LGBT news quotes (July 24, 2013)
“This financial compensation is one more step toward justice for Edie Windsor, and all of the men and women who confronted similar indifference at a time of deep personal loss.”
— New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on the state’s decision to refund estate taxes to same-sex spouses following the Supreme Court decision striking down DOMA. (Associated Press)
“With Russia about to hold the Winter Games in Sochi, the country is open to pressure. American and world leaders must speak out against Mr. Putin’s attacks and the violence they foster. The Olympic Committee must demand the retraction of these laws under threat of boycott.”
— Harvey Fierstein calls for using the threat of a boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly virulent campaign against homosexuals. (The New York Times)
“It’s shameful that two more people have been convicted of consensual same-sex conduct in Cameroon. … The government continues to send the message that LGBTI people are less than human.”
— Neela Ghoshal of Human Rights Watch on the conviction of two Cameroonian men for homosexuality just days after the brutal murder of gay activist Eric Ohena Lembembe. (Associated Press)
“I am of the generation whose BBC personnel files had Christmas trees on them. It meant you were ‘as camp as Christmas’ and thus a potential security risk.”
— Longtime BBC broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, 64, on being tagged early in his career as gay, because at the time gays were considered security risks. On being out, he says, “I was never ‘in.’” (Telegraph, U.K)
“Men who are taller, bigger, who don’t fit this lean six-pack shape, may not go any further if they can’t relate to these images.”
— HIV activist Christopher Hucks-Ortiz on the use of attractive, muscled models in safer-sex billboards currently being displayed in Los Angeles. (Los Angeles Times)
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