“In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of the people that come and watch the gay Halloween parade, where all those excesses are on display, those are straight families, and they think it's funny. But what people don't think is so funny is when two middle-aged lawyers who are married to each other move in next door to you and your wife and they have adopted a Korean girl and they want to send her to school with your children and they want to socialize with you and share a drink over the backyard fence. That creeps people out, especially Christians. So, I don't think gay marriage is a conservative issue. I think it's a radical issue.” LoveReligionHatePoliticsMarriageGayActivismQueerRadicalismGlbtSame Sex Marriage Author:Edmund White
“Young people dislike and even fail to understand our slang; my gay students ask me what “tricking” means. It’s all old whore’s slang, of course.” GaySlang Book:The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading Source: The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading
“There is an enormous pressure placed on gay novelists because they are the only spokespeople. The novelist's first obligation is to be true to his own vision, not to be some sort of common denominator or public relations man to all gay people.” PeopleMenFirstsCommonVisionGayRelationPressureEnormousObligationBeing TrueNovelistsGay PeoplePublic RelationsCommon DenominatorSpokespeople Author:Edmund White
“The scorn directed against drags is especially virulent; they have become the outcasts of gay life, the "queers" of homosexuality.In fact, they are classic scapegoats. Our old fears about our sissiness, still with us though masked by the new macho fascism, are now located, isolated, quarantined through our persecution of the transvestite.” StillsFactsGayClassicFascismIsolatedDragHomosexualityPersecutionScornOutcastMachoScapegoatTransvestitesGay Life Book:States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America Source: States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America
“San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled--or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?” KnowsWayShouldProblemDreamWantedCitiesFantasyParticularGayNotionDaily LifeTransformedFulfilledVividSan FranciscoAnticipate Book:States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America Source: States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America
“Dreadful is a poignant biography of a forgotten man who drank himself to death. It's a brilliant evocation of a self-hating gay novelist in the 1940s whom Gore Vidal once considered a rival.” MenSelfHateGayForgottenBrilliantNovelistsBiographiesRivalsDrankGorePoignant Author:Edmund White
“In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.” ThinkingMenBookBoysCasesNovelTeacherNeededGayAdultsExperienceEnjoyedEtcComing OutBetrayCreepy Author:Edmund White
