Gays Quotes & Sayings

Our politics at its best involves us recognizing ourselves in each other. And our politics at its worst are when we see immigrants or women or blacks or gays or Mexicans as somehow separate, apart from us. — Barack Obama

Many people secretly think that gays are a lot happier than they are, and want to punish them. — George Weinberg

Hip-hop is contributing to American society's misogyny and racism, hyper-sexuality anti-Black representations. Hip-Hop isn't setting the standard for misogyny. No one reduces the presidency to misogyny, although we've had misogynistic presidents. No one reduces our government to being solely homophobic, although we have a government with a don't ask, don't tell policy for gays and lesbians in the military. — Bakari Kitwana

Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken. — Rich Mullins

The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.
So if there is a message I have to give, it is that if I've found one overriding thing about my personal election, it's the fact that if a gay person can be elected, it's a green light. And you and you and you, you have to give people hope ... — Harvey Milk

Some people go to the West and claim they are gays and that their lives are at risk in the Gambia, in order for them to be granted a stay in Europe. — Yahya Jammeh

Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned. — John Ridley

Well, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is back - not for gays in the military. It's President Obama's new policy for questions about Libya. Don't ask, don't tell. — Jay Leno

You can't believe that AIDS is a curse from God against Gays without accepting that Lyme Disease is a curse from the same God against Deer Hunters ... — T. Rafael Cimino

I'm one of them gays too. — Ellen Hart

Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family. — Stephen Colbert

If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters. — Anita Bryant

The sooner being gay is completely normalized, the sooner homophobic prohibitions against touch will be taken off straight men. As much as gay men have faced the brunt of homophobic violence, straight men have been banished to a desert of physical isolation by these same homophobic fanatics who police lesbians and gays in our society. The result has been a generation of American men who do not hug each other, do not hold hands and cannot sit close together without the homophobic litmus test kicking in. — Mark Greene

The term "queer" is not simply a 1990s recoding of a pre-Stonewall epithet but here refers to a myriad forms of same-sex and other non-normative kinds of desire that have come to inform certain specific identity groups such as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender individuals, transsexuals, transvestites, cross dressers, drag queens, drag kings, alternative straights and anyone in between. — Chantal Zabus

I'll always remember being called by my mother who beckoned me to look at the screen where a young man was being tortured by the church. Bag over his head, rolling on the ground, crying, suffocating, vomiting while the congression continues yelling chants, "God will save you!" treating him like the devil's child.

It was the first time I've ever doubted God. First time I've ever heard the terms 'Gays, and 'Queers.' I went through a lot in my childhood, but this was the first I've ever been so traumatized. My mom tells me they deserved it and the church tries to justify their actions as if it was the most intelligent excuse in the world. At 12 years old, I knew only one thing. I would never be like them. — Merlin

Our gays are more macho than their straights. — Ann Coulter

A world that becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else. First it's Jews, already abandoning France. Then it's homosexuals, already under siege from gay-bashing in Amsterdam, 'the most tolerant city in Europe'. Then it's uncovered women, targetted for rape in Oslo. And if you don't any longer have any Jews or (officially) any gays or (increasingly) uncovered women, there are always just Christians in general, from Nigeria to Egypt to Pakistan. More space for Islam means less space for everything else, and in the end for you. — Mark Steyn

I hear the word 'tolerance'-tha t some people are trying to teach people to be tolerant of gays. I'm not satisfied with that word. I am gay, and I am not seeking to be 'tolerated'. One tolerates a toothache, rush-hour traffic, an annoying neighbor with a cluttered yard. I am not a negative to be tolerated. — Chely Wright

Despite our founding principles and the many ways our constitution has protected individual liberties, we do, let's admit it, have a long history of shutting people out
african americans, women, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities
and throughout our history, we have found too many ways to divide and exclude people from their ownership of the law and protection under the law. — Hillary Clinton

They needed some Jews or gays or something to spice things up, to add a bit of theater and a couple of interesting bistros. — Harlan Coben

In Indiana, gays and lesbians can be fired from their jobs with impunity, and in Arkansas, it's the same thing. We need those protective laws to truly have an equal society. — George Takei

Gays feel about popularity the same way teenage girls do. Is it that we really want friends we can count on, or do we just want guys around us whom we can share our curlers with? — Perry Brass

My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren't they? I know they didn't invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: it disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn't know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves. — Nick Hornby

Are not the gays who seek the right to marry, to formalise their commitment to each other, holding up a mirror to heterosexuals who are marrying less frequently and divorcing more often? — Malcolm Turnbull

Originally I was opposed to gay assimilation and targeted gay marriage as just another effort on the part of gays to resemble their straight neighbours. — Edmund White

In the 1992 election, Mr. Clinton raised discrete fortunes from a gorgeous mosaic of diversity and correctness. From David Mixner and the gays he wrung immense sums on the promise of lifting the ban on homosexual service in "the military" - a promise he betrayed with his repellent "don't ask, don't tell" policy. From a variety of feminist circles he took even larger totals for what was dubbed "The Year of the Woman," while he and his wife applauded Anita Hill for her bravery in "speaking out" about funny business behind the file cabinets. — Christopher Hitchens

Avery doesn't know what these people are talking about, and since he's driving, he can't go online to check. The sensation he has is a strange, difficult one. He knows these people aren't talking about him. But at the same time they are talking about him, in their blanket dismissal. And they're also talking about us. Because so many of them are our age or older, stuck in previous decades of thought. The gays of today, the gays of yesterday - we're all the same bother, all the same wrong. Not people, really. Just something to yell about. — David Levithan

It's just like calling homosexuals 'gays.' Gay means happy! You know, it's just to try to dilute it so that it becomes socially acceptable, and if you say anything against homosexual marriage or anything - 'Oh, you're not tolerant.' So we're supposed to prostitute our principles, on behalf of tolerance. — Ted Cruz

I've always thought it would be fun to have a vegan campaign aimed at gays called "Don't be a Dairy Queen." — Dan Mathews

I fear that within 10 years gays, trade union activists and left wing politicians will be led off to the gas chambers. — Ken Livingstone

I'm in a weird position, because I like rainbows, but I'm not gay. So whenever I go out wearing a rainbow shirt, I have to put "Not gay." But I'm not against gays, so under that I'll have to put " ... but supportive." It's weird how one group of people took refracted light. That's very greedy, gays. — Demetri Martin

John Paulk, the poster boy for 'ex-gays' was found in a gay bar in Washington. He said he was there to use the bathroom. But nobody thought to ask him for what. — Kate Clinton

I was on a panel with light skinned Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland was one inhabited by White gays. — Ishmael Reed

It's not that gays and diversity equal high technology. But if your culture is not such that it can accept difference, and uniqueness and oddity and eccentricity, you will not get high tech industry. — Richard Florida

Gays and lesbians began to gain civil rights when Americans realized that their brothers, cousins, daughters were gay. — Nicholas Kristof

Most of the people ... they say gays are born that way and it has been ... proven ... That is a lie. That's what's called a lie. It is not true. There is no definitive scientific study that has ever proved that homosexuality is innate — Scott Lively

Gays should be fought against. — Rafal A. Ziemkiewicz

I think that we ought to be a tolerant nation. I think we ought to be tolerant people. But we shouldn't set up special categories for anybody. And I'm for the rights of everybody, including gays, but not any special rights. — Fred Thompson

Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless - until they aren't. — Amy Waldman

I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. — Barack Obama

Originally, I was against gay marriage because I was opposed to all marriage, being an old-fashioned gay bohemian. The straight people I knew in the sixties were very much opposed to it. I was, too, and it was never a possibility for gays, but when I saw how opposed the Religious Right was to it, I thought it a fight worth fighting. — Edmund White

Over the past seventy years the various identity struggles have to some degree remediated the great wrongs that have been done to workers, people of color, Indigenous Peoples, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, while helping to humanize our society overall. But they have also had a shadow side in the sense that they have encouraged us to think of ourselves more as determined than as self-determining, more as victims of 'isms' (racism, sexism, capitalism, ableism) than as human beings who have the power of choice. For our own survival we must assume individual and collective responsibility for creating a new nation - one that is loved rather than feared and one that does not have to bribe and bully other nations to win support. — Grace Lee Boggs

Liberals claim to love gays when it allows them to vent their spleen at Republicans. But disagree with liberals and their first response is to call you gay. Liberals are gays' biggest champions on issues most gays couldn't care less about, like gay marriage or taxpayer funding of photos of men with bullwhips up their derrieres. But who has done more to out, embarrass, and destroy the lives of gay men who prefer to keep their orientation private than Democrats? Who is more intolerant of gays in the Republican Party than gays in the Democratic Party? — Ann Coulter

But it doesn't say that dude shall not fall in love with dude, because that's just impossible, right? The gays are animals, answering their animal desires. It's impossible for animals to fall in love. And yet- — John Green

If you believe in equality, if you believe in standing up for the rights of all, especially for people most affected by bigotry and discrimination, then you have no choice but to be present and accounted for when it comes to standing up for gays and lesbians in our society. — Michael Moore

The only street I like is Rue Honore de Balzac, because 'Balzac' sound so gay, and I love my gays. I might like Parisians more if they named their streets only for gay icons, like Rue Liza Minnelli or Rue Bette Midler or, my favorite, Rue McClanahan. — Joan Rivers

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

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

I think camp is a really fascinating thing, and it's hard to define and hard to apply consciously. It's almost something you take from material that's already existed in the world, a reading of the world. But I think it speaks of a long tradition of gay reading of the world, before gays were allowed to be visible. — Todd Haynes

Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA
oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's[sic] first act in office was to promote "gays in the military." RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters
it all goes together. — Jerome Corsi

I was a gay kid in high school in the late '90s, and I was in theater club. I was never a thespian. I was much more of a lighting guy or a backstage guy. Because I wanted to do something easy for the rest of my life, I thought, "Maybe I'll go and apply to colleges that specialize in theater set design. I'll do that. That's what I want to do." With theater, really, I'd be around the gays. — James Pearse Connelly

There are gays and lesbians in every country, so there should be no discrimination against them just because of their destiny. — Hun Sen

Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment - whether it is found in the form of neglect, indifference, cruelty or adultery, to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief. — Malcolm Turnbull

I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this ... Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world had long before measured as lost or gone. Some of the people who were able to look at the dirtiest, the poorest, the gays, the straights, the drug users, those in recovery, the basest of sinners, and those who were just ... plain ... different.
They were able to look at them all and only see strength. Beauty. Potential. Hope.
And if we boil it down, isn't that what love actually is? — Dan Pearce

Atheists are the new gays; in the closet and pretty much disqualified from public office. — Richard Dawkins

Gays have become colossal bores. Once interesting and iconoclastic, all they seem to crave nowadays is the State's pension and seal of approval. They ought to go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police's violations of privacy and private property were the object of their anger and activism. — Ilana Mercer

I have no idea why gay men love me, but I would have to assume it's because they know how much I love the gays! Everyone needs a good gay man in their life. — Chelsea Handler

This informal "pre-exclusion" is probably the more powerful and widely exerted form in many churches. It is in my denomination. As the divorced and remarried don't seek communion at a Roman Catholic parish, gays and lesbians don't seek to participate in most evangelical churches. — Ken Wilson

Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas - none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bare it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. — Haruki Murakami

What people love about Santorum is he is who is he. He speaks his words. He loves God. He loves his country, and he loves gays. — Foster Friess

God says in the bible that we should love our neighbor and he created us all as equals. I know in my heart that gays and lesbians should have the same government rights that Spencer and I will when we get married. So, yes, this blonde Christian believes in gay marriage. — Heidi Montag

You can't plead tolerance for gays by saying that they're just like everyone else. Tolerance is something we should extend to people who are not like everyone else. — Vito Russo

Let me tell you about gays in the military. I don't want any gay people hanging around me while I'm killing kids. I just don't want to see it. — Bill Hicks

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America ... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen. — Jerry Falwell

What happened in the 80's was that all the men died of AIDS. That was a particularly depressing time because so many people passed away and it was a very desperate and lonely time, so I think a lot of people felt that we were somehow, unreceived. Not only by the disease but also by the public image of the disease. It really gave homophobia a real shot in the arm and changed the way people viewed gays, queers. It became an entirely different atmosphere. — Margaret Cho

We don't want sympathetic liberals, we want gays to represent gays ... I represent the gay street people-the 14-year-old runaway from San Antonio. We have to make up for hundreds of years of persecution. We have to give hope to that poor runaway kid from San Antonio. They go to the bars because churches are hostile. They need hope! They need a piece of the pie! — Harvey Milk

Better say gays are bad, or people might think I am gay.

That's homophobia, in a nutshell. — Robert Black

Gays being gay is wrong. Two women can't produce a baby, two men can't produce a baby, so it's not how it's supposed to be ... I don't believe in gay marriages. I don't believe in being gay. — Carl Everett

The greatest spiritual leaders in history have all preached love for others as the basis for all happiness, and never did they accompany such mandates with a list of unlovable actions or deeds. They never said, love everybody except for the gays. Love everybody except for the homeless. Love everybody except for the drug users. Love everybody except for the gang members, or those covered in ink, or the spouse abusers. They didn't tell us it was okay to love everybody with the exception of the "trailer trash," those living in poverty, or the illegal immigrants. They didn't tell us it was okay to love everybody except for our ex-lovers, our lovers' ex lovers, or our ex-lovers' lovers. The mandate was pretty damn clear, wasn't it?
Love others.
Period. — Dan Pearce

No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere. — Barack Obama

Nor did Americans believe that Republicans had been waging war on minorities, women, or gays - especially given that Republicans have held the House only since 2011 and have been out of power in the Senate and presidency since 2009. — Victor Davis Hanson

We can't believe how many gays there are in heavy metal, people like ... — Biff Byford

We need laws that protect everyone - men and women, straights and gays, regardless of sexual perversion ... ah, persuasion. — Bella Abzug

It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays. — Tom Perrotta

Your tolerance is not love. It is unfaithfulness. — Kevin DeYoung

I am a huge fan of gays. They love me, and I love them. They think of me as sort of a gay icon. — Tori Spelling

The very concept of an Iranian university is an oxymoron. There are no free and open places of learning in that repressive theocracy. Dissenters are not given tenure; they are murdered, after first being tortured. Blasphemy, which is broadly defined, is punished. Gays are not only excluded from Iranian universities, but are imprisoned and killed. — Alan Dershowitz

There's a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it. — Tom Robbins

The most important fact is that gays have been here since day one. To say otherwise is a gross denial and stupidity. We played an enormous part in the history of America. — Larry Kramer

Yeah, things are better for blacks and women and gays, but it was the blacks and women and gays that did it, not fuck-ups like this bunch. Whites and straights came along to give help, all right, after the blacks said 'enough' and got their heads busted, and it's the same for the gays and the women. The whites and straights, they control things, and they could have changed it anytime. — Joe R. Lansdale

Yet through history gays have always dominated religious life and churches. — Malcolm Boyd

We have the history of slavery or inequality to women, and now the civil rights movement of the 21st century is the struggle for equality for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. And I think it's important for Americans to know about the times that we failed. — George Takei

Our opponent [Cory Aquino] does not put on any make up. She does not have her fingernails manicured. You know gays. They are for beauty. Filipinos who like beauty, love and God are for Marcos. — Imelda Marcos

[Gays and lesbians should be] Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing. — Ali Al-Sistani

My father tried to get me to be around gay people a lot when I was young. He owned a gay bookstore and it had a lot of gay literature and art books and he wanted me to be taken care of by the young gays and lesbians who worked for him. — Margaret Cho

As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around. — John C. Danforth

Compared with lesbians, gays seem to be more unapologetic about their sexual orientation. The former must not have balls. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value. — Gary L. Francione

The Bible is to gays what Mein Kampf is to Jews. — Peter Tatchell

I don't get this shitty attitude that only gays should care about gay issues and only women should care about women's issues. — Sarah Silverman

I plan to see St. Louis as a global competitor. As an international trade hub, as an incubator of new companies, as a place of culture and the arts, as a magnet for immigrants, for entrepreneurs, for animal lovers, and for gays, as a city of parks and trails, and as the sort of place that figures in young people's dreams. — Francis G. Slay

Leviticus 18 doesn't tell us everything we need to know about sex, but it gives us the basic rules: incest is bad (vv. 6-27); taking a rival wife is bad (v 18) ... adultery is bad (v 20); killing our children is bad (v 21); homosexuality activity is bad (v 22); and bestiality is bad (v 23). — Kevin DeYoung

I think what you're seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they've got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out. — Barack Obama

In public discourse, the challenge is not to stifle robust debate, but rather to make sure that it is real debate. The first obligation for Christians is to listen carefully to opponents and if they are not willing to do so, then Christians should simply be silent. To engage in a war of words is to engage in a symbolic violence that is fundamentally at odds with the gospel. And too often, on such hot button issues as poverty, abortion, race relations, and homosexuality, the poor, children, minorities, and gays are used as weapons in ideological warfare. This too is an expression of instrumentalization.16 — James Davison Hunter

I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America
the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians
none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen
either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide
and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it
all of it
seems to have led me to where we are, here and now. — David Levithan

And why is it "homophobic" for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital. — Ann Coulter

In both cases, it is the prejudice, not the condition, that does the harm. It may be, as some would have it, that blacks are inherently inferior to whites or that homosexuals are all, by definition, sick. So what? Even if either condition truly is inherently undesirable, no manner of social pressure will turn blacks into whites or gays into straights. Social pressure will only exaggerate the handicap. It is still the prejudice, more than the condition, that does the harm. — Andrew Tobias

Right now the institution of marriage feels very one-sided, and I want to live in a country where we all have equal rights. I have so many friends who are gays and lesbians who would so badly want to get married, that I wouldn't be able to sleep with myself [if I got married before they could]. — Charlize Theron

If a woman or a gay person has a right, by conservative logic, then the right is not actually a right but instead an assault on rights. Women and gays: So evil that we can turn actual rights into assaults on freedom just by having them. — Amanda Marcotte

Along with racial equality and the late bloom of women's rights, future generations will have to explain how, in the past, gays were misunderstood and publicly humiliated for loving each other, and, eventually, how they stood together and conquered stupidity and hypocritical hatred, and fought their way out of marginalization. — IO Tillett Wright