I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.

I wouldn't want [gay marriage] to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current court.

The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they've done the terrible things.

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn't have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.

We don't get ourselves dry cleaned.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.