Queer Cafe

LGBTQ Comments and Remarks

"Religious freedom ends when it becomes an excuse to harm other people."

-Pete Buttigieg

"I think being gay is a blessing, and it's something I am thankful for every single day."
-Anderson Cooper

"Homosexuality is irreversible. Your prayers cannot change us."
-Brandy Kiki

"Transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know. But no person should have to be brave just to live in safety and dignity."
-President Joe Biden

"I’m an openly queer woman of color. To anyone who has ever questioned their place in the gray space, I promise you this. There is indeed a place for us."
-Ariana DeBose (Best Actress, West Side Story)

"To be gay is beautiful, right, and perfect."

-Dan Reynolds, Imagine Dragons

"Being gay is a natural normal beautiful variation on being human. Period. End of subject. Therefore, any argument which says differently is an immoral supremacist one. Call it out as such. Be outraged, offended, angry and intolerant of any discussion or any one who describes you as unequal, undeserving, or unnatural for being just as you are."
-Larry Kramer

"LGBTQ people are some of the bravest and most potent change agents and leaders I have encountered, and the most forceful defenders of the vulnerable and voiceless, because they know what it's like to be there."
-Ronan Farrow

"There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are."
-Tammy Baldwin

"I love that I am trans. And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I thrive."

-Elliot Page

"Now we know that queer and trans people are magic. So many kinds of magic and so many kinds of normal."
-Jill Soloway

"Soon the day will come when science will win victory over error, justice a victory over injustice, and human love a victory over human hatred and ignorance."
-Magnus Hircshfeld

"It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain."
-Francis Maude

"The most violent element in society is ignorance."
-Emma Goldman

"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality."
-James Baldwin

"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains."
-Tennessee Williams, Streetcar Named Desire

"The opportunity to be threatened, humiliated and to live in fear of being beaten to death is the only special right our culture bestows on homosexuals."
-Diane Carman, Denver Post

"Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it's a good place to start."

-Jason Collins, First Openly Gay Athlete in US Pro Sports

"When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free."

-Barack Obama, US President

"This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another."

-Ellen Page

"I believe that no one should ever have to choose between a career we love and living our lives with authenticity and integrity."

-Selisse Berry, Out & Equal Executive Director

"It takes some intelligence and insight to figure out you're gay and then a tremendous amount of balls to live it and live it proudly."

-Jason Bateman

"Every gay and lesbian person who has been lucky enough to survive the turmoil of growing up is a survivor. Survivors always have an obligation to those who will face the same challenges."

- Bob Paris, Writer, Actor

"All of us who are openly gay are living and writing the history of our movement. We are no more and no less heroic than the suffragists and abolitionists of the 19th century. And the labor organizers, Freedom Riders, Stonewall demonstrators, and environmentalists of the 20th century. We are ordinary people, living our lives, and trying as civil rights activist Dorothy Cotton said, to fix what ain't right' in our society."

-Senator Tammy Baldwin

"I've been embraced by a new community. That's what happens when you're finally honest about who you are; you find others like you."

-Chaz Bono

"We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity."

-George Takei

Coming Out

"I'm proud that I was one of the first ones to come out, singing loud and proud.”
-KD Lang

"Growing up, I felt there was something about me that truly set me apart from other kids. But I didn't have a grasp of what it was. I had a few fleeting crushes on girls, then, a full-blown crush. Inside, they felt right and normal. But at the same time, I didn't have any way to process those feelings because I didn't know any gay people or know that I knew them. I felt that I would risk something if I expressed my feelings. Then I started playing on my college rugby team (which had some lesbian players) and for the first time I saw women being openly affectionate to each other. It was like being dropped into what was originally a foreign country but, once there, I realized it was my country of origin. I thought, Wow, the feelings I've been having are normal. It is okay to be who I am."
-Candace Gingrich, Manager of HRC's National Coming Out Project, Sister of Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

"The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives."
-Armistead Maupin, Writer

"I wanted to be out so I could relax and be me."
-Melissa Etheridge, Musician

"It's great to be out and proud."
-Greg Louganis, Olympic Gold-Medal Diver at Gay Games opening ceremonies

"I just wish more of my fellow queers would come out sometimes. It's nice out here, you know?"
-Elton John, Accepting Distinguished Achievement Award from Elizabeth Taylor at Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's 25th anniversary blowout

"When my friends and I came out in college, the other students took an obvious dislike to us. It was hateful, horrible rhetoric, and divisive. I lost some friends. I felt like they just couldn't step up to the plate. It was very hard, really hard, to deal with that, and to tell them that they were not being very supportive. You learn many valuable lessons about what friendship means. It's those first five minutes in coming out to your friends and acquaintances that are really the hardest. But after that, things get better than before. The most important thing you can do is come out. People's hearts have to change. And when a person meets someone who is gay, that more than anything seems to make them understand and take on new attitudes."
-Suzanne Westenhofer, Comedian

"The day we stop resisting our instincts, we’ll have learned how to start living."
-Federico Garicia Lorca, Poet and Playwright

"I've been embraced by a new community. That's what happens when you're finally honest about who you are. You find others like you."
-Chaz Bono

"Outing is a nasty word for telling the truth."
-Armistead Maupin, Writer

"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."
-Senator Barney Frank

"Every gay person must come out. Once they realize we are indeed their children and that we are indeed everywhere, then every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all."
-Harvey Milk

"Nothing has happened to me out of the closet that was anywhere near as dangerous as being closeted."
-Karen Thompson

"The closet symbolizes isolation, the individual without society, a stranger even to the self."
-Kathy Weston

"By staying closeted we make ourselves invisible. By coming out we shatter the popular illusion that the whole world is heterosexual."
-Romanovsky & Phillips

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light."
-Plato

"Being out means doing what your grandmother told you to do, which is not to lie."
-Barbara Smith

"There are many lesbians and gay men trapped by their fear into silence and invisibility, and they exist in a dim valley of terror wearing nooses of conformity."
-Audre Lorde

"The moment you can learn to deal with homosexuality in art, it's quite an exciting moment, just as in a sense when people come out it's quite an exciting moment. It means they become aware of their desires, and can deal with them in a remarkably honest way."
-David Hockney, Artist

"I have learned that coming out is a daily process, not limited to where we live, who we're linked to, or how we conduct our lives. It is understanding your place in the world, born of your own family. It is entwined with your personal ideas and the goals you set. Alas, these things are ever-changing, and you have to keep discovering new ways to exist as a gay or lesbian person while making your life whole."
-Tom Curtise

"Slowly but surely, gay people are coming around to the idea that if you continue to be invisible, that's all you will be, and it's not a nice life."
-Bev Clark

"When I see young men and old women come out of the closet and face being called faggots and dykes and pariahs and betrayers of the family dream, then I am honored to be gay because I belong to a people who are proud."
-Arnie Kantrowitz

Pride

"No one likes to be told to grow up. It’s insulting. But these are always the answers. They will always be the answers. The only answers. There will never be any other answers. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. Be proud of yourself. Be proud you are gay."
-Larry Kramer

"I'm homosexual. How and why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green."
-Jean Genet

"I’m not willing to be tolerated. That wounds my love of love and liberty."
-Jean Cocteau, Writer and Director

"The next time you feel you have to say I love you to someone, say it to yourself and see if you believe it."
-Harvey Feirstein, Playwright, Torchsong Trilogy

"Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it. It is yourself."
-Jean Cocteau, writer

"It is better to be hated for what one is than to be loved for what one isn’t."
-Andre Gider, Writer

"You always have to remember, no matter what you’re told, that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway."
-Cyndi Lauper, Musician

Youth

"All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential."
-Harvey Milk

"We've made houses for hatred. It's time we made a place where people's souls may be seen and made safe."
-Jewel Kilcher

"It's the job of the young to push the societal envelope."
-Jeanne Cordova

Business/Workplace

"Communities that promote inclusion thrive, and so do the business that invest in them."

-Chad Griffin, HRC President

"I believe that no one should ever have to choose between a career we love and living our lives with authenticity and integrity."

-Selisse Berry, Out & Equal Executive Director

“Workplace equality is improving, but some employees, unfortunately, still face discrimination because of their sexual orientation and gender identity… Of course, from a job seeker’s perspective, there are many good reasons to seek out employers with diverse workforces… But the most important one is the way the employees are treated… Everyone should feel like their workplace is a safe space.”
-Lily Martis, Monster Jobs

“Some LGBTQ employees are completely closeted at work and fully out at home…. For them, everyday is a demanding, energy-draining balancing act…. Still others are fully out in all facets of their lives… Their experiences range from joyful to miserable… For some being out at work has been easy… For others, coming out on the job remains the most frightening thing they have ever done.”
-Dan Woog, Book, Gay Men Straight Jobs

“The workplace is full of mixed messages for LGBTQ people… Studies tell us that openness at work is a good thing, but outing oneself on a résumé could jeopardize getting an interview… Companies have LGBTQ recruiting and outreach, but there is a shortage of out people at the top tier of companies.”

-Kyle Knight & Todd Sears, Huffington Post

Defining Self

"I am the most well-known homosexual in the world."
-Elton John

"I like the word gay, though I think myself more as queer. I believe the strength in my work comes from that perspective - my being an outsider."
-Holly Hughes

"I love that I am trans. And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows, and the more I thrive."

-Elliot Page

"Being queer is like being on a lifetime assignment as a secret agent in some foreign country."
-Noretta Koertge

"I don't want to be labeled as either a pansy or a heterosexual. Labeling is so self-limiting. We are what we do, not what we say we are."
-Montgomery Cliff

"I know I'm not a man. And I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman either. The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other."
-Kate Bornstein

"Because of our situation, God has given us an opportunity to almost transcend our gender, which gives us a vision and sensitivity that other people don't have. They think that being white and male is going to save the world. But life is not The Lion King."
-Jason Reeves

"Lesbians and other oppressed people have a bigger burden to bear because the rest of the world spends a lot of time telling us we should feel bad about ourselves."
-Nancy Lanoue

"I know I can't tell you what it's like to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. It's not hiding behind words, like family and decency and Christianity."
-Armistead Maupin

Political

"I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or who you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try."
-President Barack Obama

"As leaders, our greatest responsibility is ensuring that every person we represent, regardless of their gender identity or gender expression, is entitled to respect, fairness, and freedom."
-Phil Murphy, New Jersey Governor

"Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
-Jamin Raskin, Getting to the point, in a debate over a proposed constitutional amendment to the Maryland state constitution to prevent gay couples from having legal marriage rights

"They have every right to be as miserable as the rest of us."
-Kinky Friedman, Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys bluegrass band, running for Governor of Texas as an Independent and supports gay marriage

"No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love."
-Rita Mae Brown, Speech, August 1982

"How stupid is it that a government decides to choose who you can love?’ It never made sense to me, actually. No one can tell you who to love, right? Really, love chooses. You don’t get to choose.”
-Kunal Nayyar, Big Bang Theory

"If you dream of a world in which you can put your partner's picture on your desk, then put her picture on your desk...and you will live in such a world. And if you dream of a world in which you can walk down the street holding your partner's hand, then hold her hands...and you will live in such a world. If you dream of a world in which there are more openly gay elected officials, then run for office...and you will live in such a world. And if you dream of a world in which you can take your partner to the office party, even if your office is the US House of Representatives, then take her to the party. I do, and now I live in such a world. Remember, there are two things that keep us oppressed --- them and us. We are half of the equation."
-Senator Tammy Baldwin

"Other people get money for being married. They get health benefits for being married. They get money for having children. When we want to be able to kiss and hold hands on the street without being beaten up, suddenly we're asking for special rights."
-Mark Fisher

"By aspiring to join the mainstream rather than figuring out the ways we need to change it, we risk loosing our gay and lesbian souls in order to gain the world."
-Urvashi Vaid

"It's time we did something to assert ourselves. After all, we do comprise 10% of the population."
-Allen Ginsberg

"It takes no compromise to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression."
-Harvey Milk

Struggle

"Straight Americans need an education of the heart and soul. They must understand, to begin with, how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul."
-Bruce Bawer

“It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too."
-Sigmund Freud

"It takes some intelligence and insight to figure out you're gay and then a tremendous amount of balls to live it and live it proudly."
-Jason Bateman

"Every gay and lesbian person who has been lucky enough to survive the turmoil of growing up is a survivor. Survivors always have an obligation to those who will face the same challenges."
-Bob Paris, Writer and Actor

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life. Define yourself."
-Harvey Fierstein

"Somebody, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour, and in the oddest places, for the lack of it."
-James Baldwin, Author

"The pain, the abuse, is the sand that will make your pearl."
-Tennessee Williams

Difference

"If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be."

-Maya Angelou

"Freedom means nothing, unless it means the freedom to be different."

-Marty Rubin

"Stop hiding what makes you different and learn to embrace every part of who you are!"

-Amanda Foust

"He who is authentic assumes the responsibility to be what he is, and recognizes himself free to be what he is."

-Jean Paul Sartre

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself."

-Rita Mae Brown

"The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen."

-Albert Einstein

Philosophical

"Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love, all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce."
-Plato

"If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise."
-Johann von Goethe

"Silence kills the soul. It diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it’s nothing."
-Marlon Riggs, Filmmaker

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
-Dr. Seuss

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness."
-Shakti Gawain

"Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy."
-Lucille Ball

Love

"I am the love that dare not speak its name."
-Lord Alfred Douglas, From poem Two Loves

"There's this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That's completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved."
-Boy George

"If you are not personally free to be yourself in that most important of all human activities - the expression of love - then life itself loses its meaning."
-Harvey Milk

"You must know that I am, of all men who were ever born, the most inclined to love persons. Whenever I behold someone who possesses any talent or displays any dexterity of mind, who can do or say something more appropriately than the rest of the world, I am compelled to fall in love with him. And then I give myself up to him so entirely that I am no longer my own property, but wholly his."
-Michelangelo

"It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it."
-Oscar Wilde

"I just want to be loved. Is that so wrong?"
-Harvey Fierstein

"I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason."
-Christopher Hitchens

"In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality. The ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”
-Simone de Beauvoir

"The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself."
-Gore Vidal

"What people do in their own homes is their business, and you can choose to love whoever you love."
-Jay Z

Marriage & Family

"If your Bible tells you that gay people ought not be married in your church, don't tell them they can't be married at city hall. Marriage is a civil rite as well a civil right, and we can't let religious bigotry close the door to justice to anyone."
-Julian Bond

"Protect marriage? Please. Give me a break. With a 50 percent divorce rate, rampant domestic violence, Las Vegas drive-through chapels, and I wanna-marry-a-really-rich-guy reality TV shows, there's no way gays could trash marriage the way straight people already have."
-Good Times, Santa Cruz County News

"We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity."
-David Brooks, New York Times

"Gay and lesbian people fall in love. We settle down. We commit our lives to one another. We raise our children. We protect them. We try to be good citizens."
-California Sen. Sheila Kuehl, After California Senate approved gay marriage bill

"The consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of the New Hampshire Diocese of the Episcopal Church is an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves, and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage."
-Owen Keavney

"Marriage should be between a spouse and a spouse, not a gender and a gender."
-Hendrik Hertzberg

"Home is where the heart is, no matter how the heart lives."
-Sally Fingerett

"He pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me around my waist, and said henceforth we were married."
-Herman Melville

"Marriage is a long, dull meal with dessert served at the beginning."
-Oscar Wilde

Discrimination

"The people who would forbid gays from marrying in the country are those who would have made Rosa Parks sit in the back of the bus."
-Jason West, Mayor of New Paltz, NY

"I fought too long and too hard to end discrimination based on race and color, to not stand up against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Human rights, civil rights, these are issues of dignity. Every human being walking this Earth, whether gay, lesbian, straight, or transgender, is entitled to the same rights. It is in keeping with America’s promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

-John Lewis, US Congressman

"Discrimination is discrimination no matter who the victim is, and it is always wrong. There are no special rights in America, despite the attempts by many to divide blacks and the gay community with the argument that the latter are seeking some imaginary special rights at the expense of blacks."
-Julian Bond, NAACP Board Chairman

"At the end of the day it doesn’t matter which group is most oppressed or whether they are identically oppressed, what matters is that no group be oppressed."
-Keith Boykin, President of National Black Justice Coalition

"I am in the valley of prayer on the issue of gay marriage, and I will err on the side of inclusiveness and not exclusion. I’m going to follow Jesus and say, Whosoever will, let them come. And I’m going to extend rights to all of God’s children and if I am wrong, God will have to judge me."
-Rev. Joseph Lowery, Founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference

"I believe that no one should ever have to choose between a career we love and living our lives with authenticity and integrity"
-Selisse Berry, Out & Equal Executive Director

"I hate the word homophobia. It's not a phobia. You're not scared. You're an asshole."
-Morgan Freeman

Humor

"Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."
-Woody Allen

"Closets are for clothes."
-Bumper Sticker

"My mother took me to a psychiatrist when I was fifteen because she thought I was a latent homosexual. There was nothing latent about it."
-Amanda Bearse

"If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work: Hello. Can't work today, still queer."
-Robin Tyler, Stephanie Strong

"If Michelangelo had been straight, the Sistine Chapel would have been wallpapered."
-Robin Tyler

"Did you hear about the Scottish drag queen? He wore pants."
-Lynn Lavne

"I think gay people are like blondes: There’re fewer of them but they have more fun."
-Rita Mae Brown, Writer

"Homosexuality is God’s way of insuring that the truly gifted aren’t burdened with children."
-Sam Austin, Composer and Lyricist

"You could move."
-Abigail Van Buren, "Dear Abby," In response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood

"Outsiders develop humor as a defense. Why do you think most comedians are gay or Jewish?"
-Paul Lynde

"There are easier things in life than being a drag queen. But I ain’t got no choice. Try as I may, I just can’t walk in flats."
-Harvey Fierstein, Filmmaker

"Homophobia is the irrational fear the three fags will break into your house and redecorate it against your will."
-Tom Ammiano, Comic

"When people have asked me in the past if I’m gay, I’ve said I’m not gay, but I’m festive.”
-Sharon Gless, Actress

"I think it’s interesting that when you play a lesbian, people ask you if you’re a lesbian, but if you play a serial killer, nobody asks you if you’re a serial killer."
-Nora Dunn, Actress

"You’re kidding. You really are queer. But you’re so attractive."
-Leslie Ann Warren, Actress, from the film Victor/Victoria

"I don't mind straight people as long as they act gay in public."
-Dennis Rodman

"Homosexuality in Russia is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison, locked up with the other men. There is a three year waiting list."
-Yakov Smirnoff

Human Rights

"When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.”"
-US President Barack Obama

"All of us who are openly gay are living and writing the history of our movement. We are no more, and no less, heroic than the suffragists and abolitionists of the 19th century. And the labor organizers, Freedom Riders, Stonewall demonstrators, and environmentalists of the 20th century. We are ordinary people, living our lives, and trying as civil-rights activist Dorothy Cotton said, to fix what ain't right in our society."
-Senator Tammy Baldwin

"You cannot demand your rights, civil or otherwise, if you are unwilling to say what you are."
-Merle Miller, Writer

"Few contemporary cultures are as hostile to homosexuality as America’s is."
-Myron Brenton, Writer, The American Male

"Whenever a society wants to demonize a particular group, it prohibits them from marrying."
-California Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl / On state governments legislating against gay marriages

"How dare you make my life a felony."
-Protest Sign at 1987 Sandra Day O’ Connor speech

"If gay and lesbian people are given civil rights, then everyone will want them!"
-Protest Sign

Everyday

"This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another."
-Ellen Page

"I am reminded of a colleague who said that all my homosexual patients are quite sick, to which I finally replied, so are all my heterosexual patients."
-Ernest van den Haag, Psychotherapist

"I'm living by example by continuing on with my career and having a full, rich life, and I am incidentally gay."
-Portia DeRossi, Actress

"Being gay is natural. Hating gay is a lifestyle choice."
-John Fugelsang

"We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity."
-George Takei

"I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being. By the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant."
-Paul Newman

Activism

"I do not have to be a woman to believe in women’s rights. I do not have to be an Asian, an African American, a Latino, or Native-American to believe in civil rights. I do not have to be gay to believe in gay, lesbian and bisexual rights. But I do have to be a human being to believe in human rights."
-Activist Saying

"We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him."
-Bayard Rustin

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-Martin Luther King Jr

"The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today."
-John F. Kennedy

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
-Barry Goldwater

"If you can't raise consciousness, at least raise hell."
-Rita Mae Brown

"I became an activist to reconcile myself, and to give voice to experiences of oppression, and to resist the slow death of silence and inaction."
-Carmen Vasquez

"Real love cannot be silent in the face of injustice."
-Mel White

"Sometimes you have to speak your mind rather than mind your speech."
-Anonymous

"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."
-Harvey Milk

Orientation and Gender

"I don't think homosexuality is a choice. Society forces you to think it's a choice, but in fact, it's in one's nature. The choice is whether one expresses one's nature truthfully or spends the rest of one's life lying about it."
-Marlo Thomas

"There are some people in this world that believe being gay is a choice. It's not a choice, we're born this way."
-Lady Gaga

"As anyone who is gay will confirm, being that way is not something you become, it is a set of emotional and physical responses that just are."
-Lance Loud

"Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning sexual behavior the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex."
-Alfred Kinsey

"I believe that gender is something between your ears, not between your legs."
-Chaz Bono

"I don’t think there is such a thing as a precise sexual orientation. I think we’re all ambiguous sexually."
-Tennessee Williams, Playwright

"I always have and still do consider myself queer. To me, being queer isn't who you're sleeping with. It's just an idea that sexuality isn't gender-based, that it's love-based."
-Ani DiFranco

"I desire a person, not a gender."
-Matthew Ehrlich, Writer

Bigotry

"It is long past time to eliminate bigotry in the workplace and to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans. It is time to make clear that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are first class citizens. They are full and welcome members of our American family and they deserve the same civil rights protections as all other Americans. It is time for us to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Such discrimination is wrong and should not be tolerated."
-Senator Tom Harkin

"While many minority groups are the target for prejudice and discrimination in our society, few persons face this hostility without the support and acceptance of their family as do many gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth."
-Virginia Uribe & Karen Harbeck

"You just can’t say lesbianism hurts women’s golf. It’s more correct to say homophobia does."
-Donna Lopiano, Executive Director of the Women’s Sports Foundation

"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you pour on it, the more it will contract."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, American Jurist

Civil Rights

"We are a better, stronger nation for having advanced the cause of equality."
-Senator Tammy Baldwin

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people."
-Coretta Scott King

"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group."
-Coretta Scott King

"We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny. I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

"I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy. The civil rights movement thrives on unity and inclusion, not division and exclusion. My husband's struggle parallels that of the gay rights movement."
-Coretta Scott King

"For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."
-Coretta Scott King

"We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say “common struggle” because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination."
-Coretta Scott King

"For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law. I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. My husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. On another occasion he said, I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible. Like Martin, I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others. The great promise of American democracy is that no group of people will be forced to suffer discrimination and injustice."
-Coretta Scott King

Religion

"Religious freedom ends when it becomes an excuse to harm other people."

-Pete Buttigieg

"From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people."
-Howard Dean

"My sexual orientation is not a sickness to be healed or a sin to be forgiven. My sexual orientation is a gift from my Creator to be accepted, celebrated, and lived with integrity."
-ChristianGay.Com

"It's funny, isn't it? You can preach a judgmental, vengeful, angry god, and nobody will mind. But, if you start preaching a god that is too accepting, too loving, too forgiving, too merciful, too kind, then you're in trouble."

-Bishop Gene Robinson

"It is never legitimate to use the words of scripture to promote a loveless agenda."
-Right Rev. Dr. Peter Short / Moderator of United Church of Canada

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision."
-Lynn Lavner

People should never be the collateral damage of your theology.
-Sarah Bessey

"It took the Catholic Church 359 years to admit that they were wrong when they accused Galileo of heresy and condemned him to death, unless he recanted that the earth rotates around the sun. Since he wanted to live, he was forced to deny the truth and agree with the Church that the sun rotates around the earth, but he was still placed under house arrest until his death."

-ChristianGay.Com

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn't marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society."

-Pope Francis

"If you're against abortion, don't get one. If you're against contraception, don't use any. If you're against same-sex relationships, don't have one. If you're against same-sex marriage, don't marry someone of the same gender. Do not impose your religious beliefs on all Americans."

-Ana Navarro-Cardenas

"The Church is powerful and has a history of pressuring society and individuals to say and believe what the Church thinks is right. They were wrong then and they are wrong now regarding homosexuality. Let's hope it doesn't take them that long this time to discover and admit their error."
-ChristianGay.Com

“Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.”
–Elton John

"The Scriptures have been misused to defend bloody crusades and inquisitions; to support slavery, apartheid, and segregation; to sanction the physical and emotional abuse of women and children; to persecute Jews and other non-Christian people of faith; to support the holocaust of Hitler's Third Reich; to oppose medical science; to condemn inter-racial marriage; to execute women as witches; to excuse the violent racism of the Ku Klux Klan; to mobilize militias, white supremacy and neo-nazi movements; and to condone intolerance and discrimination against sexual minorities. "
-Mel White, Letter to Jerry Falwell

"There is nothing in the Bible or in my own theology that would lead me to believe that God regards homosexuality as sin. God is interested in our relationships with ourselves, others, the things in our lives, and with God. There is nothing in the mind of God that could be against a loving, sexual relationship, freely entered into, without coercion, among sincere adults whether gay, bisexual or straight."
-Dr. Slayton, Baptist

"Some argue that since homosexual behavior is unnatural, it is contrary to the order of creation. Behind this pronouncement are stereotypic definitions of masculinity and femininity that reflect the rigid gender categories of patriarchal society. There is nothing unnatural about any shared love, even between two of the same gender, if that experience calls both partners into a fuller state of being. Contemporary research is uncovering new facts that are producing a rising conviction that homosexuality, far from being a sickness, sin, perversion or unnatural act, is a healthy natural, and affirming of human sexuality for some people. Findings indicate that homosexuality is a given fact in the nature of a significant portion of people, and that it is unchangeable."
-Bishop John Shelby Spong, Episcopalian

"Our sexual orientation is a given, something we discover about ourselves. Some might say it is a gift from God. How one relates to others (caring or exploiting) is the source of sin."
-Bishop Wood, Episcopalian

Culture

"Gay people are born and belong to every society in the world. They are of all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a western invention. It is a human reality."

-Hillary Clinton

"Do you want to protect your children from gay influence? Very well. Destroy the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, silence Messiah and Swan Lake, and burn Moby Dick and The Portrait of a Lady. Gay culture is all around you. And it belongs to everybody."
-Brue Bawer

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?"
-Ernest Gaines