Second opinions.

"The thing I had in mind was to make it a story against bigotry of all sorts, because here were people who were certainly different than everybody else, but they were good, they were trying to do the right thing. But as so often happens in real life, if you have a different religion, a different country, a different sexual orientation, whatever the difference is, people--not all people, but it happens--are going to dislike you, distrust you, fear you."

--Stan Lee, creator of Marvel Comics superheroes such as Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, discussing his characters with the San Francisco Chronicle, October 15

"There is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America. Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle.... Life there was savage ... and those brought to America, and other countries, were in many ways better off."

--An essay by psychotherapist Gerald Schoenewolf, a member of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an "ex-gay" group, as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center, October 6

"The openly gay [people in the Bush administration] range from Steve Herbits, the prescient right-hand consultant to Donald Rumsfeld who foresees disaster in Iraq in Bob Woodward's book State of Denial, to Israel Hernandez, the former Bush personal aide and current Commerce Department official whom the president nicknamed 'Altoid boy.' (Let's not go there.)"

--Frank Rich, lambasting the SOP for bashing gays while employing their services, in his New York Times column, October 15