So they say . . .

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.
~ Sigmund Freud

Our main character, Brian, is a guy who fucks anything that moves. He does not pay a price for it. He does not get AIDS, and he has no conscience about it. I think that's absolutely revolutionary.
~ QAF co-producer Dan Lipman

QAF is the gay Shaft.
~ Peter Paige in an interview with Carla Collins for eNow

The opening episode has the longest lick down the backside of a boy of any TV broadcast in history.
~ Tom Legan, QAF Manager of Promotions and Marketing

I'm a total 'Queer As Folk' whore.
~ Leeza Gibbons at the 12th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles, California

It's a great study in the mechanics of desire.
~ Randy Harrison (Justin)

As an actor, the thing you look for is the chance to jump off a cliff, essentially, the chance to sort of put blinders on and go. I'm this person in these, whatever, in these 30 seconds that we're shooting this thing, I'm this person. I really got to experience that with QAF and I got to go wherever I needed to go. And I promised myself I wouldn't do it in a fearful way. I promised myself that if I did this show, I'd go the distance and I really did. I felt like I really did.
~ Fab Filippo (Ethan)

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and three hundred sixty two admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.
~ Lynne Lavner

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work. "Hello, can't work today. Still queer."
~ Robin Tyler, Comedian

Yes, I was a teen-age lesbian. And while that may sound like a horror movie to some of you, for me I could subtitle that period of my life, ‘Adventures in Paradise,' because there was one thing that we gay teen-agers could do that our straight friends couldn't. I could say, "Hey, Mom, Michelle's coming over to spend the night Friday night, okay?" . . . "Okay, honey!"
~ Marilyn Pittman

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 in New York City

There is no need for parents to fear homosexual teachers. Ninety-seven percent of child seduction is heterosexual.
~ Dr. Benjamin Spock

Today's gay boy generally doesn't need a Socrates to initiate him into the world of adult physical love: He's already aware of his sexuality and its value. He's a self-conscious commodity, willing to accept objectification if the compensation is fair. Like the gold diggers in old black-and-white musicals, the boy has the power of pulchritude. Because he's desired for his appearance alone, he can act as he pleases and the man has to tolerate it. The gay boy is a bitch because he can get away with it. He never grows up because he doesn't have to.
~ Philip Guichard

Lots of gay and lesbian viewers are wetting themselves over the new Showtime series Queer as Folk, which follows the lives of fags and dykes in Pittsburgh. When it comes to the boys, Queer as Folk definitely gets it right, but sadly there are far fewer lesbians on the show, and the ones we do get are bickering, jealous bitches who just want to have kids and settle down. We've still got a long way to go. The show is being applauded for pulling no punches when it comes to the depiction of gay and lesbian lives. Words like "real," "uninhibited," and "gutsy" are simply euphemistic references to the show's explicit content-yes, they actually show you said queer people being sexual. In the world of gay TV, that's revolutionary stuff. On network television, while straight people routinely romp around in their underwear and grope each other, the supposedly slutty Jack of Will and Grace has never even been seen in bed with another man.
~ Tristan Taormino, Village Voice

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, fab magazine, Winter 1997 issue.

Labels can also be misleading. I saw a news report about a lesbian protest march, and the reporter said, "Coming up next, a lesbian demonstration." My first thought was, "Cool. I always wondered how those things work."
~ Michael Dane, Comedian

I just wish more of my fellow queers would come out sometimes. It's nice out here, you know?
~ Elton John, accepting a Distinguished Achievement Award from Elizabeth Taylor at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's 25th anniversary blowout.

Just by being out you're doing your part. It's like recycling. You're doing your part for the environment if you recycle; you're doing your part for the gay movement if you're out.
~ Martina Navratilova

I don't mind straight people as long as they act gay in public.
~ T-shirt worn by Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls during a network-TV interview.

To a large segment of our society, gay people are viewed as sexual outlaws. God forbid a straight person should acknowledge that there are pleasures associated with their anus. That's a big, big door that people don't want to open.
~ Phil Hartman

I'm gay, I'm queer, I'm homosexual, I'm a poof, I'm a poofter, I'm a ponce. I'm a bum boy, baddy boy, backside artist, bugger, I'm bent. I am that arse bandit, I lift those shirts, I'm a faggot arse, fudge packing, shit stabbing, uphill gardener. I dine at the downstairs restaurant, I dance at the other end of the ballroom, I'm Moses in the parting of the red cheeks. I fuck, and I'm fucked. I suck, and I'm sucked. I rim them, and wank them, and every single man has had the fucking time of his life. And I am not a pervert.
~ Stuart Alan Jones, UK QAF

If you removed all of the homos and homo influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with ‘Let's Make a Deal.'
~ Fran Lebowitz

I couldn't do that part -- those [silly] three lines. They brought me in to audition for a small part, an A-list gay who is throwing a party that Hal Sparks' character goes to. But I said no. I'm getting typecast and it's getting boring. The characters I play on TV are props. It's a way to make Liberals feel good about themselves. Every lead character on Providence has a gay or black friend. It's a way for them to say, "Look, you see, we're doing something good -- we are putting this gutless character on our show." I find that insulting. I find that worse than no representation.
~ Scott Thompson, on auditioning for Queer As Folk; from "Homecumming queen" by Nelson Branco, fab magazine, December 20, 2001

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

I believe that those who promote discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or any other grounds are gravely mistaken about the values that make our nation strong. I will continue to move my administration in the direction of compassion, acceptance, and understanding.
~ Former President Bill Clinton in an interview with The Advocate

If God dislikes gays so much, how come he picked Michelangelo, a known homosexual, to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling while assigning Anita [Bryant] to go on television and push orange juice?
~ Mike Royko, syndicated columnist.

I haven't seen so many stiff members on TV since the launch of the Parliamentary Channel. Talk about full frontal. Anyone who thoughts that Jerry Springer was the biggest dick on TV ought to check out Pride after midnight.
~ from "Getting hard" by John Kennedy, fab magazine, December 20, 2001

Memo to the Congress: Thanks for thinking of me, but I don't need you to defend my marriage. My husband and I can handle that ourselves. Spare me 'The Defense of Marriage Act' label on a bill banning same-sex marriages. The name implies that the value of heterosexual marriages goes down once you let homosexuals into the institution. There goes the neighborhood. I don't buy this realtor's view of relationships. Gay and lesbian couples who want to wed aren't trying to assail the grounds for marriage. They're trying to share them. If anything, they want to stabilize the gay community.
~ Syndicated Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman.

Amateur porn has gotten pretty hot since the advent of the Internet. ... I'm grateful to these boys for sharing their largesse with the rest of us, but don't these guys have parents? I mean, if your hard-on can be downloaded anywhere from Athens to Zanzibar, chances are pretty good it's going to find its way back to Peoria. And surely there's somebody you once dumped or just plain pissed off enough who'll make certain it gets there.
~ Portland, Oregon 'Just Out' columnist Marc Acito

Disney movies are just full of fairies, you know. And what's the deal with Chip and Dale? Two male chipmunks, living together, year after year. I suppose they want us to think they're 'roommates.' With evidence like this, I'm surprised it took the Southern Baptist Convention until 1996 to aim the flamethrower of righteousness at the Walt Disney Co. Yea, verily, the Southern Baptists are threatening a boycott because Disney has extended health benefits to the partners of its gay employees and allowed gays and lesbians to actually GO INSIDE Disney theme parks. To the Southern Baptist way of thinking, Disney is turning anti-family. Mickey Mouse is gnawing away at the baseboards of morality. Pluto is whizzing on the tires of decency. It all seems pretty Goofy to me . . . Oh, well. There is an upside to all this, you know. If the Southern Baptists stay away from Disney Wold, the rest of us should be looking at WAY shorter lines for Space Mountain.
~ Mike Resmond, in a letter to the editor of the Indianapolis Star on Tuesday, June 18, 1996, in response to the Southern Baptists' boycott of the Walt Disney Company.

Here lies David Diamond — underneath Tom Cruise.
~ Dave Diamond's preferred epitaph.

Why can't they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand gay guys with M16s going, ‘Who'd you call a faggot?'
~ Jon Stewart

My aim is to have an all-gay sitcom someday, with heterosexuals as token guest stars. Let them be the next-door neighbors for a change.
~ Harvey Fierstein

Wouldn't it be great if you could only get AIDS from giving money to television preachers?
~ Elayne Boosler

Yes, you can get AIDS from a mosquito . . . if you have unprotected receptive anal intercourse with an infected mosquito.
~ Randy Shilts

And don't give us that tired old mantra about discipline, good order, and morale. We acknowledge the need for discipline and good order, and we have read the Navy's report on Tailhook: and we have concluded nonetheless that it would be wrong — fundamentally wrong — to exclude heterosexuals from the armed forces. The standard for all should be conduct, not status.
~ Rep. Gerry Studds (D-Mass.), at the Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, 25 April, 1993.

When we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we say, '. . . with liberty and justice for all.' Well what part of 'all' don't people understand?
~ Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), at the Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, 25 April, 1993

A very good-looking boy followed me for a quarter of an hour, and in the end he came up to me outside the Opera. I went back with him to his home and he kissed me with a frenzy even on the staircase. I was wildly passionate. We made love like tigers until dawn.
~ Rudolph Valentino, silent screen actor.

To be forced back into the heterosexual cage of coupledom [via gay marriage] is not a step forward but a step back into state-imposed definitions of relationship. With all that we have learned, we should be helping our heterosexual brothers and sisters out of their state-defined prisons, not volunteering to join them there.
~ Jane Rule, author of Desert Hearts, in Toronto's Xtra!

My starting point is generally that gay issues deserve to be thought through carefully, not just polemicized about. So much that comes from our gay advocacy groups is just political rhetoric. ... Orwell has a great line condemning people who 'think in slogans.'
~ Syndicated gay-press columnist Paul Varnell

I don't know, darling — he never sucked my cock.
~ Tallulah Bankhead, on being asked if a certain acquaintance of hers was gay.

The [Christian] supremacists who lead the anti-gay crusade are wrong morally. They are wrong because justice is moral, and prejudice is evil; because truth is moral and the lie of the closet is the real sin; because the claim of morality is a subtle sort of subterfuge, a strategem which hides the real aim which is much more secular. The supremacists don't care about morality, they care about power. They care about social control. And their goal, my friends, is the reconstruction of American Democracy into American Theocracy.
~ unknown

Homosexuality is a problem because an unenlightened society has made it a problem, but I have received letters by the thousands from gay people telling me that they wouldn't be straight if they had a choice. All they ask is to be allowed to love in their own way without facing the charge that they are "sick and twisted." I say, love and let love.
~ Abigail Van Buren (aka 'Dear Abby'), advice columnist

I'm beginning to believe that one of the last frontiers left for radical gesture is the imagination. At least in my ungoverned imagination I can fuck somebody without a rubber, or I can, in the privacy of my own skull, douse Helms with a bucket of gasoline and set his putrid ass on fire or throw congressman William Dannemeyer off the Empire State building. These fantasies give me distance from my outrage for a few seconds. They give me momentary comfort. Sexuality defined in images gives me comfort in a hostile world. They give me strength.
~ David Wojnarowicz

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
~ John Wooden

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
~ Pat Robertson on Indiana's proposed ERA

You saw him! He's the best, I've had the best!
~ Nathan Maloney (Charlie Hunnam), Queer As Folk, UK

That's bizarre to me. Maybe it's because they're young. Maybe it's because they don't know what it's like to lose 87 of their friends like I do. But it's an incredibly stupid view to have. It's incredibly stupid to have unsafe sex. It's beyond stupid. It's imbecilic. When I see people doing it, I just want to smack them over the head with a hammer. I feel like saying, "You want AIDS? Here -- I'll just inject you with it myself! Here -- let me strap your arm, and inject you with the fucking virus, because you're pissing me off!"
~ Lea DeLaria in A&U Magazine

It is better to be hated for what one is than loved for what one is not.
~ Andre Gide

I think people are very unnerved by bisexuality in our culture -- unless it's about teasing, unless it's about withholding sex or implying homosexuality with the underlying message being 'Ha-ha, I'm not.' There's virulent homophobia in our culture. Cartoonists deal with exaggerated caricatures. Comics are seen as a kiddie medium, and there is a little history of dealing with taboo in comic strips. For example, in daily strips you used to not be able to show snakes. Why? Hmmm. Let me think. Snakes: phallic. And so on. Things are loosening up a little bit. As far as I know, Akbar and Jeff (from 'Life in Hell') are the only gay couple in comics. They may dance with a woman or two. But I don't think they are going to shape up.
~ Matt Groening on why there are so few gay characters in cartoons

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.
~ Benedict Spinoza

One should never lose hope. Homosexuality can strike any straight man at any age.
~ Roger Peyrefitte

Sex is like bridge: If you don't have a good partner, you better have a good hand.
~ Charles Pierce

I'm a Queer atheist. I hope Jesus does come back. I bet he'd be a miraculously good bottom.
~ B. Allan Ross

To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
~ E. E. Cummings

All around the Crayola-bright disco, hair and makeup personnel spritz buff male torsos with fake sweat. The make-believe scene is a same-sex dance mecca called Babylon. So many men, so little time to dust them with glitter. On another set nearby, a wardrobe mistress gives what she calls "a sock-and-jock adjustment" to an actor playing a waiter at a trendy gay eatery. Translation: She's enhancing the endowment of this guy's jeans by stuffing them with a hank of hosiery. His crotch now looks like the cover of the Rolling Stone's Sticky Fingers album.
~ Steve Daly, Entertainment Weekly: "The Gayest Show on Earth"

There's no drama in political correctness.
~ Russell T. Davies, QAF original creator

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

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