“Having so many friends who are gay and having a big gay following, I get hate mail and threats. Some people are blind or ignorant, and you can’t be that prejudiced and hateful and go through this world and still be happy.”

“Gay unions, what is that all about? I haven’t been invited to any ceremonies and I wouldn’t go anyway. The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn’t work for straight people anymore, I think is a bit tragic.”

“When I think about seeing gay-themed films in public theaters … I always return to Making Love, one of the first mainstream films to deal with gay subject matter. It got to Morgantown in 1982, when I was in graduate school at WVU. How delighted my queer friends and I were finally to see gay life depicted in film. That exuberance was short-lived. When the male leads got intimate, the primarily straight audience exploded with disgust: ‘Oh, God! Sick! I’m gonna puke.’ … It was that audience reaction all those years ago that I could not stop thinking about as I waited, with equal measures of enthusiastic anticipation and cold dread, for Brokeback Mountain to get to Southwest Virginia, where I teach, or Charleston, where my partner John lives. And it was my own violent reaction to a jeering audience that I feared the most. [But Jack and Ennis] made love in their high-mountain tent. They kissed violently after four years apart. They sprawled naked in a motel bed, delighting in their reunion. And that Charleston audience was absolutely silent.”