"I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother, and thought to myself, 'That's the last time I'm going to come up from one of those.'" 

- Stephen Fry 

"If you feel something, you feel it. No one has the right to tell you if that's right or not. The more we talk about it in society, the less stigma it should have attached to it. Surely it's inevitable we have to accept same-sex marriage. It's embarrassing it's taking us so long to get with it." 

- Missy Higgins

"I never said this before, but I am a proud bisexual woman." 

- Vanessa Carlton 

"I'm just a musical prostitute, my dear." 

- Freddie Mercury 

"Female performers have been doing this for years--pushing the envelope about sexuality--and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out." 

- Adam Lambert

Prolific Person of the Week:

RuPaul
"What other people think of me is not my business." 

RuPaul Andre Charles (November 17, 1960-) was born in San Diego, California to a Louisiana Creole mother.

RuPaul lived in a small suburban home with his mother, father, and twin sisters.
One of his first memories as a child was lip-syncing to the Supremes in his front yard at the age of five. It was also around this time that RuPaul began to be bullied by neighborhood kids for liking to wear his sister's dresses, they would often taunt him and call him a "sissy".

RuPaul's parents divorced in 1967, and his mother experienced a mental breakdown that would forever have an effect on him. RuPaul's father left the home, and the family of three went on welfare. As he would recall later, "we became little adults, we took care of Mom...we kept secrets from social workers, from Daddy, and from anyone who threatened our family".
Over the next couple of years, RuPaul recalls following his sisters around everywhere. He learned how to dance at one of their friends' homes while listening to records. Unfortunately, the twins ran away from home in 1969. They were fifteen.
Mrs. Charles began to recover, finally, from the divorce. She obtained a job at Planned Parenthood. RuPaul, in and around this time, began to be mistaken for a girl, as he often dressed in dresses and heels, and paraded around for the neighbors.
The years to come were reckless.
One of the twins married a boy from school, two months after her 17th birthday. RuPaul also, at the tender age of eleven, began experimenting with drugs and alcohol. He also developed a crush on an older boy, but "by then, I was already a pro at hiding my feelings...so that's what I did".
When RuPaul was sixteen, one of his twin sisters suggested that he move with she and her husband to Atlanta, Georgia. The three fell on hard times, but finally RuPaul felt as if he found a place where he truly belonged. He received his drivers license, and began to take school seriously--particularly his courses in theater.
This was not to be, however, and RuPaul dropped out of high school and later applied for his G.E.D.
He took a job at his brother-in-law's used luxury car business. Although it was "just to pay the bills", RuPaul enjoyed driving cross country to buy cars, or deliver cars to customers. His brother-in-law did a lot of business with a man in San Diego, which enabled RuPaul to visit his mother regularly.
It was on one of these such visits that RuPaul had his first romantic encounter with a man. A thirty-six year old named Richard swept him off his feet. "I had never even kissed a man!" Ru recalls. It was a week after his eighteenth birthday.
By 1981, Ru was restless for change. He had already reasoned with the fact that he had learned all he could from his brother-in-law, who up until then had been the most forward-thinking, interesting person he had known.
Ru wrote in to a local late-night variety show, which featured a unique tribe of "social misfits"--he wrote about his interest in drag and in campy humor. After expressing how much he loved the show and wanted to be a part of it, the director called him and asked him to appear as a regular.
That was the beginning of a showbiz career that has yet to be completed. 
For the next thirty-two years, RuPaul appeared on the radio, television, stage, and the "big screen"--in his own feature indie film Starrbooty. In 1996, Ru even wrote a biography, entitled Lettin It All Hang Out--detailing his younger life, his official introduction to drag in New York during the mid-1980s, and his rise to become one of the most prolific drag queens in the world. 
About his career, RuPaul has said, "my goal was always to come from a place of love...but sometimes, you just have to break it down for a motherfucker".
In addition to being in and out of drag whenever his heart delights, RuPaul is currently serving as host to his own reality television show's, RuPaul's Drag Race, fifth season.

"I had a hell of a time convincing people I was gay--which was so annoying!" 

- Portia de Rossi 

"We only have so much life left. Before I do die, I want to do something good for people." 

- Michael Huffington 

"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart? Oh no, it is curved like a road through mountains." 

- Tennessee Williams 

"Ooh, you make me fancy!"

- Manila Luzon 

"I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with." 

- Fannie Flagg 

"When Thea and I met nearly 50 years ago, we never could have dreamed that the story of our life together would be before the Supreme Court as an example of why gay married couples should be treated equally, and not like second-class citizens. While Thea is no longer alive, I know how proud she would have been to see this day. The truth is, I never expected any less from my country." 

- Edie Windsor

"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's a fact. What I have chosen is to be in a gay relationship." 

- Cynthia Nixon 

"I wasn't really naked. I just didn't have any clothes on." 

- Josephine Baker 

"I'm mad in the front of my mind, but business-minded in the back." 

- Alexander McQueen

"I think people should be free to engage in any sexual practices they choose; they should draw the line at goats though." 

- Elton John 

Prolific Person of the Week:

Virginia Woolf 

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency."

Adeline Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882-March 28, 1941) was born in London, to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen. 

Sir Leslie was a prolific historian, writer, and critic--who had a great influence on Virginia's early development. Julia Stephen was an Indian-born Englishwoman with renowned beauty, and had served as a Pre-Raphaelite model to several painters. 

Woolf was born into a high-class, well-connected, and well-educated family. Both of her parents had been previously married and widowed, therefore the household contained the children of three different unions. The house bustled with the company of literary figures, painters, aristocrats, and educators. Though only the sons of the family were sent away to university, Sir Leslie offered his daughters a formal education from home--where Virginia eagerly sharpened what would become her infamous literary skills. 

Troubles first occurred when Virginia suffered first the death of her mother, at the age of thirteen, and then the death of her half-sister Stella when Virginia was fifteen. These occurrences made Virginia to suffer a series of mental breakdowns. Despite the hardships, Virginia overcame them and continued her studies in Latin, Greek, German, and history. She began writing professionally in 1900, at the age of eighteen--publishing works first in the Times Literary Supplement. 

Virginia's father died when she was twenty-two, which caused another nervous breakdown. This time, her mental state was so fragile she was briefly institutionalized. Later in life, Virginia would reveal in her essay A Sketch of the Past, that her frequent mental collapse was possibly attributed to sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her two older half-brothers. However alarming her mental state continued to be throughout the years, Woolf was persistent in her work as an author. 

Virginia married Leonard Woolf on August 10, 1912. The pair were an unlikely match, Virginia having come from a well-off family, and Leonard being what she would sometimes refer to as a "penniless Jew". Regardless of the differences, the two were practically inseparable. The bond was further strengthened by their common professional interests, and in 1917 they founded Hogarth Press which would publish Virginia's works, as well as the works of T.S. Eliot, Laurens van der Post, and others.
Her heterosexual marriage did not consume Virginia's nature, which was determinedly bisexual.
Virginia's first same-sex relationship came with the arrival of Vita Sackville-West, a society-woman and fellow writer, in 1922. It is not entirely known whether the women's husbands were aware of the relationship, but it was maintained for several years with relative success. Theirs was a fantastic romance, described later by Sackville-Wests' son as "the longest and most charming love letter...she [Virginia] explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her". The relationship was at it's peak in 1928, when Virginia presented Sackville-West with the novel she wrote for her, Orlando. Though Virginia and Sackville-West gradually ended their relationship in the 1930s, the two remained friends. Sackville-West continued on to have a series of high-profiled relationships with other women of society. Virginia, however, stayed private about other affairs, and preferred to speak only of Sackville-West.

After a final decline in health, and a series of more breakdowns caused most surely to the onslaught of WWII and the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, Virginia quietly committed suicide on March 28, 1941. 

"I enjoy being a character actor, I enjoy being different in everything. I want a private life, I want to be able to go to 7-11 and not get in a fight with a guy because he saw me in a movie. You want to be wanted for who you are, not what you've done or who you've become, and it's hard." 

- Alexis Arquette 

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." 

- Oscar Wilde 

"I'm doing things on my own terms. I don't have to answer to anyone but me." 

- Perez Hilton