“When Air National Guard absentee George W. Bush dressed up in [Tom] Cruise’s ‘Top Gun’ costume and used the USS Abraham Lincoln as a giant, nuclear-powered strap-on, that was as brazen an exhibition of cross-dressing as there’s ever been.”
- Author Mark Simpson, inventor of the word “metrosexual” (Salon.com)
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“I will defend the sanctity of marriage against activist courts and local officials who want to redefine marriage. The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution. I support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
- George W. Bush, addressing the National Association of Evangelicals Convention
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“If the [Bush] administration and their allies want to make a campaign issue out of amending the Constitution [to ban gay marriage], we will not only stand against it, but we will point out that they’d rather talk about taking away rights and undermining the ability of Americans to live their own lives, to have their own families, than to talk about the miserable economy, to talk about their miserable foreign policy, to talk about their rollback of environmental laws and workers’ rights, education and health care.”
- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., addressing the Empire State Pride Agenda
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“I have no problems with that issue [same-sex marriage] at all. … Marriage has been undermined by divorce. So don’t tell me about marriage. … People should look at their own life and look in their own mirror. I think marriage has been undermined for a number of years, if you look at the facts and figures on it. So don’t blame the gay, lesbian, transgender, transsexual community, please don’t blame them for it.”
- Chicago Mayor Richard Daley at a press conference.
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“Aristotle said, ‘You can’t live a good life in an unjust society.’ And I think there’s tremendous injustice when we deny the rights of 40-plus million Americans – the same rights that my wife and me have. That’s wrong, and I can’t feel in any way, shape or form that my marriage is as whole when I’m denying the same rights that I have as a married man to millions — millions and millions — of Americans.”
- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on CBS’s “60 Minutes II,”
“That train [gay marriage] had already left the station. This was going to be used as a wedge issue regardless of whether or not some crazy mayor was sworn in in San Francisco or not. I can’t stand my party right now. Is it political expediency? Is it accommodation that we’re after? Or is it about standing up on principles and values?”
- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom speaking at Harvard University
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“We can’t ever back down on this issue. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a book on the battle for civil rights equality and entitled it ‘Why We Can’t Wait.’ It’s the same thing for same-sex marriage equality. Some people tell us this isn’t the time to push the matter. But for them, there’s never going to be a right time. So we have to just fight like hell.”
- New Paltz, N.Y., Mayor Jason West announcing that he would lead the town’s first gay-pride parade. West was being prosecuted for marrying same-sex couples.
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“I support it [gay marriage] because we’re asking for the same thing. If I have a partner and something happens to me, I want that partner to enjoy the benefits of what we have reaped together. It’s a civil-rights thing, isn’t it? … It’s like African-Americans. We were not allowed to go through certain doors because of our race, our color. Jews were not allowed to buy property.”
– Singer Eartha Kitt to the Seattle Gay News, Feb. 11.
