“I think if the world were a fair and just place, there wouldn’t even need to be a gay label.”

I don’t have a good attention span and can’t spend long in record stores or video shops or games emporiums without getting grumpy.

I really worshipped Mama Cass a lot. Mama Cass, who was really fat and she didn’t lose weight. Yeah, she went on diets but for the most part of her life and the better part of her career she was a big person.

Even talking, I’m super-loud. I could never have that kind of meek, little wispy whimsical lavender and lace voice. It comes from my body. There’s no way I can fight it.

I’m shameless, and I love a pun. There’s a lot of Beth puns.

I’m like cheddar: Yes, other cheeses are more ooh la la, but I’m strong, mature, and oh so delicious.

Because I didn’t have any queer, lesbian, female role models I hated my own femininity and had to look deep within myself to create an identity that worked for me. Pop culture just doesn’t hand us enough variety to choose from.

I’m naturally a mousy blonde, so I dye my hair, and my eyebrows would disappear if I didn’t get through at least a pencil a month.

A beautiful plant is like having a friend around the house.

Barack Obama was amazing, but he wasn’t perfect. We all know that. He was the closest thing to perfect America’s ever had. We were basking in the glow. We forgot that there’s always going to be a backlash within a movement every time.

Just like my straight friends, I am repeatedly asked when I plan to have kids, and have been told many times, by various branches of my bloodline, that “even lesbians can have babies these days.”

As with most phobias, the fear of flying does make some sense, but if ever there was a fear worth quashing then this is it. After all, life is short, and there’s a great big world to explore out there.

I never went to college and I was raised in Arkansas so there wasn’t a lot of academic language being thrown around my house.

I find inspiration everywhere. I love challenges and my favorite thing is to find something ridiculous and be like “if it’s all that I have available to me, I am gonna make it look the best that I can”.

I can take care of a house, and some people I meet, I think, ‘You don’t even know how to make a bed.

I’m on a diet. It’s very strict: all hot dogs. Just sausages, constantly. It’s working out – I’ve gained fifteen pounds!

High school wasn’t so bad though because, by then, I had worked out that there were far more nerdy kids and poor kids than there were rich, popular kids, so, at the very least, we had them outnumbered.

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

Scouts should be progressive and should be adapting. If you’re gay or not it’s irrelevant, Scouting values respect.

Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.

I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed – for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late ’50s, early ’60s – that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist.

if you search the bible, you will find no reference to birth control or gay marriage, and you will not find a word, strangely, about stem cell research. I have searched.

I know that there are people who are secularists who have problems with the rights of gay people and problems with reproductive choice, but frankly those people are few in number.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.