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Quote UnQuote

Compiled by Rex Wockner

Published Thursday, 18-Aug-2005 in issue 921

“[T]he LGBT community and our issues are changing in relatively rapid fashion. Recent surveys show that younger Americans in their teens and 20s overwhelmingly favor equal treatment for LGBT people in housing, employment, and, yes, even marriage. As Bob Dylan wrote and sang, ‘For the times they are a changin’.’”

Openly lesbian San Diego Mayor Toni Atkins writing in the Gay & Lesbian Times, July 28.

“This extreme measure is nothing short of a nuclear weapon being launched at lesbian and gay Californians. It would totally wipe out all existing legal protections for legally recognized domestic partners and their children.”

Geoffrey Kors, head of Equality California, as signature gathering began on a ballot measure to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage and eradicate California’s comprehensive domestic-partnership law, which grants all state-level rights of matrimony to registered same-sex couples.

“I have seen a lot of them [drag queens impersonating me]. There were seven at one time in Las Vegas. Why are they all me? I wonder if I have a glandular imbalance that nobody wants to tell me about. They have five o’clock shadows, and I wish they would shave better. Some of them in Las Vegas don’t look female. I look at them and I think, ‘Who’s that they’re doing?’ I went to one with George Burns, and he laughed his head off, and he said, ‘Carol, it’s just like you.’ Isn’t that awful?”

Actress/singer Carol Channing to SHOUT Magazine in Austin, July 21.

“A sleeping giant has been awoken by Canada’s debate about same-sex civil marriage rights: the Christian right. Their engagement in the political arena threatens to change a lot in Canadian politics over the next generation. Perhaps – if we don’t figure out how to deal with this – this emerging religious extremism will wreak the same havoc upon civil debate in this country as in the U.S., where religious extremists hijacked the Republican party and re-wrote the nation’s agenda in biblical terms.”

Gareth Kirkby, managing editor of the Ottawa, Ontario, gay newspaper Capital Xtra!, writing in the July 14 issue.

“This is a short note to inform you that we had to remove one or more of the images from your LeathermensDungeon.com profile because we do not have a scanned copy of your Photo ID on file, and due to new regulations by the United States Government we need to have such documentation on file for any sexually explicit images on the site. If you wish to continue displaying sexually explicit photos in your profile you’ll need to first upload a scanned copy of your Photo ID, such as your drivers [sic] license or passport. …”

An example of the effects of new rules added to the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988 (18 U.S.C. §2257) that took effect June 23. Cruisy gay Web sites are among those where users can no longer post pictures of themselves that show such things as two people naked, a naked person with a pet, a hand touching genitals, a hand down one’s pants, a hand spreading apart buttocks, bondage or sadomasochistic abuse – unless the Web site has documented proof the people depicted in the photos are over age 18.