Gay Community Quotes & Sayings

I think so many doors have been opened for the gay community as far as the dangers and horrors of HIV. There is so much more out-ness now. — John Benjamin Hickey

When think about the Frank Oceans of the world, it's not like we don't have gay men within the hip-hop community. — Tasha Smith

Having been fucked up by my family and community, I'll never know where my gayness came from, and where it ends and "neurosis" begins. But as a gay person I know I'm a vital element in our civilization. — Edward Field

I'm very gay, but I love women. I'm not attracted to men in any way ... But yes I am gay, I'm so happy. I'm a gay, heterosexual male ... I got major love for the gay and lesbian community, and I just want to push less separation. — Lil B

I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked - our community was attacked. Now, I gotta get in their face. I'm proud to be a woman. I'm proud to be a black woman. And I'm proud to be gay. — Wanda Sykes

To me, celebrity doesn't mean a whole lot unless you're willing to use it. So I wanted to use it in a different way, with my AIDS work, the human rights stuff for the gay and lesbian community and the speaking I do. — Judith Light

I have gay friends, I support gay rights, I have nothing against the gay community, but when I see two guys kissing, I think it's gross. And, by the way, it's gross when 99% of straight people do it, too. — Artie Lange

I say, 'I'm bi, my love knows no gender,' and the straight community says, 'Oh right, that's just a cover-up - you're gay!' And the gay community says, 'Yeah right, that's just a cover-up - you're gay.' They both want to push me gay. — Andy Dick

I have a wide spectrum, a wide demographic. I have the young girls, I have the gay community, I have many regular theatergoers. I do feel a tremendous responsibility and pride to be a role model for some of these young people. — Idina Menzel

Everybody deserves a shot at playing sports. It shouldn't matter in the least if that person is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Building community through healthy and inclusive activities should be one of the main focuses behind athletics, and that isn't possible if you exclude LGBT individuals, especially our youth. — Mardy Fish

In the 1990s, it's OK to do comedy about the Chernobyl disaster or the Space Shuttle blowing up. It's acceptable to ridicule the Pope or the President of the United States, but God forbid you do a joke ... about gays. The gay community is the last sacred cow in this society. — Sam Kinison

Gays are beginning to realize what blacks learned long ago: Unless you are out here fighting for yourself then nobody else will help you. I think the gay community has a moral obligation to continue the fight. — Bayard Rustin

It's not the '90s anymore. I think the gay community is a lot more accepted these days. — Tila Tequila

So many people in the gay community have always asked me to come out, say it like it is, and help our cause. But for me ... I think my biggest statement I could give to the world is to be strong being myself ... you have to make something of yourself, and that's what makes us strong. — Johnny Weir

The gay community has taken care of their issues and problems in terms of HIV/AIDS. They have done an incredible job. We as heterosexuals need to learn from the gay community because they have rallied together. They have sent a lot of information out there. They go get tested. — Magic Johnson

My best audience and where I'm happiest is in the gay community. That's where I feel the most accepted. It's a community that appreciates pop culture like no other. For me, that's where I'm home and I always want to come home. — Katerina Graham

I do not think the gay population has been all that rabid for gay marriage. Note that I do not use the words 'gay community.' Expunge that expression from your vocabulary. We are not a community. — Larry Kramer

In my work with young Jewish adults in the gay community, I hear their stories of discrimination, of struggling for acceptance, of feeling invisible not for what they have done but simply for who they are. — Lynn Schusterman

Politicians know that if they fail to engage with the gay community, and fail to develop coherent positions on the issues that concern them, they risk punishment at the ballot box. If we can do that for science, we will have made an outstanding start. — Mark Henderson

Everyone in the gay community doesn't think alike. — Ang Lee

Just because you are out doesn't make you the poster boy for the gay community. — Jai Rodriguez

If you're a member of a despised group, look out! They'll find a drug and associate you with its use. There are a lot of people in the gay community using methamphetamine and paying taxes and going to work and doing well. — Carl Hart

I have been hung in effigy by the gay community for a long time, from when I was on President Reagan's first AIDS commission. — Richard DeVos

Of course, I have a different vested interest in the gay community, because I am gay, and I would certainly enjoy the tax advantages that straight people have, and the inheritance advantages, and things like Social Security, but I've always been a civil rights advocate across the board. That's how I was raised. — Janis Ian

Perhaps no other body of literature is as subject to political pressures from within the community as gay fiction. — Edmund White

I most certainly am not harboring any sort of negative feeling toward the gay community. I don't have an opinion on people with different religious, sexual or political preferences. I'm one of the most liberal artists that I think you will ever meet, and I pride myself on that. — CeeLo Green

Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community. — Malcolm Gladwell

To the gay community I apologize if I did something, but all I said was I was against same-sex marriage. But I am not condemning you. My favorite expression is, 'Love one another ... as you love yourself, love thy neighbor' — Manny Pacquiao

The gay community just recognizes what their closets are and we straight have to spend years trying to figure out which closet we are trapped in. — Judith Light

You know what they do in San Francisco? Some in the gay community there, they want to get people. So if they got the stuff they'll have a ring, you shake hands and the ring's got a little thing where you cut your finger. Really. It's that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder. — Pat Robertson

A mother cat is rightfully called a Queen. Personally, I think it would be great if pregnant women were also called Queens. If the gay community protested too much we might possibly accept Baroness, Duchess or Fairy Princess. Anything instead of those glamour-sapping medical terms Gravida, Multigravida and the dreaded Geriatric Multigravida. — Helen Brown

I have a half-brother who is very, very, very gay, many cousins, best friends who are all members of the LGBT community, and for me to not say anything would be hypocritical. There is a lot of prejudice. People think it is abnormal. No, it's just another normal. — Lea Salonga

As I walk around, I have met 70-year-old women who live on the Upper West Side who love the show. And I met a couple in Kansas - a couple of truck drivers who drove around together - who loved it. It's popular all over the place and definitely in the gay community. — Lee Tergesen

It's not dissimilar to what we see with the president of Russia, who uses a minority there, the lesbian, gay, bisexual community ... and he goes after them with great relish because he knows that it's going to resonate with a part of the population. — Thomas Mulcair

Passing Proposition 8 did not stop LGBTQ couples from going to sleep that night with their partners. What it did accomplish, however, was remind the gay community once again that they are not looked at as equals, that the God of so many does not love them. — Timothy Kurek

This is an effort to have government coerce, force speech and behavior. And it's being pushed and advocated by the gay community. This is their ultimate goal. It's to not allow for diversity of opinion on this issue, because they don't want to be celebrated, they want to force everyone to not only agree with them but also have to finance their agenda. — Michele Bachmann

Most pastors railing against gay marriage have never cried out on racism, any type of injustice or police brutality. They've never once made a statement about health care. Many of them are silent on community issues. They are very silent, but they have become the leaders of this particular movement. — Otis Moss III

The sex curriculum will be essentially by taught by the local gay community. — Michele Bachmann

We understand that a family is something you make. I grew up hearing 'blood is thicker than water,' and maybe it's true, but in the gay community we've got more than water between us. We've got something stamped onto our DNA, something that marks us as belonging to each other every bit as much as we belong to our birth families. I'm not sure people outside the circle can ever fully understand a connection they've never experienced. — Rachel Spangler

The gay community is very fickle. And I know because I'm part of it and I see it every day. — Lance Bass

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

I have a friend who is around my age, a little younger, and she's gay and came out to her own community when she was younger but not to her family and to the community at large. — Laura Innes

According to the oral tradition of Witches, we were once the priests and priestesses of a peasant Pagan religion. Members of this secret sect met at night beneath the full moon, for these were the "misfits" and "outcasts" who did not fit into mainstream society. Little has changed over the centuries and the Witchcraft community still embraces individuals frequently rejected in mainstream society. These include gays, lesbians, transgendered individuals, and other people with the courage to live their lives authentically in accord with who they are inside their hearts, minds, and spirits. — Raven Grimassi

For the gay and lesbian community, even though I'm not gay I think its really important to speak out for people that aren't necessarily dealing with the same circumstances you're dealing with and don't have the benefit of the health care system or the government that you do. — Chelsea Handler

Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression. — Audre Lorde

I think what Lawrence did was provide an assurance that gay and lesbian couples could live openly in society as free people and start families and raise families and participate fully in their communities without fear. And two things flowed from that, I think. One is that has brought us to the point where we understand now in a way even that we did not fully understand in Lawrence, that gay and lesbian people and gay and lesbian couples are full and equal members of the community. — Donald Verrilli Jr.

I don't know many people who don't have somebody in their family who's a part of the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community. It's not like they're aliens or outsiders. This is family. — Cyndi Lauper

The Mafia's involvement with gay bars is ironic on so many levels. Macho guys ruled gangland but supported a subculture for nelly queens. Most mobsters were evil sociopaths motivated only by financial self-interest but nevertheless were doing a good thing in providing social spaces for the gay community. The mob was on the wrong side of the liquor laws by serving gay folk but on the right side of the 14th Amendment in arguing for equal protection. The Mafia exploited an oppressed community but advanced the gay cause. — Phillip Crawford Jr.

I would say that although my music may be or may have been part of the cultural background fabric of the gay community, I consider myself an outsider who belongs everywhere and nowhere ... Being a human being is what truly counts. That's where you'll find me. — Annie Lennox

I think after time goes by and you earn certain rights or you break through certain barriers, you could sometimes, maybe, take it for granted what you have now that you didn't have before. And then that would lead to a certain lack of community, in a way, caring in a way, that I saw before [in gay society]. — Madonna Ciccone

When you hear of Gay Pride, remember, it was not born out of a need to celebrate being gay.
It evolved out of our need as human beings to break free of oppression and to exist without being criminalized, pathologized or persecuted.
Depending on a number of factors, particularly religion, freeing ourselves from gay shame and coming to self-love and acceptance, can not only be an agonising journey, it can take years.
Tragically some don't make it.
Instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride be grateful you have never needed one.
Celebrate with us. — Anthony Venn-Brown

The gay people with whom I am close are some of the strongest, most passionate and caring people I know, and their demands for justice are no less imperative than those of any other community. — Cory Booker

I mean, I am fully aware of my influence and my responsibility to society in general representing the gay community. But in the same time, I don't represent the entire gay community because it's a vast, vast community, as one can imagine. — K.d. Lang

I came from a pretty accepting community, and my school had a lot of openly gay and LGBT-plus people. When I joined YouTube, I saw a lot more hostility than I saw in my everyday life. — Tyler Oakley

I think the gay community should get smart and drop the word 'marriage.' Do you really need to change every right-wing Christian to make sure you get your equal rights? Eyes on the prize, we should be sticking to getting equal rights. — Ani DiFranco

I've said before, the number one thing that we have to work on is protecting the gay community from sharia law. Now, in the United States, it's probably not a big issue right now, but my brother-in-law is gay, and his partner and I would like them to be able to travel any place in the world without them risking harm. — Foster Friess

Gays have rights, lesbians have rights, men have rights, women have rights, even animals have rights. How many of us have to die before the community recognizes that we are not expendable? — Octavia St. Laurent

As a young gay African, I have been conditioned from an early age to consider my sexuality a dangerous deviation from my true heritage as a Somali by close kin and friends. As a young gay African coming of age in London, there was another whiplash of cultural confusion that one had to recover from again and again: that accepting your sexual identity doesn't necessarily mean that the wider LGBT community, with its own preconceived notions of what constitutes a "valid" queer identity, will embrace you any more welcomingly than your own prejudiced kinsfolk do. — Diriye Osman

If the gay community finds me attractive, I hope women feel the same way. — Manoj Bajpai

I've known I was mostly gay ever since I can remember. I know it troubles many people for me to refer to myself as a lesbian considering I have a male partner. I think they gather that it trivializes the plight of the LGBTQIA community & although that couldn't be further from the truth at this point in my life I'm trying to steer as far from labeling as possible. Compartmentalizing myself only leads to condemnation & contradiction. I'm happier being fluid and I'm happier being honest. — Caitlin Stasey

Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches. Almost, the vote was against them. But they will try again and again until they get in, and the tragedy is that they would get one vote. Because they are spoken of here in Jude as being brute beasts, that is going to the baser lust of the flesh to live immorally, and so Jude describes this as apostasy. But thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there'll be a celebration in heaven. — Jerry Falwell

I think the gay community, as a whole, is slighted by high-profile figures who remain in the closet. But I think that a lot of times we need to ask ourselves what that person's role in our community would be if they were out of the closet. — Christopher Rice

When I decided to have my character on the show come out, I knew I was going to have to come out, too. I never wanted to be the lesbian actress. I never wanted to be the spokesperson for the gay community. Ever. I did it for my own truth. — Ellen DeGeneres

My mom has always been a big advocate, especially in the gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual community, so for me it's always been a part of my soul. — Josh Hutcherson

So I am deeply saddened and shocked over the current legislation that is now in place against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community here in Russia. In my opinion, it is inhumane and it is isolating. — Elton John

Out & Equal is about work. It's about authenticity. It's also about justice. Essentially it's about love, because when you get right down to it, the civil rights movement for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community is really about having the freedom to be who we are, and to love who we love. — Selisse Berry

The move to render the presence of lesbians and gay men invisible in the intricate fabric of Black existence and survival is a move which contributes to fragmentation and weakness in the Black community. — Audre Lorde

I go back and forth, but I never wanted to be the photographer of the gay and lesbian community. I will wave a rainbow flag proudly, but I am not a singular identity. I think a singular identity isn't very interesting, and I'm a little bit more multifaceted as a person than that. — Catherine Opie

Barack Obama's decision to come out in favour of gay marriage may be a historic occasion, but it is not an isolated one. His administration has been making pro-gay noises for some time; his demographic in the upcoming election is young and educated, precisely the group that favours equality for the LGBT community. — Edmund White

Gay people - generally speaking - have a responsibility to our own community and to future generations of gay people to come out, if and when we feel that we can. — Rachel Maddow

Instead of the country agreeing with her community on the natural rightness of heterosexual marriage as the center of family life, she was now obliged to defend herself against the idea that these views were sexist, homophobic, old-fashioned, and backward. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Jeff Chu's pilgrimage across America to discover his own place as a gay man in the Christian church as well as attitudes about being gay and Christian across denominations is at once timely, smart, poignant, disturbing, inspiring, and maddening. It's essential reading for anyone who cares about the rights of the LGBTQ community to be treated as equal citizens at every level, including the religious-which means it should be essential reading for everybody. — Donna Freitas

I didn't set out to do a gay comic, but given the current political and religious climate in this country, I feel it is important as a gay person, and a Christian, to create stories with humor and honesty. — Paige Braddock

And thus I wonder about so many gay men I've met since, pillars of the community, out to everyone else but Mom, who still refer to their lovers as something between a roommate and a valet. Just who is being protected here, and who thinks queer is wrong? — Paul Monette

I thought that the main problem in the gay community is the lack of funding, I was wrong. The essential quality that this movement needs is courage and an ideal; without an ideal, nothing is possible. — Nikolay Alexeyev

People don't like what I represent, and they think I'm trying to represent the whole gay community just because I'm a gay person and I make music. By default I'm supposed to represent a whole community? I think that's ridiculous. — Steve Grand

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. — Sarah Schulman

The spirit that emerged outside a Mafia-run bar in 1969 became the pulse of the gay community and inspired not just an annual parade but ways to express gay pride in individual lives.
Stonewall happens every day. — Ann Bausum

I'm an Air force Brat and I've lived all over the world and this country and there were people in my community who were gay - nurses, hairdressers, designers - people who just had a different way about themselves. — Pam Grier

I love San Francisco and Brighton has something of San Francisco about it. It's by the sea, there's a big gay community, a feeling of people being there because they enjoy their life there. — Brian Eno

The male gay community seems to be very into female singers. I think it could be the songs we sing. They're more open with their feelings. And they have good taste! — Liza Minnelli

I'm in favor of outing when people have demonized or scapegoated gay people for their own public gain. When they have risen to public prominence on the backs of the gay community that they are part of and they prey on, I think that's absolutely deserving of outing. — Rachel Maddow

Anderson Cooper has a job to do. And that job is to try to reinforce his credibility in the gay community after the fact that you couldn't get him out of the closet for 10 years with a canister of tear gas. Now he's the sheriff; now he's running around writing everybody a ticket! — Alec Baldwin

When I first came up, the whole AIDS epidemic was starting, and the gay community that I experienced from the beginning of my career was mostly - and overwhelmingly - concerned with staying alive. And, also, I felt really aware of the preciousness of life and time. The gay community and people who were HIV-positive were treated so badly, and I was very disturbed by things. But I also saw a lot of love and connection in the gay community at that time. — Madonna Ciccone

I think the gay community, just like anybody, should be represented in all forms and all types. — Cameron Monaghan

"Let's say we discover the gene that says the kid's gonna be gay. How many parents, if they knew before the kid was gonna be born, [that he] was gonna be gay, they would take the pregnancy to term? Well, you don't know but let's say half of them said, "Oh, no, I don't wanna do that to a kid." [Then the] gay community finds out about this. The gay community would do the fastest 180 and become pro-life faster than anybody you've ever seen ... They'd be so against abortion if it was discovered that you could abort what you knew were gonna be gay babies." — Rush Limbaugh

Frankly, it's self-evident. As people of faith, it's our duty to love everyone, the way God loves everyone. There's no reason why any one group is less deserving of love - either the love of a church community, to the love of a family - than any other. — Robin Talley

There are certain performers that the gay community receives and recognizes with love, and my whole life, I've always responded to those same artists, — Annaleigh Ashford

[T]he most elaborate code of [law]... would still have left unspecified a hundred ways in which wreckers of Communism could have sidetracked it without ever having to face the essential questions: are you pulling your weight in the social boat? are you giving more trouble than you are worth? have you earned the privilege of living in a civilized community? That is why the Russians were forced to set up an Inquisition or Star Chamber, called at first the Cheka and now the Gay Pay Oo (Ogpu), to go into these questions and "liquidate" persons who could not answer them satisfactorily. — George Bernard Shaw

There are tons of gay issues that are important, from gay marriage to adoption rights to work-place discrimination and more ... but I think the biggest gay issue is the level of involvement of the gay community to demand change. So many gays think that other gays will take care of it. To fix this, people need to realize that they CAN make a change, but no one person can do it alone. — Tyler Oakley

When AIDS hit, lots of people banded together to take care of each other and do what the government wasn't doing. When you grow up Jewish, as I have, you learn that everybody hates you, no one's going to help you, and you have to take care of yourself. That's a great maxim to the gay community, and we took it to heart; we took care of our own. — Bruce Vilanch

And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people its not, but for me its a choice, and you dont get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if its a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesnt matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not. — Cynthia Nixon

There are those from religious backgrounds who resist and oppose LGBT equality; some very obsessively and publicly. They make bold accusations and negative statements about gay and lesbian people, their supposed "lifestyle" and relationships. But when a son, daughter, brother, sister or close friend comes out it is no longer an "issue" it becomes a person. They realise everything they'd said was painfully targeted at someone they love. Then ... everything changes. — Anthony Venn-Brown

Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they're active and they talk about it. — Herbie Mann

Let me say, on behalf of the entire gay male community, we hate your fucking guts 'cause you landed him. Share, you selfish bastard. — Andrea Speed

I've had more difficulty accepting myself as bisexual than I ever did accepting that I was a lesbian. It felt traitorous. A few years ago, I admitted to myself that I was still interested in men in more than a "Brad Pitt is slick hot sexy" kind of way. But I worried whatmy friends, exes, and the Community would think. I never even broached the subject with my parents. Because what bothered me the most was that people would think that being a lesbian had been a phase for me, when that was so very not the case. What I feared was that I would no longer be part of a community, that I might be seen with my boyfriend and not be recognized as something not the same. — R. Gay

I probably wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the gay community supporting me. I wouldn't be the artist I was today if it wasn't for that because that was the only community that let me try, let me perform without knowing who I was. — Kiesza

It would be so helpful for the straight community to see men in powerful positions coming out and saying "I'm gay" so they don't have these preconceived notions that all gay men are smarmy idiots living on the street or whatever it is people think of gay men. I think it would be really helpful and productive. — Madonna Ciccone

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

A lot of people in my world - in the acting world - have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community. — Emma Thompson