If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers.

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.

I enjoy being around people who disagree with me; and I enjoy being in non-political contexts and activities.

Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold.

If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers.

Homosexuality is like the weather. It just is.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

In many ways, my attachment to human freedom was completely compatible with my right to live freely as a homosexual.

The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set.

We've got fuel prices coming down and good travel numbers coming out, so it's not surprising airline stocks are going up.

My own early crusade for same-sex marriage, for example, is now mainstream gay politics. It wasn't when I started.

The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.

The Dixiecrats meet again in New York. Now they're called Republicans.

Al Gore's problem, in my view, is that he never liked politics. He's actually deeply uncomfortable in it but felt he had to do it because of his father. He's much more comfortable in a private sector role and has, in fact, been much more successful in a private sector role, and I admire him for that.

Anything that raises any internal honesty about gay life is inherently suspect.

I actually bought the argument that if we democratized Iraq, we could create a space for venting some of the stuff that's going on in the Middle East in these autocratic regimes that is expressing itself through jihadism, because it has nowhere else to express itself.

I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

I purge compulsively. I'm constantly shedding things.

I think if someone is writing continuously for 10 years and has not changed their mind about something - there's something wrong with them. They're not really thinking.

I've always been a pretty candid person. I'm not a very secretive person; I'm not a very discreet person. One of my best friends once described me as pathologically indiscreet.

The good news about me is that my friends and social network is entirely independent of politics.

The relationship of black Americans to Obama is sociologically riveting.

There is something about hearing your president affirm your humanity that you don't know what effect it has until you hear it.

Well, in the past, the size of government was one of the more fundamental dividing lines between Right and Left. The Right was supposed to represent the small government philosophy - limited spending, low taxes. Obviously, things have shifted.

What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship.

When I first started talking about gay marriage, most people in the gay community looked at me as if I was insane or possibly a fascist reactionary.

When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, 'Then there's no hope for me, Mum.'

Homophobia the fear that another man will treat you like you treat women.

Homophobia whether internalized or externalized is really fear its not hatred its fear. Its fear of the truth about ourselves.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.

I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards.

You know raising a family in the lifestyle of a professional athlete can be very difficult.

I love to see my family together. That's what life is about. It's about family.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Even though we were all celebrities to a certain extent, we all looked at each other as family.

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

I love my family.

I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life... though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.