Quotes about lesbian

A collection of quotes on the topic of lesbian, women, people, right.

Quotes about lesbian

“Did you read [Holly Near's book]? Let me save you the trouble. This is the most exciting sentence in the book:…"I feel like a lesbian when I'm making love to a woman." Gooooooooood, Holly! Well, the major difference between me and Holly Near is that I feel like a lesbian when I am BREATHING!”

Lea DeLaria (1958) American actress and singer

Bulldyke in a China Shop

Love, Books, Making love, Feeling

“If someone is a lesbian, it's man's fault.”

Alexander Lukashenko (1954) President of Belarus since 20 July 1994

Comment about lesbians (2011), as seen on National Television of Belarus: Lukashenko about gays and lesbians http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HACHqxzi6M

“When we respect the faiths practiced in our churches and synagogues, our mosques and our temples, we're more secure. When we welcome the immigrant with his talents or her dreams, we are renewed. When we stand up for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and treat their love and their rights equally under the law, we defend our own liberty as well. We are more free when all people can pursue their own happiness. And as long as walls exist in our hearts to separate us from those who don’t look like us, or think like us, or worship as we do, then we're going to have to work harder, together, to bring those walls of division down.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Brandenburg Gate Speech (June 2013)

Love, People, Faith, Law

“We share a belief in the dignity and equality of every human being; that our daughters deserve the same opportunities as our sons; that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters must be treated equally under the law; that our societies are strengthened and not weakened by diversity. And we stand up for universal human rights, not only in America and in Europe, but beyond, because we believe that when these rights are respected, nations are more successful and our world is safer and more just.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

"Barack Obama: The President's News Conference With Prime Minister Reinfeldt of Sweden in Stockholm" by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, atThe American Presidency Project (4 September 2013)
2013

World, Law, Sister, Universe

“Oh please…As a standup, I tried to change the world. As an entertainer, I try to entertain. And as a lesbian, I try to pick up the prettiest girl in the room. Not necessarily in that order.”

Lea DeLaria (1958) American actress and singer

ibid.
When asked if she thought of herself as a performer, or as a performer with an agenda.

World, Girl, Change

“I was doing press for the show and they were going to show a clip from The L Word that included a love scene of sorts between me and another character, and she had the audacity to say, 'If there are any children in the room, you might want to ask them to leave.' And my mind was blown open and I said to her, ‘If it had been a heterosexual love scene, would you have asked the same question?’ I asked her on air, because I thought, it’s important to ask -- it contextualizes the import of the show." My feelings were hurt and it just spoke to me of what the gay and lesbian community has to deal with on a day-to-day basis in terms of popular media.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Beals and Obama article (3 March 2009) http://www.douban.com/note/29958902/.

Love, Children, Feeling, Communication

“I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U. S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. … I know how important the issue of equal rights is to the LGBT community. I share your sense of urgency. If I am elected U. S. Senator, you can be confident that my colleagues in the Senate and the President will know my position.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

On the Defense of Marriage Act, Windy City Times (11 February 2004) http://www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=4018 2004

Confidence, Communication, Sense

“[Speaking about same-sex marriage] It’s about familiarity, and I think the only reason they’re uncomfortable with the notion of same-sex marriages is because they haven’t come into contact with gay and lesbian couples enough to understand that it’s about love—and that it is a civil right.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Curve Magazine Interview (Summer 2009) http://www.curvemag.com/Curve-Magazine/Web-Articles-2008/Goodbye-to-Romance/.

Love, Marriage, Sex, Understanding

“Today is a big step in our march toward equality. Gay and lesbian couples now have the right to marry, just like anyone else. #LoveWins.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

President Barack Obama on Twitter at June 26, 2015 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/614435467120001024 2015

“In the end, the success of our ideals comes down to us -- including the example of our own lives, our own societies. We know that there will always be intolerance. But instead of fearing the immigrant, we can welcome him. We can insist on policies that benefit the many, not just the few; that an age of globalization and dizzying change opens the door of opportunity to the marginalized, and not just a privileged few. Instead of targeting our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, we can use our laws to protect their rights. Instead of defining ourselves in opposition to others, we can affirm the aspirations that we hold in common.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)
Context: In the end, the success of our ideals comes down to us -- including the example of our own lives, our own societies. We know that there will always be intolerance. But instead of fearing the immigrant, we can welcome him. We can insist on policies that benefit the many, not just the few; that an age of globalization and dizzying change opens the door of opportunity to the marginalized, and not just a privileged few. Instead of targeting our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, we can use our laws to protect their rights. Instead of defining ourselves in opposition to others, we can affirm the aspirations that we hold in common. That’s what will make America strong. That’s what will make Europe strong. That’s what makes us who we are. And just as we meet our responsibilities as individuals, we must be prepared to meet them as nations. Because we live in a world in which our ideals are going to be challenged again and again by forces that would drag us back into conflict or corruption. We can’t count on others to rise to meet those tests.

Age, Fear, Law, Sister

“Grown men, otherwise daring, capable and virile men of accomplishment frequently find themselves terrorized and terrified by ridiculous accusations of bias or impropriety cast by spoon-fed students, indignant sluts, disabled lesbians, bipolar transsexuals, illegal immigrants and the morbidly obese. In the space of a few hundred years, the noble morality of the sovereign has been exchanged for the ignoble morality of the squeaky wheel.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

pg 42
A More Complete Beast (2018)

Men

“We’ll advance human dignity by standing up for the rights of minorities, because no one’s equality should ever be denied. We will stand up for freedom of religion -- the right of every person to practice their faith as they choose -- because we are all children of God, and we are all fallible. And the notion that we, as a majority, or the state should tell somebody else what to believe with respect to their faith, is against our basic values. We will stand up for our gay and lesbian fellow citizens, because they need to be treated equally under the law. We will stand up for the rights and futures of our wives and daughters and partners, because I believe that the best measure of whether a nation is going to be successful is whether they are tapping the talents of their women and treating them as full participants in politics and society and the econ.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Queensland University Address (November 2014)

God, Faith, Religion, Law

“If you are a woman, if you are a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, The Notorious C.H.O. Tour
Context: “And I have a lot of self-esteem, which is amazing, because I’m probably somebody who wouldn’t necessarily have a lot of self esteem as I am considered a minority and if you are a woman, if you are a person of color, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it's going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women's and gay men's culture. It's all about how you have to look a certain way, or else you're worthless. You know, when you look in the mirror and think, ‘Ugh, I'm so ugly, I'm so fat, I'm so old.’ Don't you know that's not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising. Magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself, so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around crème that doesn't turn around shit. If you don't have self-esteem, you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you want to go for. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to call yourself an American. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote; you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution, and our revolution is long overdue.

World, Intelligence, Personality

“Anyway, how are you and Ramona doing?'

Uh… you know. Pretty good.'

Have you said the L-Word yet?'

The L-Word? You mean? Lesbian?'
Uh… No. The other L-Word.'

?'

Okay. Uh, It's "love." I wasn't trying to trick you or anything.”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together

Love

“I am going to sing lesbian love songs and support gay rights no matter what. The rest is public relations.”

Jasmine Guy (1962) American actor, director and singer

Love, Support, Singing

“Look, I can't go out with you, because… because… because I'm a lesbian.”

Louise Rennison book Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

Source: Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

“In my paranoid world every storekeeper thinks I’m stealing, every man thinks I’m a prostitute or a lesbian, every woman thinks I’m a lesbian or arrogant, and every child and animal sees the real me and it is evil.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: It Chooses You

World, Thinking, Evil, Animals

“But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Women, Sleep

“But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Problem

“Not wanting anyone to pop my bubble by speaking to me, I immediately began reading Lesbian Nuns, and that did the trick. No one attempted small talk.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Source: Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters

Reading

“If I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I'm sick of the world thinking I'm straight. I've worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian”

Leslie Feinberg Stone Butch Blues

Source: Stone Butch Blues

World, Thinking

““What do lesbians have against capitalized letters?”
“Capitalization implies a hierarchy, that some letters are more special than others.””

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

“And let's not make any mistake, or gloss over that fact: Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are at risk every day of their lives. Not only are we the group most at risk of violence, we are most at risk of job discrimination, losing our families; homophobia retains its title as the last socially acceptable form of bigotry.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

People, Family

“No one has ever gone broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer.”

Dan Savage book Skipping Towards Gomorrah

Source: Skipping Towards Gomorrah (2002), p. 216

“One of my first jobs was on a lesbian cruise. I was the ship comedian for the Lesbian Love Boat.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

Love

“For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chicago Tribune (1 April 1998)

Women, Men, People, Courage

“There’s not a lesbian hero that everybody can relate to.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

quoting Shazia Mirza
"Complete Hero" (2009)

“As you can tell, my Halloween costume this year is once again middle-aged lesbian pundit in cheap jacket. Boo.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC (October 31, 2012)

Age

“Imagine if you were attacked in the street just for holding hands with your partner. Imagine if your children were bullied or isolated at school just for who they are. Sadly, such experiences remain part of everyday life for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) citizens in Europe. Discrimination should have no place in our Union.”

Věra Jourová (1964) Czech politician

From ' List of actions by the Commission to advance LGBTI equality' http://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/files/lgbti_actionlist_en.pdf, Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, 2016.

Life, Children, School, Imagination

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reuters (31 March 1998)

People, Justice, Dreams

“I was reading an article about this case in California, where two lesbians were fighting over the custody of children that genetically were traceable to one, but which the other had raised. You know what? Nobody even thought about or mentioned, nobody asked a simple question about whether the father of those children should have any claim, because, very often in these relationships, they are conducted in such a way and conception occurs in such a way as to intentionally mask who the father might be, so that children must grow up without knowing who their father is. And that means that an incestuous situation could easily arise in our society, it's more than likely to arise--not to mention every other kind of incestuous complication.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Rally in defense of marriage, Boston, Massachusetts, May 14, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_05_14boston.htm. 2009

Children, Way, Question, Reading

“Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando's LGBT community. They have been through something that nobody could ever experience. This is a very dark moment in America's history. A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub, not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens, because of their sexual orientation.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

History, Communication

“And again, don't misunderstand. I am not here bashing people who are homosexuals, who are lesbians, who are bisexual, who are transgender. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life, and sexual identity disorders. This is a very real issue. It's not funny, it's sad.
Any of you who have members of your family that are in the lifestyle — we have a member of our family that is. This is not funny. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say this is "gay". It's anything but gay.
It's profoundly sad to recognize that almost all, if not all, individuals who have gone into the lifestyle have been abused at one time in their life, either by a male or by a female. There's been profound hurt and profound things that have happened in almost all of their lives.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

2010s

Life, People, Sadness, Family

“I've experienced all kinds of discrimination," Oshima says. "Only people who've been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to. Like that lovely pair we just met." He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. "Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas-none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. With those women I should've just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can't do that. I say things I shouldn't, do things I shouldn't do. I can't control myself. That's one of my weak points.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 19, Oshima

Love, Women, Men, Pain

“If there was a problem connected with my being a lesbian, even after I became aware of it, it was the loneliness, the fact that I didn't know anybody else like me.”

Elsa Gidlow (1898–1986) Canadian-American poet

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977), as cited in Palmer, Chris, October 6, 1978, "' Word is Out' an important film on gays http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=we08AAAAIBAJ&sjid=Yi4MAAAAIBAJ&pg=3700%2C2698575", Bangor Daily News.

Problem, Loneliness

“In contrast to earlier gay law reform and equality-oriented movements, the 1970s LGBT liberation movement did not seek to ape heterosexual values or secure the acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities within the existing sexual conventions. Indeed, it repudiated the prevailing sexual morality and institutions - rejecting not only heterosexism (heterosexual supremacism) but also male machismo, with its oppressive predisposition to rivalry, toughness and aggression; the extreme expressions of which are the rapist, queer-basher, racist murderer and war criminal.
The "radical drag" and "gender-bender" politics of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the early 1970s glorified and promoted male gentleness. A conscious, if sometimes exaggerated, attempt to renounce the oppressiveness of masculinity and male privilege, it rejected straight macho values; identifying them with the subordination of women and LGBT people. The GLF was truly revolutionary because it attempted to subvert male-female gender roles and straight patriarchy. It denounced the ethos of masculine competitiveness, domination and violence; instead affirming the worthwhileness of male sensitivity and affection between men and, in the case of lesbians, the intrinsic value of an eroticism and love independent of maleness.
These ideas led me to propose that without the construction of a cult of machismo and a mass of aggressive male egos, neither sexual, gender, class, racial, speciesist nor imperialist oppression are possible.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Machismo Underpins War and Tranny http://www.petertatchell.net/masculinity/machismo-underpins-war-and-tyranny.htm, Official Website

Love, Women, Men, War

“It's extremely dangerous trying to resolve political problems outside the framework of the law — first the ‘Rose Revolution', then they'll think up something like blue. [word play here: "rose" having the colloquial sense of "lesbian" in modern Russian, and "blue" meaning "gay"]”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

On the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, News conference http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/russia/article405454.ece, (23 December 2004). On Ukraine

Law, Problem, Thinking, Sense

“I was asked by one of the reports whether or not I would call Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist. I didn't mention her name. See, one of the articles said I had mentioned her. This is not true. I didn't mentioned her. But leave that aside. All I said was, she had come forward as a lesbian, she identifies herself as someone who engages in homosexual sexuality. I have just said that by definition, it involves selfish hedonism. I can't change that. Now, it might be true [that] the argument I've just given is the best argument in support of the Republican plank on gay marriage that I think can be made. There are lots of other arguments that can be added, but, in principle, that's the best one because we need to understand that marriage is procreational sex, not recreational sex. Now, I want to tell you. If my daughter or anybody else engages in behavior that put them under that descriptive label, I will not consent to lie about it, and I will not tell the American people that I support a plank that requires this logic and then exempt my daughter from the logic that it requires.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Party for the President, September 2, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_09_02partypresident.htm. 2009

Marriage, People, Lie, Sex

“I'd like to start off by telling you some great news. I got approved for a new reality show—it's an extreme makeover show for middle-aged lesbians, called "This Old Bull-Dyke". We already have a sponsor, too- Wolverine steel-toed boots has picked it up. We had another title, but the censors nixed it; it was originally going to be called, "Pimp My Muff!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

Behavioral Problems

Age, Reality

“And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Remarks to Pat Robertson after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on The 700 Club (13 September 2001) (audio recording) https://home.comcast.net/~joe.grabko/falwell.mp3; more at "Falwell and Above" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/rumors/falwell.htm Falwell later told CNN: I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize. CNN (14 September 2001) Falwell: "If we decide to change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation was built we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us as he has in the past." Amanpour: "So you still stand by that." Falwell: "I stand right by it." Interviewed by CNN's Christiana Amanpour about his current feelings regarding blame for the September 11th attacks, and whether or not he still feels as he did when he made the conversial statement cited above (8 May 2007) (video recording) http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/cnn-just-last-week-falwell-reiterated.html. This statement attesting that he still blamed so many was made one week before his death.

God, People, School, Way

“I am a lesbian trapped in a man's body.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Unrepeatable (1994)

“A growing revulsion against the atrocities (committed against farm animals) might well have a positive effect on reducing those practiced regularly on these shores against the aged, African-Americans, poor whites, Latinos, women, lesbians and gays, social activists, Native Americans and Asians, to name but a few of our perennial pariahs.”

William Kunstler (1919–1995) American lawyer and civil rights activist

Speech at the American Bar Association (August 1992); as quoted in Henry Spira, "Animal Rights: The Frontiers of Compassion" https://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=hensart, Peace & Democracy News (Summer 1993).

Women, Age, Animals

“Visionary idealism is a male art form. The lesbian aesthete does not exist. But if there were one, she would have learned from the perverse male mind.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 117

Art, Learning

“Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?”

Tom Coburn (1948) Medical doctor, politician

GOP Senate candidate in Oklahoma speaks of 'rampant' lesbianism in schools http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_9ff48ab7-2233-50c1-8a13-b1b6b715f7b0.html, August 31, 2004.

School, Girl, Thinking

“It leads to the personal enslavement of individuals. Because if you're involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it's bondage. Personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

EdWatch National Education Conference, November 6, 2004
Michele Bachmann in 2004: Homosexuality is "personal enslavement"
2011-07-13
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20079221-503544.html
2011-07-17
https://archive.is/YKg1q
2013-06-28
2010s

Personality, Despair

“Our call to people of goodwill and justice, and especially to all gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people, and those who support and love us —our allies in the fight for liberty and justice for all— is to take action.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

Love, People, Justice, Support

“So David outside of gay and lesbian issues, first of all no one should get fired because they are gay or lesbian period. But when you set these laws up my experience with these laws are you create a protected class. And I speak as someone who started a one man handyman business in Albuquerque in 1974 and grew it to over a thousand employees… I’ll tell you because of our laws that we passed on safety issues that this whole notion of whistle blower legislation it sounds great but the reality is… employees that were horrible declared themselves to be whistle blowers in the safety category or they declared themselves an alcoholic because of legislation [feedback] the American for Disabilities Act… I want that person who breaks a window breaks a windshield with a rock prosecuted on the basis that they threw a rock through a windshield not because they were motivated by hate.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
Sound Government

Hate, Alcohol, Law, Motivation

“There is this incredible, indelible community that has sprung up around the show, a community that gathers in homes and clubs, from Los Angeles to Topeka, Kansas and around the world. A community that, in some places, meets quietly in a lesbian bar that doesn’t even exist depending on whom you ask.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

“It’s a Wrap”, message posted on ourchart.com (16 October 2008) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/speeches/oc.html#wrap.

World, Angels, Home, Communication

“At the 2008 Lambda Literary Awards (the awards the LGBT community gives to books ignored by straight book awards) not a single lesbian book nominated for best novel was published by a mainstream press. Our literature is disappearing at the same time we are being told we are winning our rights. How can we be equal citizens if our stories are not allowed to be part of our nation's story?”

Sarah Schulman (1958) American writer

Source: The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), p. 151

Books, Communication, Literature, Time

“My name is Ellen and I'm a vegetarian. Just to add another label to me: I am a lesbian, aquarian and vegetarian. I've said it…”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen Degeneres hosting Paul McCartney and Friends Live: PETA's Millennium Concert, 1999

“Cynthia: Of all the times to come out to your family, I had to do it right before the last presidential debate. Damn that John Kerry!
Ginger: Cynthia, I'm sorry your parents are having a meltdown, but it's hardly John Kerry's fault.
Cynthia: When he called Mary Cheney a lesbian, I felt like I had been drop-kicked.
Ginger: Well, Mary Cheney is a lesbian, and you're a political football.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#452, "Absolute Value" (2004), collected in Invasion of the DTWOF (2005).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Family, Parent, Time, Football

“[N]o one appeared to wonder whether this S-M proliferation was a lesbian copy of a faggot imitation of patriarchal backlash against feminism.”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

"The Politics of Sado-Masochistic Fantasies", in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist, p 235.

Appearance

“I recently became vegan because I felt that as a Jewish lesbian, I wasn’t part of a small enough minority. So now I’m a Jewish lesbian vegan.”

Carol Leifer (1956) American actor and comedian

“Confessions of a Jewish *** Vegan,” in PETA.org (9 July 2009) https://www.peta.org/blog/confessions-jewish-lesbian-vegan/.

Parting

“One of the most startling discoveries of my career was when I realized that the strongest women in the world are not lesbians but heterosexual women, who know how to handle men.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 80

Women, Men, World

“But I… don't believe that gender is just binary, and I never have, so that's what pulls me to sometimes politically identify as a lesbian, because I'm a feminist, and I feel like women are still so suppressed. I don't feel like we've come that far. But I also feel like there are people all along the spectrum, so in that sense, I feel like I would be more bisexual or just, you know, open-ended.”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Interview with The L Words Daniela Sea https://web.archive.org/web/20121012071650/http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/TV/2006/1/sea3.html", AfterEllen (3 January 2006).

Women, People, Feeling, Sense

“[I]t is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 162-3
Desiring Arabs

“I had crushes on women — actually I loved charismatic, extreme people, women or men. By high school I was saying I must be a lesbian, because if you are attracted to women, you're a lesbian. I was also attracted to men, but I didn't get along with men.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Love, Women, Men, People

“Middle-class men, neutered by office life and daunted by feminist rhetoric, are shrinking. Lesbianism is increasing, since anxious, unmasculine men have little to offer. Women are simply more interesting to them. Male homosexuality is increasing, because masculinity is in crisis and because maternal consciousness, severed from the support network of the extended family, has become a psychotic system, forcing the young to struggle for life against clinging personal fantasy.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 90

Life, Women, Men, Family

“To opine that, unknown to humans, God had hitherto created some people to be homosexuals and lesbians (i. e., sexual orientations) is tantamount to creating God in our own image and introducing a cancerous element into the fabric of the African understanding of marriage and family.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

God, Marriage, People, Family

“That's something the kids should know about. Reading is a gateway to witchcraft and lesbianism.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

I Love the 90's Part Deux, VH1, 1998; referring to Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Reading

“I have lesbian impulses, so I understand how a man looks at a woman. … When I was growing up, it wasn't possible for me to do anything about my attraction to women. Lesbianism didn't exist in that time, as far as I knew.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Women, Understanding, Time

“I wanted [Martin] to be a really decent human being because I didn't want to depict the cliché that a woman becomes a lesbian because her husband is terrible to her.”

Patricia Rozema (1958) Canadian film director

On Martin, the husband of Camille Baker, in When Night Is Falling as quoted in "Patricia Rozema : The Mermaid's Song" interview with Patricia Rozema, in The View from Here : Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (2007) by Matthew Hays, p. 287

“If Gore had been elected president, right now he would just be finding that last lesbian quadriplegic for the Special Forces team.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Fall Fashion Preview: Cowboy Boots In, Flip-Flops Out" (14 October 2004) http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15519. 2004

“Lesbian feminists, for all their ideals of sisterhood and solidarity, can treat each other with a fickleness, a parasitic exploitativeness, and vicious spite that have to be seen to be believed.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 80

“[A social worker has shown up to talk about Raffi's adoption during dinner with Toni's parents]
Sr. Ortiz: What's going on here?
Toni: Uh… mamá y papá, Gwynne… viene de la iglesia! ¡Sí, sí! Y viene para hablar… uh… del bautizo de Rafael! Decidimos que sería bueno que lo bautizaramos! (Mom, dad… Gwynne is… from the church! Yeah! And she's here to talk about, uh… Rafael's christening! We've decided to get him baptized!)
Sra. Ortiz: Gracias a Dios!
Sr. Ortiz: How very good of you to come, Sister.
Gwynne: Back at ya, brother! It's a pleasure in this day and age to meet folks who are so supportive of their daughter's decision.
Sra. Ortiz: That is unusual?! This country is even more wicked than I thought!
Gwynne: Yes, it's a shame, but many lesbians' parents tend to disapprove.
Sr. Ortiz: What does her being a … a homosexual have to do with it?
Gwynne: Exactly, Mr. Ortiz! If only more people felt like you!”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#246, "The Converts" (1996), collected in Hot, Throbbing DTWOF (1997).
Dykes to Watch Out For

People, Pleasure, Age, Moms

“The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one's breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry "caste." In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either "poverty" or "consumerism." In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry "alienation." In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry "oppression." In a society of boundless private charity, they cry "avarice." In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the "exploitation" of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry "injustice." In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like "liberty" in quotation marks when these refer to the West.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Women, World, Dreams, Behavior

“Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 672

Women, Marriage

“I want to cry out to these young girls: Stop! Think!... For heaven's sake, don't fall down the rabbit hole of the lesbian scene. You will never escape, and your talent will wither on the vine. Your energy will be wasted and absorbed in repetition without progression. Women alone are Spenser's Bower of Bliss, enclosed, comfortable, and dangerous.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 82

Women, Girl, Thinking, Cry

“It is possible, after all, to 'fake' the 'realest' possible 'evidence' of heterosexuality: man or woman, one can participate in heterosexual marriage and even help produce a brood of spawn and still 'turn out' to have been 'living a lie,' to have been 'really' gay or lesbian all along. Precisely because there is no final 'proof' of heterosexuality, heterosexuality must constantly set about trying to prove itself, assert itself, insist on itself. Indeed, as Butler argues, heterosexuality as hegemonic institution is finally nothing more than its own repetitive self-insistence, nothing other than 'a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations' (Bodies 125). Or, as Janet E. Halley puts it in regard to legalistic constructions of heterosexuality, normative heterosexuality 'is a highly unstable, default characterization for people who have not marked themselves or been marked by other as homosexual.”

Calvin Thomas (critical theorist) (1956) American academic

As Halley continues: 'The resulting class of heterosexuals is a default class, home to those who have not fallen out of it.'
Source: Straight with a Twist (2000), p. 28.

Marriage, People, Lie, Home

“As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Interviewed in The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/aug/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview8, August 31, 2002.

Death, Knowledge

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment ("Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked", Washington Post, 23 August 1992); it is sometimes claimed that this statement appeared in Robertson's 1992 GOP convention speech, but this is not the case (see also transcript http://www.patrobertson.com/Speeches/1992GOPConvention.asp)

Women, Children, Family

“I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than "climate change."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/902373016818126849 (August 30, 2017) 2017

God, Change

“And some sad news… the first lesbian couple to legally get married in the state of Massachusetts has split up. They cited irreconcilable similarities.”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Monologue, 24 July 2006
The Tonight Show

Sadness

“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day…
The lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she's piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Turning the Wheel (1981), section 2

Life, Truth, History, Question

“I've argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn't go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The red's become green but the goals remain the same. And there's no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we're all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

How Hard Can It Be? The World According to Clarkson Volume 4 (2010)

Age, Way, Light, Time

“[Demystifying lesbian sex for an interviewer] In a way, the sex isn’t really that different… From what I can tell, no, not really. All the things that men and women do together, think of everything that men and women do together, women and women can do together. And that makes you realize that sex is just simply about connecting with another person, or about intimacy…”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Asahi Radio Interview, Japan (2008) http://publications.asahi.com/ae/interviews/jennifer/index.shtml

Women, Men, Sex, Way

“He sung,—the notes at first were low,
Like the whispers of love, or the breathings of woe:
The waters were hushed, and the winds were stay'd,
As he sang his farewell to his Lesbian maid!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Arion from The London Literary Gazette (23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Water

“The election's coming just in a couple of weeks, and I hope you're praying about your vote. One of the propositions, of course, that I want to mention is Proposition 8, which is the proposition that had to be instituted because the courts threw out the will of the people. And a court of four guys actually voted to change a definition of marriage that has been going for 5,000 years.
Now let me say this really clearly: we support Proposition 8 — and if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8. I never support a candidate, but on moral issues I come out very clear.
This is one thing, friends, that all politicians tend to agree on. Both John McCain and Barack Obama, I flat out asked them "what is your definition of marriage?" and they both said the same thing. It is the traditional, historic, universal definition of marriage: one man and one woman, for life. … There are about 2% of Americans are homosexual or gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2% of the population determine — to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture, and every single religion, for 5,000 years. … So I urge you to support Proposition 8, and pass that word on. I'm going to be sending out a note to pastors on what I believe about this, but everybody knows what I believe about it, and they heard me at the civil forum when I asked both Obama and McCain on their views.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

regarding California Proposition 8 to amend the state constitution to not recognize same-sex marriage, as quoted in "News & Views 10/23/2008 Part 3 (Prop 8)" in Pastor Rick's News and Views (23 October 2008) http://www.saddleback.com/blogs/newsandviews/index.html?contentid=1502

Life, Marriage, People, Religion

“Tommy started to play the guitar and sing. He and I had trekked more than once downtown to the Folk Center to hear a barefoot hillbilly woman in a long, faded skirt intone Elizabethan songs and pluck at a dulcimer or to listen, frightened and transported, to a big black Lesbian with a crew cut moan her way through the blues. The People — those brawny, smiling farmers, those plump, wholesome teens bursting out of bib overalls, those toothless ex-cons, those white-eyed dust bowel victims — the People, half-glimpsed in old photos, films and WPA murals, were about to reemerge, we trusted, into history and our lives.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Five (p. 120).

People, Smile, Way, Photo

“Gay and straight men have much more in common than do gay men with lesbians or straight men with straight women. Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he he just falls back into her and is swallowed up. This is the agonizing myth-pattern in the comic, matricidal Psycho (1960), one of the hauntingly emblematic films of our time.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 23

Women, Men, Time

“I'm not wearing any pants and the lesbians are waiting!”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Strong Black Woman (2006)

Waiting

“Of course I’m delighted that Fun Home has met with such success, but it still strikes me as very unlikely that an odd, cerebral story about a lesbian and her closeted gay suicidal mortician father would have struck a chord with anyone but me.”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

on her breakout graphic novel http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article6914181.ece?token=null&offset=108&page=10 Other

Home, Suicide, Success

“Imagine finding out you got rejected from community college, then finding out that your alcoholic father got arrested for domestic abuse, you lost all your life savings in a Ponzi scheme, and all of this happens to you while you're on the space shuttle Challenger. Then you wake up and it's all a bad dream, except you realize that you're at work without clothes on, and work is NASA and you're really on the space shuttle Challenger. That's what this movie is like, only infinitely worse. Everything about this movie pissed me off, save for the lesbian finger bang scene. Except even that sucked because it wasn't in the movie.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Quantum of Solace is a shitpile. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=quantum_of_phallus The Best Page in the Universe

Life, Alcohol, Dreams, Imagination

“And then who comes along to save the day? A couple of tool-belt wearing, golf-loving, Dinah Shore weekend lesbians sent from heaven.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Strong Black Woman (2006)

Love

“Silence equals nonexistence. If I don't give too much information, if I don't go there, it's like I was never there in the first place. I noticed this most right after September 11, when there were no gays or lesbians invited to give their opinion about what was going on. There were no women invited to give their opinion. There were hardly any people of color invited, and if they were, they were Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans talking about the violence that they'd experienced because they shared the same skin color as the terrorists, which is heinous and dumb!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

That's like arresting Emmanuel Lewis because Gary Coleman punched that woman!
From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Women, People, Color, Silence

“So I was on the ship, with 800 lesbians. We can't get off. So much drama. "Were you looking at her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her? WELL, WERE YOU?!" We all got on the same cycle.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

“While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As written in "Sapphism is more than designer-dykery" by Nigella Lawson in The Guardian http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,416467,00.html (31 December 2000)

Women, Sex, Way

“The categories gay and lesbian are not universal at all and can only be universalized by the epistemic, ethical, and political violence unleashed on the rest of the world by the very international human rights advocates whose aim is to defend the very people their intervention is creating.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in his book Desiring Arabs (2008).
Desiring Arabs

People, World, Universe

“I have found few lesbians with whom I can discourse for more than five minutes without hitting some tiresome barrier of resentment or ideology. … Again and again over the decades, as I did my time, in frustrated boredom, in lesbian bars, trying with spectacular lack of success to make friends or just converse, I would end up gabbing for hours with some stray gay man. He might have dropped out of school at fourteen, but he had opinions, tastes, energy, wit. Is there something innately different about the gay male brain?”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 74

School, Time, Success

“Some have argued that lesbian sexuality-meaning here simply women having sex with women not men-solves the problem of gender by eliminating men from women's voluntary sexual encounters. Yet women's sexuality remains constructed under conditions of male supremacy; women remain socially defined as women in relation to men; the definition of women as men's inferiors remains sexual even if not heterosexual, whether men are present at the time or not.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: "Pleasure under Patriarchy" (1989) Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 2 pp. 314-346

Women, Men, Sex, Problem

“If you had told me 28 years ago that the largest organization in the world touching the lives of gays and lesbians would be a church, I would not have believed you. So many members of the lesbian and gay community feel they have had violence done to them by religious groups that it is very difficult to evangelize any members of our community. But we do evangelize.”

Troy Perry (1940) American activist and clergy

Quoted in the Christian Century in 1996.

World, Feeling, Communication

“Willow: Questions. Great.
Tara: W-we can answer questions.
Nigel: Good. I need to know a little bit more about the Slayer, and about the both of you. Your relationship, whatever you can tell me.
Tara: O-o-our relationship?
Willow: We're friends.
Tara: Good friends.
Willow: Girlfriends, actually.
Tara: Yes, we're girlfriends.
Willow: We're in love. W-we're lovers. We're lesbian, gay-type lovers.
Nigel: I meant your relationship with the Slayer.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

All the Way [6.6]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Love, Lovers, Question

“When I meet gay men anywhere in the world, there is a spontaneity and a spirit of fun and mischief that lesbians seem incapable of.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 78

Men, World

“When I say this game is hard, I mean hard like nipples-on-a-blind-lesbian-in-a-fish-market hard.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

The Best Page in the Universe

Game, Fish

“I think it’s more difficult to be vegan than gay. I think people have a harder time accepting it; people feel more uncomfortable with a vegan at their dinner table than they do a lesbian. It’s confronting. It’s kind of suggesting that what someone else is doing is bad or wrong, and it hits them on a more personal level. … If somebody is setting there eating a steak watching you eat polenta, they’re thinking that you’re trying to preach to them or you’re trying to convert them in some way. Whereas with being gay, I don’t think anyone’s concerned that that’s the agenda. “Hey, Mom, you also have to be gay. I’m gay and so should you be!””

Portia de Rossi (1973) Australian-American actress

Certainly when I told her that I was vegan, it forced her to look at her habits. Interview for VegNews magazine, July/August 2011 issue. Quoted in VegetarianStar.com http://vegetarianstar.com/2011/07/07/portia-de-rossi-on-vegnews-julyaugust-2011-issue/.

People, Way, Feeling, Moms

“[Planned Parenthood] "is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism – everything that the Bible condemns." (The 700 Club, variously dated as 9 Apr. 1991 or 14 Jan. 1991).”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

People

“"Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft."”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 1, p. 21

Alcohol, World, Fraud, Christ

“Women have ironically enjoyed a greater symbolic, if not practical freedom. Thus it is that male and not female homosexuality has been harshly punished by law. A debater in Lucian declares, “Far better that a women, in the madness of her lust, should usurp the nature of man, than that man’s noble nature should be so degraded as to play the woman.” Similarly today, lesbian interludes are a staple of heterosexual pornography. Ever since man emerged from the dominance of nature, masculinity has been the most fragile and problematic of psychic states.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 125

Women, Law, Nature, Freedom

“If we can open ourselves to ourselves and each other, as women, only then can we begin to fight for and create, in fact reclaim, not "Lesbian Nation" or "Amazon Nation"—let alone some false state of equality—but a real Feminist Revolution, a proud gynocratic world that runs on the power of women. Not in the male sense of power, but in the sense of a power plant—producing energy. And to each, that longing for, that right to, a great love filled in reality, for all women, and children and men and animals and trees and water and all life, an exquisite diversity in unity. That world breathed and exulted on this planet some twelve thousand years ago, before the patriarchy arose to crush it.”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

Going Too Far, p. 187.

Love, Life, Women, Men

“I do have things I would like to see adopted on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people: they include the right to marry the individual of our choice; the right to serve in the military to defend our country; and the right to a job based solely on our own qualifications. I acknowledge that this is an agenda, but I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people's rights to get married, join the army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.”

Barney Frank (1940) American politician, former member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts

Frank on being accused of having a "radical homosexual agenda" Statement of U.S. Representative Barney Frank on the Inclusion of people who are Transgender in Antidiscrimination Protection Legislation (March 2008) http://www.house.gov/frank/antidiscriminationmarch2008.html

People, History, Thinking, Country