Bad Karma
“Ashrams are not without controversy. At Poona, the commune has been proclaimed an ‘AIDS-free zone,’ and the policy of requiring every guest to have an AIDS test has raised eyebrows among visitors and added to a swinging-singles profile.”
—“This Year, the Jet Set Is Seeking Nirvana,” The New York Times, June 7

Mouths of Babes
“[Sexually active teen girls] have more ignorance than they do acne. [Rebekka] Armstrong once asked an adolescent if she was sexually active. ‘Not really. I just kinda lie there,’ she replied.”  
—“HIV Cover Girl,” The New York Daily News, June 18

Post Roast
“Do I suggest that gays started this [virus]? Unwittingly, perhaps.… Heterosexuals did not bring this thing on themselves. And homosexuals can’t be blamed just because they are the source of a blight. But to legitimize what Giuliani did is a little like telling Tokyo: ‘I know Pearl Harbor was a mistake.’”
—Columnist Steve Dunleavy on New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s endorsing the city’s domestic-partnership bill, The New York Post, June 25

Gallo’s Whine
“The gay icon is horrific…. It’s a mainstream, homophobic and disease-phobic image. It’s AIDS-phobic. If you’re skinny, you’re thought of as unhealthy. You can’t even have dark circles under your eyes. Twenty years ago it was OK to look sensitive or emotional. But you can’t look like that now without being identified as subversive, a substance abuser or sick.”
—Actor-filmmaker-musician Vincent Gallo, Genre, July