I Didn't Say It ...

Eric Holder, US Attorney General, on whether or not the country is ready for marriage equality nationwide:

"Yeah, I think the country is ready for that. I think all the polls certainly show that. The reactions to the continuing number of court cases that have found same-sex marriage to be constitutionally mandated -- the polls have shown that the American people, I think, are prepared to accept that. Now this has been a sea change. This is something that has happened, I think, relatively quickly. Part of it is generational. I talk to my kids, who seem, no problems with this, no issues with this at all. But I think it's more than a generational change. I think that people who know folks who are gay, who are lesbian, and who are their friends, their coworkers, they see the moral side to this. Um, it's a civil-rights issue. From my perspective, it is the civil-rights issue of our day — gay and lesbian equality."

Hopefully he can see this through before leaving office, though I do agree, no matter when it happens, it will be sooner rather than later.

Ted Cruz, Teabagging Senator, on his quest for the White House:

"Contrary to media reports this morning, Heidi and I have not made any decisions about political plans past the mid-term elections. Clearly we have an overzealous supporter out there making freelance comments, but to be clear, no decision has been made. Whoever this 'anonymous advisor' was, he or she had no authority to speak, and doesn't know what they're talking about."

Even Cruz knows he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever becoming president. He just wants to boost his own — in his head — popularity.

Richard Blanco, inaugural poet whose Until We Could is being used in a Freedom to Marry video, on his own coming out process:

"I really didn't end up coming out until much later in life ... and what really fascinated me as a writer and as an investigator is, how does that happen? How is it that moment by moment the next notch of courage, the next notch of self-understanding — even though you know you're gay at 12, 13, 14, those words can't even enter your mind. You can't even have the vocabulary; you don't say ‘Gee, I think I'm gay.’ No, it doesn't happen that way. It's just a slow sort of easing into, and all the little things that propel you to that place, all the people that support and move you an inch in that direction. The moment of coming out is really the end of a story — and the beginning of a new one, obviously, but it's really the whole life story to get to that moment."

It is a process, and it takes however long it takes. Since we are all so different, our own coming out, our own coming to terms with being gay and what that means to each of us, our family and friends, is a different path.

All that matters is the end point: coming out.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson, on realizing he was gay:

"I kind of learned that I was gay from other kids. I didn’t know what that meant. When you’re that young, you don’t know who you’re attracted to. You don’t know anything. I just knew I was different and I realized by the way other kids treated me that I was gay and that for them, it was not okay.”

I remember hearing that, too, when I was a kid, and not really knowing what it meant, except that it meant I was a target …. Until I realized it just meant I was attracted to boys and then it was So what? Who cares?