the ABC backrooms -- a micro-managed publicity stunt. So, good for Ellen. Good for all of us. The equation still stands: one out-and-out TV dyke has more effect on social progress than a score of gay-rights bills pending on Capitol Hill."

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

"I can almost hear Ellen's ABC promoters now: 'Why not try the controversy card? It always gets results and we won't have to pay an ad agency. Just put up a warning sign. It's simple!' ... Ellen's homey coming-out sequences and her sweet peckish kiss will soon be considered pure Americana -- a nostalgic segment of Cultural Lore in the good ol' USA."

--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.

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"When Ellen first 'came out' she made the statement that she did not want to be political. Less than one year later, she is a leading political warrior in our battle against prejudice. We have said for decades that the mere act of 'coming out' was one of the most important personal and political statements you can make. It does change your life."

--Lesbian comic and event producer Robin Tyler, in an e-mail interview with this column. Tyler became the first openly lesbian comedian on national TV when she appeared on Showtime's "The First Annual Funny Women's Show," hosted by Phyliss Diller, in 1979.

"For Ellen to stand up to the giants of [the TV] industry takes tremendous courage. Why have they not forced her out yet? Because they are aware of the 'gay' dollar's tremendous buying power. If we have won no other rights in this country, we, as a people, have won the right to consume. Corporations are treating us with more respect than Washington. For them, it's simple. Dollars equals dignity."

--Lesbian comic and event producer Robin Tyler, in an e-mail interview with this column. Tyler became the first openly lesbian comedian on national TV when she appeared on Showtime's "The First Annual Funny Women's Show," hosted by Phyliss Diller, in 1979.

"Gay women ... are so loyal because Xena is the first strong, kick-ass woman on TV."

--Actress Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) to Los Angeles' Lesbian News, November issue.

"I freakin' can't understand people spending so much time trying to out me."

--Actress Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) to Los Angeles' Lesbian News, November issue.

"Is anybody besides me really sick of activist/author/playwright/relentless self-promoter Larry Kramer? Kramer accomplished -- nay, he _assisted with_ -- one thing a long time ago, and he has milked it mightily ever since in his quest to be portrayed as the last angry faggot. Kramer and a few others met long ago and planted the seeds for New York founding of the amorphous confederation of groups known as ACT UP. Kramer didn't do this on his own, and there are a host of other persons vastly more creditable with the remarkable advances and P.R. victories that can be laid at ACT UP's door."

--Jeff Epperly, editor of the Boston gay newspaper Bay Windows, in an October editorial.

"Gay studies [is] a marginal field already so full of third-tier academics that its cliquish writings rarely rise above the level of affectedly cute, self-consciously obtuse and virtually unintelligible."

--Jeff Epperly, editor of the Boston gay newspaper Bay Windows, in an October editorial.

"The appearance of the New York Blade News [the Washington Blade's new NYC weekly] will mean bad things to some people who thought they had the Manhattan gay media market under control. It will mean that readers will have a choice between publications that specialize in PC-lesbigaytrans drivel and a real newspaper. And if history can be our guide, miscreants like [writer Larry] Kramer will have a harder time gaining unfettered platforms for their, ahem, views."

--Jeff Epperly, editor of the Boston gay newspaper Bay Windows, in an October editorial.

"As you have made an application to the Copenhagen city hall in order to get your partnership lawfully registered, your wish will now be fulfilled. With this registration you will -- with few exceptions -- obtain the same social security as married people in Danish society. Before performing the registration, the municipality wishes to remind you of the meaning and importance of the promise you are giving each other. Registered partnership implies in general a pledge to live together in mutual affection, helpfulness and tolerance. In recognition of this, the municipality expresses the wish that throughout your partnership, with all its changes, you will preserve the good intentions, to live together in you (Name), do you take (Name) to be your lawful partner? Likewise, I ask you (Name), do you take (Name) to be your lawful registered partner? After you now solemnly declared your desire to enter into registered partnership with each other, I hereby ask you to sign."

--The full text of Denmark's civil gay marriage ceremony.

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