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Quote UnQuote

Compiled by Rex Wockner

Published Thursday, 07-Aug-2008 in issue 1076

“You [in the Church of England] have so many gay clergy, gay partnered clergy, gay couples who are both clergy. The bishops know it. Their congregations know it. But can you get anyone to talk about it? Oh, no. I think it’s a holdover from Victorian times.”

Openly gay and noncelibate New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson to The Times of London, July 27.

“The Scriptures were written in patriarchal times, times of slavery, times of polygamy. And when you go for a literalist reading you run into trouble. Women wear hats in church, for example, because St. Paul said you should keep your head covered. And your mouth shut, by the way.”

Openly gay and noncelibate New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson to The Times of London, July 27.

“The pull of precedent is powerful but scarcely all-powerful when a shift of personnel or perspective breaks the spell, allowing the forces of change to exert their counterpull. The road from Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 decision that dismissed a claim of gay rights as ‘at best, facetious,’ to Lawrence v. Texas, which 17 years later located the privacy rights of gay men and lesbians at the heart of constitutional due process, was paved, I have no doubt, by the justices’ experience of knowing gay men and women in their personal and professional lives.”

Retiring New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse writing in the July 13 edition of the paper.

“Everyone is so post-gay now, it’s probably not the done thing to shed a tear over the last night of G-A-Y at the Astoria in Central London this Saturday. With its simple delight in fluffy disco and boozy, cruisey merriment, G-A-Y seems a dinosaur in the modern landscape of gay indie clubs, mixed clubs and the pansexual, drag-tastic dives of Shoreditch, where the beestung-lipped boy in eyeshadow probably has a girlfriend who’s cool with it all.”

Tim Teeman writing in The Times of London, July 23.

“My girlfriend gave me a Tiffany diamond ring and proposed. I cried. We want to make sure to get married before the ballots in November, but we both have hectic traveling schedules. It’s more whirlwind than romance, but we’re hoping for the first weekend in September.”

Comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer to Seattle Gay News, July 4.

“(It was) really exciting but it was a fuck-up too. You can think you have the capacity to deal with it (fame) but nothing prepares you for it. I really thought I didn’t care, that I could be famous and not be altered by it – but you are. You get caught up in it and some of it is real but for the most part, it’s superficial and very fragile or temporary.”

Out singer k.d. lang to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, July 16.

“We made a commitment and we understood the controversy, but we are now aware the Labor Council had voted for an official boycott.”

Matt Szabo, spokesman for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who pulled out as keynote speaker at the July 26 Human Rights Campaign 2008 San Francisco Bay Area Gala in protest against the group’s support last year for a version of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would protect gay and bisexual people but not transgender people, to the Associated Press, July 27. The measure has passed the House of Representatives and is pending in the Senate.