Arts & Entertainment
Year in review: 2012 in quotes
The year’s most memorable remarks on LGBT issues
From left, President Obama, Jason Mraz, Christopher Plummer and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. (Obama and Cuomo photos Blade file photos; Mraz and Plummer photos courtesy Wikimedia)
From President Obama coming out in support of marriage equality to celebrities like Anderson Cooper just plain coming out, 2012 provided plenty of notable quotables.
Here is a look back at some of the most memorable LGBT media moments of the year.
OBAMA SAYS ‘I DO’
“For me personally, it is important to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
— President Barack Obama, announcing his support for marriage equality in an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts (ABC News, May 9)
“With his embrace of phony ’gay marriage,’ Obama outs himself as a soulless panderer with no core beliefs. He mocks his own Christian profession.”
— Peter LaBarbera, founder for Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (via Twitter, May 9)
“Let me make it very clear, that my preference is to have a national standard that defines marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.”
— GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney (CNN, May 9)
“Obama is for same-sex marriage. When the president is saying that, who am I to go the other way? It’s cool.”
— 50 Cent, speaking out on gay marriage after also being asked his reaction to fellow hip-hop artist Frank Ocean’s decision to reveal a past relationship with a man. “Anyone that has an issue with Frank Ocean is an idiot,” 50 Cent said. (BET.com, July 16)
POLITICAL MILESTONES
“Now you can be proud of serving your country, and be proud of who you are.”
— U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta thanking gay and lesbian military members for their service on June 15, as the Pentagon prepared to mark June as Gay Pride month with an official salute.
“I’m well aware I’m the first woman elected to the Senate from Wisconsin, and I’m well aware I will be the first openly gay member. I didn’t run to make history. I ran to make a difference.”
U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), who on Nov. 6 became the first openly gay candidate elected to the U.S. Senate, in a recent interview on her historic victory. (Green Bay Press-Gazette, Nov. 18)
“When I decided to run, I said either you come out and become an activist and have a major role there or I run for Congress. There was no way I could have been out and won.”
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on his first run for Congress in 1980. Frank, who came out in 1987 while serving in Congress, is retiring after 32 years in the U.S. House. (Washington Post, Dec. 3)
CELEBS SPEAK OUT
“For me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”
— Actress Cynthia Nixon in an interview with the New York Times after her recent remark that “I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better” drew criticism from some LGBT activists. (ABCNews.com, Jan. 24)
“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.”
— Cynthia Nixon in a written statement clarifying her remark. (Advocate.com, Jan. 30)
“I have an important message, all the bling and Mercedes aside: I’m an openly gay Persian man. According to the president of the country I was born in, I don’t even exist.”
— Reza Farahan, a star on Bravo’s new reality series “Shas of Sunset.” (AP, March 10)
“I’ve never dealt with the question of my personal life in public. It’s just not gonna happen.”
— Actor and singer Queen Latifah, explaining that it “definitely wasn’t the case” that she came out when performing at Long Beach Gay Pride last month, while adding, “To me, doing a gay pride show is one of the most fun things.” (Entertainment Weekly, June 1)
“The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.”
— CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, ending years of speculation by coming out via email to gay writer Andrew Sullivan. (Andrew Sullivan/The Dish, July 2)
“I’m a black, gay woman. I think the only way to make the GOP hate me more is if I sent them a video of me rolling around on a pile of welfare checks.”
— Comedian Wanda Sykes in a clip from her two-part Logo special, “NewNowNext Vote with Wanda Sykes.” (Huffington Post, Sept. 10)
FAMOUS FRIENDS
“I think everyone sort of understands it might be the last leg of the civil rights movement.”
Actor George Clooney, a gay marriage supporter, speaking for LGBT rights in an interview at the Golden Globe Awards, where he won Best Actor. (Politico.com, Jan. 16)
“I sing songs about love and just as people have a right to choose to listen to songs about love, I believe people have a right to marry the person that they love.”
— Singer-songwriter Jason Mraz in a video for Americans for Marriage Equality, an HRC campaign to let gay couples marry. (HRC.org, March 21)
“I think that gay marriage is going to happen. It must. We are not actually equal — humanity — if we are not allowed to freely love one another. What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope. It is not a reflection of all religious people.”
— Lady Gaga, who is Catholic, responding in a radio interview to Pope Benedict XVI’s comments against gay marriage. (Fox News, Sept. 25)
“You can’t change the way you are or who you fell in love with … We support Uncle Poodle and all the other poodles in the world too.”
— TLC reality star Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, age 7, in a statement publicized by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation about her gay uncle. (GLAAD.org, Oct. 19)
PLAYING GAY
“In some ways, gender should be irrelevant. It shouldn’t matter who someone is connected to and finds love and a life with. I hope [full federal equality] will come to be a reality for the LGBT world.”
— Actress Glenn Close, who plays a woman who lives as a man in 19th century Dublin in her film “Albert Nobbs.” (Windy City Times, Jan. 25)
“Gay characters are human beings. We’re all exactly the same. That’s the reason I played it the way I did, not as a caricature. … I know there is a lot of anti-gay sentiment in our society at the moment and I abhor it.”
Actor Christopher Plummer, who portrayed a gay man who came out after age 70 in the film “Beginners.” (On Top Magazine, Jan. 30)
“’Truth’ is our small chance to ask that you try and understand someone who lives their life in a way that is a little bit different from yours, even though all of our hearts are the same. We want to stop the hate and find understanding.”
— Pop icon Janet Jackson on why she is serving as executive director for “Truth,” a documentary about transgender people and their fight for equality. (Advocate.com, June 4)
GOOD SPORTS
“I guess [coming out publicly] seems like a weight off my shoulders. I’ve been playing a lot better than I’ve ever played before. I think I’m just enjoying myself and I’m happy.”
Megan Rapinoe, a midfielder for the US women’s soccer team, who scored three goals on the way to the team’s gold medal. Rapinoe came out in the press before the start of the London Olympics. (Associated Press, Aug. 8)
“I find it inconceivable that one of your players, Mr. Brendon Ayanbadejo, would publicly endorse same-sex marriage… I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as a National Football Franchise Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employee…”
— Maryland General Assembly Delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. in an Aug. 29 letter, sent on official letterhead, to Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti. (Yahoo Sports, Sept. 6)
“I’ve also been vocal as hell about the issue of gay marriage so you can take your ‘I know of no other NFL player …’ and shove it in your close-minded, totally lacking in empathy piehole and choke on it. Asshole.”
— Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe in a hilariously profane open letter to Md. State Delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. (Deadspin.com, Sept. 7)
COURTING CONTROVERSY
“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’”
— Dan Cathy, president of Chick-fil-A, noting that his company is “guilty as charged” in opposing same-sex marriage. (Comments published by Baptist Press on July 16)
“The comments … that sought to link the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy to our state’s embrace of marriage equality are as offensive as they are ignorant.”
— New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, responding to Rabbi Noson Leiter, who called Hurricane Sandy “divine” retribution for New York legalizing gay marriage. (New York Daily News, Nov. 5)
The 44th annual Queen of Hearts pageant was held at The Lodge in Boonsboro, Md. on Friday, Feb. 20. Six contestants vied for the title and Bev was crowned the winner.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
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Books
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
Tuesday marks four years since Russia attacked Ukraine
Journalist J. Lester Feder’s new book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians and their experiences during Russia’s war against their country.
Feder for “The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine” interviewed and photographed LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kyiv, the country’s capital, and in other cities. They include Olena Hloba, the co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ Ukrainians, who fled her home in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha shortly after Russia launched its war on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russian soldiers killed civilians as they withdrew from Bucha. Videos and photographs that emerged from the Kyiv suburb showed dead bodies with their hands tied behind their back and other signs of torture.
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, wrote the book’s forward.
The book also profiles Viktor Pylypenko, a gay man who the Ukrainian military assigned to the 72nd Mechanized Black Cossack Brigade after the war began. Feder writes Pylypenko’s unit “was deployed to some of the fiercest and most important battles of the war.”
“The brigade was pivotal to beating Russian forces back from Kyiv in their initial attempt to take the capital, helping them liberate territory near Kharkiv and defending the front lines in Donbas,” wrote Feder.
Pylypenko spent two years fighting “on Ukraine’s most dangerous battlefields, serving primarily as a medic.”
“At times he felt he was living in a horror movie, watching tank shells tear his fellow soldiers apart before his eyes,” wrote Feder. “He held many men as they took their final breaths. Of the roughly one hundred who entered the unit with him, only six remained when he was discharged in 2024. He didn’t leave by choice: he went home to take care of his father, who had suffered a stroke.”
Feder notes one of Pylypenko’s former commanders attacked him online when he came out. Pylypenko said another commander defended him.
Feder also profiled Diana and Oleksii Polukhin, two residents of Kherson, a port city in southern Ukraine that is near the mouth of the Dnieper River.
Ukrainian forces regained control of Kherson in November 2022, nine months after Russia occupied it.
Diana, a cigarette vender, and Polukhin told Feder that Russian forces demanded they disclose the names of other LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kherson. Russian forces also tortured Diana and Polukhin while in their custody.
Polukhim is the first LGBTQ victim of Russian persecution to report their case to Ukrainian prosecutors.
Feder, who is of Ukrainian descent, first visited Ukraine in 2013 when he wrote for BuzzFeed.
He was Outright International’s Senior Fellow for Emergency Research from 2021-2023. Feder last traveled to Ukraine in December 2024.
Feder spoke about his book at Politics and Prose at the Wharf in Southwest D.C. on Feb. 6. The Washington Blade spoke with Feder on Feb. 20.
Feder told the Blade he began to work on the book when he was at Outright International and working with humanitarian groups on how to better serve LGBTQ Ukrainians. Feder said military service requirements, a lack of access to hormone therapy and documents that accurately reflect a person’s gender identity and LGBTQ-friendly shelters are among the myriad challenges that LGBTQ Ukrainians have faced since the war began.
“All of these were components of a queer experience of war that was not well documented, and we had never seen in one place, especially with photos,” he told the Blade. “I felt really called to do that, not only because of what was happening in Ukraine, but also as a way to bring to the surface issues that we’d had seen in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan.”
Feder also spoke with the Blade about the war’s geopolitical implications.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 signed a law that bans the “promotion of homosexuality” to minors.
The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in Sochi, a Russian resort city on the Black Sea. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine a few weeks after the games ended.
Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown has continued over the last decade.
The Russian Supreme Court in 2023 ruled the “international LGBT movement” is an extremist organization and banned it. The Russian Justice Ministry last month designated ILGA World, a global LGBTQ and intersex rights group, as an “undesirable” organization.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has sought to align itself with Europe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after a 2021 meeting with then-President Joe Biden at the White House said his country would continue to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. (Zelenskyy’s relationship with the U.S. has grown more tense since the Trump-Vance administration took office.) Zelenskyy in 2022 publicly backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova in 2023 applauded Kyiv Pride and other LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in her country when she spoke at a photo exhibit at Ukraine House in D.C. that highlighted LGBTQ and intersex soldiers. Then-Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson, who Feder profiles in his book, was among those who attended the event.
“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”
Feder in response to the Blade’s question about why he decided to write his book said he “didn’t feel” the “significance of Russia’s war against Ukraine” for LGBTQ people around the world “was fully understood.”
“This was an opportunity to tell that big story,” he said.
“The crackdown on LGBT rights inside Russia was essentially a laboratory for a strategy of attacking democratic values by attacking queer rights and it was one as Ukraine was getting closet to Europe back in 2013, 2014,” he added. “It was a strategy they were using as part of their foreign policy, and it was one they were using not only in Ukraine over the past decade, but around the world.”
Feder said Republicans are using “that same strategy to attack queer people, to attack democracy itself.”
“I felt like it was important that Americans understand that history,” he said.
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes won medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that ended on Sunday.
Cayla Barnes, Hilary Knight, and Alex Carpenter are LGBTQ members of the U.S. women’s hockey team that won a gold medal after they defeated Canada in overtime. Knight the day before the Feb. 19 match proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
French ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who is gay, and his partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry won gold. American alpine skier Breezy Johnson, who is bisexual, won gold in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, was part of the American figure skating team that won gold in the team event.
Swiss freestyle skier Mathilde Gremaud, who is in a relationship with Vali Höll, an Austrian mountain biker, won gold in women’s freeski slopestyle.
Bruce Mouat, who is the captain of the British curling team that won a silver medal, is gay. Six members of the Canadian women’s hockey team — Emily Clark, Erin Ambrose, Emerance Maschmeyer, Brianne Jenner, Laura Stacey, and Marie-Philip Poulin — that won silver are LGBTQ.
Swedish freestyle skier Sandra Naeslund, who is a lesbian, won a bronze medal in ski cross.
Belgian speed skater Tineke den Dulk, who is bisexual, was part of her country’s mixed 2000-meter relay that won bronze. Canadian ice dancer Paul Poirier, who is gay, and his partner, Piper Gilles, won bronze.
Laura Zimmermann, who is queer, is a member of the Swiss women’s hockey team that won bronze when they defeated Sweden.
Outsports.com notes all of the LGBTQ Olympians who competed at the games and who medaled.
Va. activists preparing campaign in support of repealing marriage amendment
PHOTOS: Queen of Hearts
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes medal at Olympics
Rob Jetten becomes first gay Dutch prime minister
Judge rescinds order against activist in Capital Pride lawsuit
Trans activists arrested outside HHS headquarters in D.C.
How do we honor Renee Good, Alex Pretti?
Calendar: February 20-26
