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          =  QUOTE UNQUOTE #138 - Jan 15, 1999    =
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<><><1><><>

"I declare you queen of the realm."

--Outgoing San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Barbara
Kaufman presenting a tiara and feathered scepter to incoming
President Tom Ammiano, who is gay, at Ammiano's Jan. 8
installation.

<><><2><><>

"We're not in Kansas any more."

--Ammiano's response (see above).

<><><3><><>

"Gosh darn it, just be the best darn homosexual you can be then."

--Horizons Community Services ad campaign appearing on public-
transit vehicles and elsewhere around Chicago.

<><><4><><>

"You're a great big wonderful lesbian, you great big wonderful
lesbian you."

--Horizons Community Services ad campaign appearing on public-
transit vehicles and elsewhere around Chicago.

<><><5><><>

"[Boy George has] never said anything that really bothered me
until his Advocate article this year. He's always said horrible
things, but in that article he said I thought I was too good for
the gay community. I felt like that was really over the top. He
did an article directly after I was arrested -- interestingly
enough, he writes a column for one of the tabloids, which is
exactly where I think he belongs. It's an English tabloid called
Daily Mail. It's also pretty right-wing and homophobic. I think
it's quite interesting that he writes for them, so I guess he'll
go for anyone who pays him. ... Am I too good for the gay
community? No. Am I too good for the likes of Boy George? Yes."

--Singer George Michael to The Advocate, Jan. 19.

<><><6><><>

"Straight men don't find it easy to get quick casual sex with
attractive women without paying for it. They normally have to do
a lot of groundwork. They are different hunts, but they are still
hunts. I've been there with my mates in clubs when we were
younger, cruising for women. I know all the stupid games you have
to play. I also know the lack of game-playing that goes on
between gay men. Men have that easy access to meaningless, casual
sex, which gives them a totally different thrill."

--Singer George Michael to The Advocate, Jan. 19.

<><><7><><>

"I left [my lover] Kenny a message that said, 'Darling, I'm in
big trouble. You're going to have to get me from the police
station.' He called me back and said, 'What did you do, darling?'
I said, 'Use your imagination.' And he said, 'DUI?' I said,
'Fuck--if only. Think again.' He said, 'Oh no!' I said, 'Please
just come down and get me.' But because of the honesty in the
relationship, I wasn't terrified about calling him. My immediate
thought was, Thank God I have him."

--Singer George Michael to The Advocate, Jan. 19.

<><><8><><>

"The media can only deal with gay personalities if they are
sexless. You never see RuPaul on the arm of a six-foot strapping
basketball player, and that's the same thing that kind of
happened to me. I became this gender-less exotic doll. I think
that's the only way people can deal with it. But, I love RuPaul.
I think RuPaul is a trooper, and I think that drag queens are the
suffragettes of our community."

--Boy George to the San Diego gay publication Buzz, Dec. 31.

<><><9><><>

"[H]ear it one more time perfectly clearly: If you're gay or a
lesbian, it's a biological error that inhibits you from relating
normally to the opposite sex. The fact that you are intelligent,
creative and valuable is all true. The error is in your inability
to relate sexually intimately, in a loving way to a member of the
opposite sex -- it is a biological error."

--Radio therapist Dr. Laura Schlessinger on her Web site,
http://www.drlaura.com, Dec. 8.

<><><10><><>

"As for 'Ex-Gays' Who Feel You Can Walk Away From Your Sexuality:
You always could. It's called the closet."

--Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, Dec. 30.

<><><11><><>

"Joe frequented cottages all the time. It is a place where gays
meet and strut their stuff. We know from George Michael's arrest
that it is still common practice. It wasn't just the cheap sex.
Joe liked to be the fly on the wall. You don't get to know what
life is really about by knocking about with BBC directors and
Oxford dons. The crudity and sparseness of life is to be found in
public lavatories."

--Leoni Orton-Barnett, sister of famed gay playwright Joe Orton,
in response to the Jan. 4 announcement that $82,000 in British
lottery money will be used to renovate three Victorian
underground toilets that were Orton's favorite cruising spots --
in part as a memorial to Orton. "Cottage" translates into
American as "tearoom."

<><><12><><>

"I felt it was a terrible intrusion on my privacy [when I was
outed after starring in The Madness of King George.] Ian McKellen
always said I should come out. But why? I make my living playing
heterosexuals. ... My partner [Trevor Bentham] and I don't want
to stand up and say we're gay, because we think [announcing it
publicly is] wrong. The best way to get people to accept you is
to move about the community and show them there's nothing to be
afraid of."

--Newly knighted British actor Nigel Hawthorne, star of TV's Yes,
Minister, to The Times of London, according to the New York Post,
Jan. 5.

<><><13><><>

"It looks like something sleeping up there. It's like it's fur."

--Make-up artist and stylist-to-the-stars Glenn Alfonso on Sir
Elton John's hair transplant, to Los Angeles' gay In magazine,
Jan. 19.

<><><14><><>

"In the porn world there are a lot of people who are saying,
'Enough with body and leg shaving and the dyed, arched eyebrows.'
It's getting to the point where those hairless, pumped-up things
in gay porn look like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floats
having sex."

--Make-up artist and stylist-to-the-stars Glenn Alfonso to Los 
Angeles' In magazine, Jan. 19.

<><><15><><>

"I find what you said totally reprehensible. I have no problem
promoting gay rights. My heart is racing. My blood is boiling.
I'm so disgusted by what you said."

--Denver School Board member Elaine Berman to an anti-gay bigot
who delivered a standard-issue rant at the board's Jan. 7
meeting. The board plans to expand gay protections in the public-
school system.

<><><16><><>

"We've always had a big gay following and we've always had many
gay friends whom we love and adore. There's a lesbian couple who
are friends of ours and have been for years. One of them is my
golf teacher. We spend Christmas day at their house, a house they
built with their own hands in Northern Nevada. It's usually just
the two of them, and Daryl and myself, and that's how we spend
our Christmas. I don't know if you know this, but Howie
Greenfield, who wrote the lyrics to 'Love Will Keep Us Together,'
died of AIDS in 1986. He was a wonderful man, and he and his
lover were very dear friends of ours. We have many friends in the
gay community."

--Toni Tennille (of the Captain & Tennille) to Boston's Bay
Windows, Dec. 23. Their song Love Will Keep Us Together was
number one in 1975.

<><><17><><>

"Years ago when AIDS was new, we all had a great sympathy for
people who developed the disease. We did not at first know it was
caused by a virus, nor how it was contracted. People who
developed AIDS were not at fault for what happened to them. That
was then. We now know that HIV is transmitted largely by
unprotected anal penetration. The information is pervasive, the
message is constant. What about people in 1999 who engage in
unprotected anal sex? If they contract AIDS are we going to feel
the same sympathy for them that we felt for the early victims? We
might pity them, we might take care of them, but we are entitled
to think they have been damn fools. We are going to blame them."

--Syndicated gay columnist Paul Varnell, in a January filing.

<><><18><><>

"I had, in fact, never had unprotected anal intercourse before my
infection. In some ways, it would have been more of a relief if I
had. I could have beaten myself up for a stupid lapse, and
isolated the sense of failure and shame I felt."

--Writer Andrew Sullivan in the San Francisco Examiner Magazine,
Jan. 10.

<><><19><><>

"Theorists on the right are too busy asserting that homosexuality
is wrong to explain at any length why it occurs, and theorists on
the left are too busy explaining why the whole concept of normal
is meaningless to figure out how homosexuality arises. The vast
terrain in between lies oddly unexplored."

--Writer Andrew Sullivan in the San Francisco Examiner Magazine,
Jan. 10.

<><><20><><>

"The existence of an extreme left wing as the representation of
gay people prevented me from coming out. It prevents other people
from coming out, because if they have to be 'queer,' they're not
going to come out. The establishment of these left-wing elites
actually impedes the possibility of gay people's living fulfilled
lives. It keeps them back in the ghettos."

--Gay writer Andrew Sullivan in The Advocate, Jan. 19.

<><><21><><>

"[Will] represents a large slab of the gay community that doesn't
get shown enough. To some people it's not as colorful to think
your brother or your neighbor or your doctor could be gay. It's
more interesting to have wacky drag queens. But there are a lot
of Wills out there. It's insane to expect us to represent
everyone's issues. Will can represent only who he is."

--Will & Grace star Eric McCormack to The Advocate, Jan. 19.

                          -end-