Quote of the Day

I know this may be hard for you to believe, but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don't consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being.  These aren't radicals or weirdos, Mama.  They are shopclerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus.  Their attitude is nether patronizing nor pitying.  And their message is so simple:  Yes, you are a person.  Yes, I like you.  Yes, it's all right for you to like me, too.

-- Armistead Maupin, "Letter to Mama"

Quote of the Day

No, Mama, I wasn't "recruited."  No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor.  But you know what?  I wish someone had.  I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, "You're all right, kid.  You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else.  You're not crazy or sick or evil.  You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends -- all kinds of friends -- who don't give a damn who you go to bed with.  Most of all, though, you can love and be loved without hating yourself for it."

-- Armistead Maupin, "Letter to Mama"

Quote of the Day

My father's arch-conservatism deepened as the years wore on, even after his party climbed into bed with the fundamentalist "Holy Rollers" he had once openly disparaged.  The platforms of the candidates he supported -- including, of course, Jesse Helms -- were growing more virulently antigay.  He claimed -- as my brother, Tony, would later claim -- that his political beliefs were independent of his love for me.  To me that meant that his love for me simply wasn't important enough to make him challenge the relentless fag-bashing of his party.  I should be grateful for his tolerance, he seemed to be saying, since I was the one who wasn't playing by the rules.  So I withdrew.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 281

Quote of the Day

Queers who embolden one another to be honest about themselves can feel real exhilaration in that moment, and it can last them a lifetime.  Your tribe, as [Christopher] Isherwood called it, becomes a source of great sustenance.  A terrible weight that you have borne for years becomes apparent by its sudden absence.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 260 - 261

Quote of the Day

It's hard for the South to get things right from the start, because, ever since the Civil War, it has taught itself to equate righteousness with losing.  We must be on the right track, y'all, because everyone else is against us.  In my seventy-two years I have heard Southerners offer this excuse for everything from segregation to miscegenation laws to the"religious liberty" currently invoked in the name of subjugating gay people.  And in every instance, when the Supreme Court reminds them that decent Americans don't act in this way anymore, they haul out the states' rights flag and brandish it in a Rebel-gray fog of amnesia.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 51

Quote of the Day

The South makes social progress, like everywhere else, though it does its level best not to notice it while it's going on.  Only later, when it stands a serious risk of looking like a total asshole, does it claim to have always been on the side of decency and justice.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 51

Quote of the Day

My youth would be like that, the slow decay of cherished myths -- about politics and race, about love itself -- until nothing was left but compost from which something authentic could finally begin to grow.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 22

Quote of the Day

Sooner or later, though, no matter where in the world we live, we must join the diaspora, venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us.  We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 2