“I was lonely [being out of the closet] during the early years. The tough part was how the media sensationalized everything I did. When I split up with Judy Nelson 15 years ago the headline in my local newspaper was ‘Lesbian love nest.’ This was a long relationship, not illicit sex. That upset me. That’s why I’m private about my [current] relationship of six years. I don’t want to trivialize my feelings or my life.”

“[I]t might be good for gays to start seeing their depiction as mindless cruisers and promiscuity poodles the way black people look upon minstrel comedy featuring blackface and banjos. Time for progress, fellas.”

“Same-sexuality, once marginalized, is now part of the mainstream. And it’s this mainstreamizing that the radical right longs to reverse – hoping against hope that a federal gay-marriage ban will be a ‘They Shall Not Pass,’ leading to a complete socio-sexual 180. The trouble for them is not only that a gay-marriage ban would be shutting the barn door long after the horse has fled – but that the horse in fact has won the Kentucky Derby. When Ian McKellen can blithely bring a boy toy with him to the Oscars, Rosie O’Donnell be afforded a place of honor on ‘The View,’ and Anne Heche lose cred for re-embracing heterosexuality, it’s pretty clear that, in the immortal words of Judy Garland, ‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.’”