“If someone loved my music as a teenager and now finds out that I’m gay and it helps him or her in some way, then that’s great. It is a double-edged sword, though. God only knows what the old fans think. I’m not really sure. Most of the new music I am putting out now is only available online, so it involves a younger audience. They are very accepting and very open and they do seem to be supporting the new album. Some of the older fans aren’t computer-savvy. It’s not even something they want to get into, so I’m not really sure what the balance is there.”

“The history of this [the Democratic] party is civil rights, women’s rights, human rights, labor rights, gay and lesbian rights. And for us to hold up civil unions and say that separate is somehow now equal – when just a year-and-a-half ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board – is transparent to the people. They see through the Democrats.”

“Late in the book, [Mary Cheney] describes hissing a furious expletive at the TV when Senator John Kerry referred to her as a ‘lesbian’ in the third 2004 presidential debate (she prefers referring at arm’s length to ‘my sexual orientation,’ as if it were an intransigent military position, perhaps, or a pesky shadow she just can’t shake). She was angry, among other reasons, she writes, because ‘he had used the word “lesbian,” instead of the more common and politically neutral term “gay.”’”