GLT » Quote UnQuote

commentary

Quote UnQuote

Compiled by Rex Wockner

Published Thursday, 25-Sep-2003 in issue 822

“I didn’t flaunt things. I know when Tony and I went to the movies, he would say, ‘Let’s go in disguise.’ We always wore baseball caps. Or he’d say: ‘You go at a certain time. I’ll go later.’ I knew people were talking. I didn’t like that.”

— 1950s screen idol Tab Hunter on his years-long gay relationship with actor Anthony Perkins, to The New York Times, Sept. 9.

“Our unelected president is campaigning for Arnold Schwarzenegger and driving the whole planet over a cliff with his insane, extremist policies. That’s what motivates me to write the strip now. In fact, if I didn’t have this outlet, I would probably implode from horror and disbelief.”

— Dykes To Watch Out For cartoonist Alison Bechdel to Los Angeles’ Lesbian News, September issue.

“A number of people had startled looks. There were people that would pass by two or three times and kind of saddle up and ask a shy question. People would peel away from their group and come back alone. We had a few snickers and jeers, but generally it was a very welcoming environment.”

— Joe Tarver of the Empire State Pride Agenda on staffing the gay booth at the New York State Fair, to the Syracuse Post-Standard, Aug. 26.

“I miss gay sass. I miss gay radicalism — unless radicalism is defined today as a desire for the conventional and the pedantic. I miss the anti-authoritarian counter-culture gay ethic that once thumbed its nose at the prissy, pedestrian conventions of straight life, with 1.7 kids, a minivan in the driveway and a house in the ‘burbs.”

— Rosie Dimanno writing in the Toronto Star, Aug. 27.

“What gays as a defined community give to the world — and I’m referring now to that faction of gays who’ve always stormed the ramparts of the ruling class, pushed the boundaries, profaned the pious, challenged the one-man/one-woman order of things — has enriched us, expanded our horizons, and generally made life more interesting, a peculiar fondness for ABBA music notwithstanding.”

— Rosie Dimanno writing in the Toronto Star, Aug. 27.

“What I do look forward to is the day when the notion of gay and lesbian books or a gay and lesbian section in a bookstore will seem as strange and old-fashioned as a section devoted to books by women or books by people of color.... For me and my friends, whether gay or straight, it’s never a question whether or not a book is by a gay writer or if it’s a story about gay people. We just read books.”

— The Hours author Michael Cunningham to Publishers Weekly, Aug. 25.

“I was expecting more. You have these guys carrying on as big queens, mincing around, shrieking and flirting with the straight guys, and it’s a bit over the top.”

— New York Times Magazine Fashion Director Robert Bryan on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” to The New York Times News Service, Aug. 24.