“I don’t think that the LGBT community should take its cues from me or some political leader in terms of what they think is right for them. Real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. As your president, I will fight to make LGBT equality a reality at the federal level. But it is the LGBT community that has to decide what is in their best interest, and to help make it happen by engaging actively with the political process.”

“I’d be upset (if my boyfriend came out as gay) because I want to be with him. It’s so funny because I joke with him that it drives me crazy to be a girl sometimes, so in my next life I’m going to come back as a guy and (he’s) going to be my bitch. But if he liked guys, I would be crushed.”

“Over the past 10 years more than 10,000 personnel have been discharged as a result of (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), including 800 with skills deemed ‘mission critical,’ such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists. These are the very job functions for which the military has experienced personnel shortfalls. General John M. Shalikashvili, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993 when the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy was enacted, no longer supports the policy because he now believes that allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military would no longer create intolerable tension among personnel and undermine cohesion. A recent Zogby poll supports this view. It found that three-quarters of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans were comfortable interacting with gay people.”