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"Will is as gay as I am, and I'm pretty gay. Eventually, if we don't realize a relationship for him and flesh out the character, then it isn't fair and it isn't the truth."

--Max Mutchnick, co-creator and co-executive producer of NBC-TV's Will & Grace, to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 9. Mutchnick plans to cast a major star for Will's first same-sex kiss.

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"If Brad Pitt wants to do some TV, I'm sure that would work out fine. George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas would all be OK. I never kissed a guy before, but I'm sure it's much the same as with a girl. Just a bit rougher."

--Eric McCormack, Will of NBC-TV's Will & Grace, on Will's first same-sex kiss, which the producers say is coming.

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"I am excited for the opportunity to bring health-care reform back into focus in the Congress. I know there have been a number of proposals out there like the patient bill of rights, the patient protection act, but none of the proposals that are currently pending in Congress really tackle the issue of the very, very large number of uninsured people that we have in this country and in this state. I think it's high time that that issue become center stage and front burner again, and I want to play a role in my freshman term to sort of reinvigorate leadership around health care."

--Openly lesbian Congresswoman-elect Tammy Baldwin of Madison, Wis., to the Wisconsin State Journal, Nov. 9. Baldwin is the first open lesbian ever elected to Congress.

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"I want my kids to see their heroes--Schwarzenegger and Cruise-- march down Fifth Avenue in the Gay Pride parade."

--Talk-show pioneer Phil Donahue to POZ magazine, December issue.

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"Here we were in the '60s, marching and singing 'We Shall Overcome,' feeling liberal and proud, and this gay world was opening up to me. I began to question what it must mean to live a life in the closet. To live life as a lie. To have to endure the humiliation of the YMCA arrests and things of that nature. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church was saying, 'Love the sinner, hate the sin.' The Church was legitimizing homophobia while it is one of the world's largest institutional closets. So, I began to see that gayness is not a moral issue, and that we all had to do something about homophobia."

--Talk-show pioneer Phil Donahue to POZ magazine, December issue.

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"I feel that the only thing I've ever had to give up ... because of any kind of fame is bad sex. I can't go to a backroom somewhere. I mean, not that I would, but at least you have that option."

--Gay filmmaker John Waters to Vancouver's Xtra! West, Oct. 29.

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"He's the only real Clark Gable of porn."

--Gay filmmaker John Waters on Jeff Stryker, to Vancouver's Xtra! West, Oct. 29.

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"Having children was a dream most gay men and lesbians had to give up when we came out, like flying for the Blue Angels or becoming Ambassador to Luxembourg. There weren't sperm banks 30 years ago, or agencies that would place a baby with two women, or courts that would finalize an adoption by a gay couple. But as more things have become possible -- save flying for the Blue Angels or becoming Ambassador to Luxembourg -- more of us have started acquiring babies."

--Seattle journalist Dan Savage writing in the Nov. 15 New York Times Magazine.

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"That so many gay men are having children at this moment is perhaps the best evidence that we are coming out of our AIDS- crisis bunkers. And many of us have decided we want to fill our time with something more meaningful than sit-ups, circuit parties and designer drugs. For me and my boyfriend, bringing up a child is a commitment to having a future. And considering what the last 15 years were like, perhaps that future is the ultimate status item for gay men."

--Seattle journalist Dan Savage writing in the Nov. 15 New York Times Magazine.

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"I understood the backlash [against the first Sex Panic Summit] in two primary ways. First, we'd committed heresy. By daring at the public level to value sex, pleasure, and the benefits which emerge from our sexual cultures -- and to argue that the Monogamites have no corner on the market on ethics, values, or morality -- we broke ranks with the gay rights movement's primary strategy of assimilationist politics and showed it for what it really is: a bankrupt, Faustian bargain which opts for a narrow package of concessions rather than authentic human rights, privileges cultural conformity over cultural pluralism, and affirms the status quo over the status queer. ... By standing as examples of gay men who appear before the public unapologetically as neither members of monogamous gay couples nor de-sexed celibates sacrificing personal lives to the demands of community work, we achieved a bad-boy status among those who continue to grovel before a community self-image as the best little boys in the world."

--Activist Eric Rofes in a speech delivered Nov. 13 at The Second Annual Summit to Resist Attacks on Gay Men's Sexual Civil Liberties.

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"I am no longer with GLAAD and very glad not to be with GLAAD."

--Chastity Bono at a San Francisco book-tour appearance, as quoted in the Nov. 12 Bay Times.

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"I believe she's just mad in general, but I do believe she [Ellen DeGeneres] blew the opportunity of a lifetime. What my sentiment was and is, is that being the first show ever to have a gay or lesbian leading character on prime time network television, you want to put something out there that is broad and inclusive of everyone; and I would have much rather had the show be on this season and next season and have her deal with less gay-specific issues on an every-episode basis. That could have been spread out and still be silly and funny."

--Chastity Bono at a San Francisco book-tour appearance, as quoted in the Nov. 12 Bay Times.

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"It's impossible. He can only get an erection when someone sticks a finger up his anus."

--Poet Federico Garcia Lorca when informed that painter Salvador Dali had fallen in love with a woman, according to the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

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"It's actually much more exciting being in a sex scene with a man. It's something outside of my normal experience. It's another example of an extreme situation -- snogging a man."

--Film actor Ewan McGregor (currently starring in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine) to Vanity Fair, December issue.

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"I am saying to some of my young gay friends [in the clergy] that they should think seriously about leaving the Church of England because things have got that bad. I could stock the Scottish Episcopal Church with sexual refugees from the Church of England. Hardly a week goes by when I don't get a letter from someone, usually with a heart-breaking story."

--The Rt. Rev. Richard Holloway, Anglican bishop of Edinburgh, Scotland, in a Nov. 19 speech.

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"There are more exciting places on earth than a dark room. ... Imagine yourself in the cockpit of an F16. You start it up and only moments later you have 15 million people beneath you. ... Do you know a more exciting place than the F16's cockpit? Please let us know."

--A new ad from the Dutch air force in the newspaper De Gay Krant. A "dark room" (called a "backroom" in America) is a space in a gay bar set aside for sexual activity.

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"I think there's an element of hypocrisy when people denounce the president because he lied about his private sexual affairs. Some of the people who are now attacking the president for lying about sex are some of the people who criticized me for telling the truth about it."

--Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., addressing the International Network of Lesbian and Gay Officials Conference Nov. 21 in Cathedral City, Calif.

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"Phelps, you're NOT in Kansas anymore."

--A protest sign outside Chicago's Broadway United Methodist Church Nov. 22. More than 1,500 gays and lesbians circled the church as anti-gay bigot the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., and six members of his clan (four of them children) cowered behind a police barrier protesting a gay wedding that had taken place at the church. Phelps is online at www.godhatesfags.com

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"I, for one, have grown tired of the misrepresentations and mindless attacks from a handful of people in our community over the past several months. I understand all rage related to the D'Amato decision as I know this was difficult for many. But HRC has been used inappropriately and unfairly as a whipping post for those who cannot or will not work to bring the community to higher and more common ground. One example is the so-called Ad Hoc Committee for An Open Process which has been brokering in misinformation regarding a 2000 march on Washington for months. The participation of one organization like HRC, among many, in an event such as a march on the nation's capitol should not be the basis for open civil war."

--Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Elizabeth Birch in a Nov. 13 press statement.

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"Thanks partly to the flock of posturing Hollywood personalities who swooped in on the case, [Matthew] Shepard's death was immediately transmogrified into a moral parable of sweet, saintly gay boy set upon by bigoted thugs and crucified for his homosexuality. But the truth seems to be (from the scanty evidence thus far) that Shepard was attracted to his assailants because they were thugs. Does anyone really believe that Shepard, educated in Switzerland, thought those two, barely literate hoodlums were gay or that he left the bar with them for cozy tea and conversation? It used to be called 'rough trade' -- the dangerous, centuries-old practice of gay men picking up grimy, testosterone-packed straight or semi-straight toughs, sometimes moonlighting as hustlers. Before Stonewall, urban newspaper obituaries were coded for such typical scenarios as 'the 49-year- old unmarried antiques dealer was found bound and gagged in his ransacked, lavishly furnished apartment.'"

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