I Didn't Say It ...

Wade Davis Jr., openly gay former NFL player and executive director of the You Can Play Project, on battling internalized homophobia before and after coming out:

“We raise young boys to wear a mask of toughness in order to be a man, and we rob them of their childhood and their innocence. And sport is one of the many vehicles parents choose to help them put on this mask. [As] little boys we learn that being labeled ‘tough’ grants you a certain type of social capital and being thought of as weak or queer is suicidal, both athletically and socially. … I was never taught how to be myself or love myself. ... I’m standing gay. I’m walking gay. I’m running gay. Would you just stop being so gay?! That was wasted motion. Most of my life in fact was wasted motion. I would be giving up so much power by being gay. And I’d be violating the very essence that I was taught of what being a man was. So what is the cost of always wearing a mask, what is the cost of never being yourself? The cost is never really loving yourself, and never allowing someone else to love all of you.”

That cost is too high; too many young lives lost because of the stigma of being gay, especially athletic and gay.

Why don’t we teach our children to love themselves and each other first, and then teach them how to be athletes … artists … doctors … dancers … whatever?

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Bill Maher, on the GOP's insistence on ignoring facts:

“It hurts their feelings when we insult their values with our facts. ... I can’t honestly say I respect your view that the world is 5,000 years old because it’s 2016. If Sarah Palin claims nighttime is when Jesus puts a blanket over the sun and I disagree, does that make me smug? I’m sorry you find it irritating when liberals point out that global warming exists, or that racism exists, or that gay people exist. But here’s the thing. You guys were wrong about all that. Really. Check the climate science. Check the dashboard camera on the police car. Check your pastor’s internet history.”

Word.

But Republicans hate facts when fear and misinformation will do.

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RuPaul, on Nightline, on why RuPaul’s Drag Race will never be normal:

“I don’t think the show could ever go mainstream because drag is the antithesis of the matrix. You know, the matrix says, ‘Pick an identity and stick with it. Because I want to sell you some beer and shampoo and I need you to stick with what you are so I’ll know how to market it to you.’ Drag is the opposite. Drag says, ‘Identity is a joke.' [And] I think that I haven’t been accepted in mainstream media outlets like ‘The Tonight Show’ or ‘Ellen’ or the late-night shows because the only way they could actually have a conversation with me is to make fun of me, or if they could somehow make a joke about what I’m doing.”

Instead of making a joke, and giggling like fools about men in dresses, understand the art form, the talent, the drive it takes to be a drag queen; the guts it takes.

The charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent.

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Bryan Hawn, social media sensation and fitness expert on his well-endowed rear end: 

“When you’re six-foot-one, weigh 185 pounds, and have a V-shaped torso that tapers into a 30-inch waist and a shelfed-out backside, a lot of people assume it’s all genetic. In fact, my whole body was actually built from a stick. In high school, I was just a lanky, 145-pound kid who loved musical theater, soccer jocks, and Mark Walhberg’s Calvin Klein ads.”

I, too, love musical theater and Marky Mark’s underwear ads … and Hawn’s rear-end.

Just sayin’.

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I Didn't Say It ...

Ted Olson, who, along with fellow AFER attorney David Boies, represented Timothy Bostic and Tony London in their suit against Virginia, on the SCOTUS announcement:

"It does seem to suggest, if I was a federal judge, I would read today’s decision as saying that the opponents, if they still exist, on the Supreme Court of marriage equality have decided they don’t want to get into this and they sort of feel that the federal judges — one after the other, after the other, after the other — are getting it right and at this point they ought to just leave it alone. We believe, those of us who have been involved in this effort, that the Supreme Court having decided not to overturn or not to even review the decisions of these circuit courts ultimately will grant that same right and that same privilege to people all over the United States. To see the United States Supreme Court recognize in this way the love of these individuals and the happiness that they will soon be able to experience is the highlight of my life.”

It started as a trickle and may end as a landslide.

As it should …

Wade Davis Jr., former profession football player who came out as gay in 2012, on being gay, and his own journey to acceptance: 

"I did not want anyone to think I was gay, I started to perform more hetero norms of masculinity. I would go to strip clubs and when I did go to nightclubs, I made sure I left with a female. I was looking at my identity through the eyes of others. ... When you look at me, Jason Collins or Michael Sam, we show up with a certain type of masculinity that is typically accepted in this country. We can walk into a room and you'll think those guys are probably straight. We must make sure that any person can show up with any level of masculinity and be accepted."

An effeminate man, gay or straight, is still a man; two men in a relationship are still men — I loathe when anyone asks me or Carlos who the woman is in our relationship.

Gay men are men, get used to it.

Yvette Schneider, ex-ex-gay, meaning now she's not not gay, I guess, on the ex-gay movement and its demise:

"I think the ex-gay movement will be dead within the next 10 years. As churches become more gay-affirming, parents and church leaders won’t seek parachurch ministries to 'fix' in gay Christians what isn’t broken. The fact that the ex-gay movement has been a monumental failure with no real, lasting change in those who have sought to negate same-sex attractions and become heterosexual will become more and more apparent to the average lay Christian. This is especially true in the age of social media, when information spreads like wildfire and can’t easily be suppressed. I’m sure there will be pockets of people here and there who will still try to change someone’s orientation. But the movement as a relevant entity in the push for LGBT rights will be defunct."

Good. Haw damaging it is to try and force someone to suppress their true self because their family, or even they themselves, think being gay is wrong.

Raven-Symoné, on how it happened that she didn’t become Lohan:

"What I’ve learned is it’s unnecessary to go to the most popular restaurant in the world when you have a scandal on your head and then get mad that someone’s going to take a picture of you. That’s your fault, boo boo. Stay in the house.” 

Word. And snap.

Frank Bruni, writing in the New York Times, about the glut of folks working in Catholic schools fired for getting all same-sex married:

"Repeatedly over the last year and a half, I’ve written about teachers in Catholic schools and leaders in Catholic parishes who were dismissed from their posts because they were in same-sex relationships and — in many cases — had decided to marry. Every time, more than a few readers weighed in to tell me that these people had it coming. If you join a club, they argued, you play by its rules or you suffer the consequences. Oh really? The rules of this particular club prohibit divorce, yet the pews of many of the Catholic churches I’ve visited are populous with worshipers on their second and even third marriages. They walk merrily to the altar to receive communion, not a peep of protest from a soul around them. They participate fully in the rituals of the church, their membership in the club uncontested. The rules prohibit artificial birth control, and yet most of the Catholic families I know have no more than three children, which is either a miracle of naturally capped fecundity or a sign that someone’s been at the pharmacy."

Once again, he cuts through the muck and madness and shows the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.