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"Up yours."
– Sir Elton John when asked by Australia's Seven Network what he would say to Prime Minister John Howard about Howard's vocal opposition to same-sex marriage and civil unions, Nov. 27.
"My sexuality comes up [on my TV show] occasionally if there's a very obvious joke lying there and I can get a very obvious laugh. Everybody's very aware that I'm gay, but it's not like I'm sitting there talking about my private life and sharing details – I'm aware of what the line is and I'm aware of what people are comfortable hearing about and knowing about, and I respect that. I've learned my lesson."
– Ellen DeGeneres to the British lesbian glossy Diva, January issue.
"The first time I went to a gay bar I was 17 years old. It was called the Hut and it was in Washington, D.C. Some referred to it as the Chicken Hut, and it was filled with early 1960s gay men in fluffy sweaters who cruised each other by calling table-to-table on phones provided by the bar. 'I may be queer but I ain't this,' I remember thinking."
– Filmmaker John Waters writing in The New York Times, Nov. 19.
"When someone is in a position of power and they are using that power to hurt gay people … it's perfectly appropriate that they be outed. We don't do it, but we have no problem with it."
– Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, to the Associated Press, Nov. 16.
"In the previous round of outing in the early '90's, everybody wanted to be first to be second. No one wanted to take the heat for starting it, but the blog phenomenon has changed that by lowering the threshold to the point that other media can't avoid it. What we are now seeing is Outing 2.0."
– University of Southern California Prof. Larry Gross, director of the Annenberg School of Communication and author of "Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing," to the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 20.
"Going against every Pop star law, George Michael appears to be getting more interesting the older he gets. He says what he feels, does what he likes and gets the tabloids continually in a froth. We're lovin' that! (Oh, and for the record, Outside is the best coming-out song ever. Bar none.)"
-London's Gay Times, December issue.
"I've had it easy in the press, in comparison to what other people go through. I mean, they leave me alone, because from the very beginning, I just said, 'Yep, I suck cock. Fuck off.' So I think if you tell them that, and you're so crude about it, then they can't concoct any kind of issue from it, because I was straight in their faces from the beginning."
– Gay singer Jimmy Somerville to London's Pink Paper, Nov. 16.
