Lgbt Lesbian Quotes & Sayings

The issue of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals has vexed politicians for decades. I have my own cloudy history with the issue, having supported a law in Mississippi that made it illegal for LGBT couples to adopt children. I believed at the time this was a principled position based on my faith. — Ronnie Musgrove

i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted who I really am. But who am I, really? Am I allowed to speak for myself or must my desires form the battleground for causes I do not care about? My answer to that is simple: 'no one allows anyone anything.' By rejecting that notion you discover that only you can give yourself permission on how to lead your life, naysayers be damned. In the end something gives way. The earth doesn't move but something shifts. That shift is change and change is the layman's lingo for that elusive state that lovers, dreamers, prophets and politicians call 'freedom'. — Diriye Osman

It is immensely gratifying to hear from fans from around the world where being a gay or lesbian teen, having feelings for someone of your own gender is simply not acceptable. We noticed that our show fills a huge void for large audiences in many different countries. That's why our choice of format for the show, the web series, is such a fortunate one as it allows viewers in those countries to feel acknowledged. While the series is not exclusively dealing with gay and lesbian issues, the fact that we don't sanitize it gives us truly global appeal, especially with the gay and lesbian community. In fact, demand is such that we are subtitling the show in French and perhaps other languages to even better reach those audiences. — Otessa Marie Ghadar

I oppose same-sex marriage and civil unions but I support domestic partnership between gay and lesbian couples. I have no problem with gay and lesbian couples adopting. I support equal benefits for same-sex couples such as hospital visitation rights — Mitt Romney

It had all happened in that instant she had seen Carol standing in the middle of the floor, watching her. Then the realization that so much had happened after that meeting made her feel incredibly lucky suddenly. It was so easy for a man and woman to find each other, to find someone who would do, but for her to have found Carol- — Patricia Highsmith

June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never again know who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childish pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madness. — Anais Nin

What does religious freedom mean if we would use it as a cover for hate and privilege? — DaShanne Stokes

I don't know any homophobic people. That suggests fear.
The people I know who hate gay folks are:
illiterate, nescient, uneducated, uninstructed, unlearned, unschooled, untaught, backward, benighted, primitive, unenlightened, blockheaded, dense, doltish, hebetudinous, obtuse, stupid, thickheaded, thick-witted
But not homophobic. — Darnell Lamont Walker

It wasn't the first time I'd been with someone, but it was different this time. Maybe it was because when I told them I was bisexual they weren't like the girls who thought I was *really* a lesbian; they weren't like the boys who thought it was hot. Maybe it was because when they told me they were genderqueer I just said that I knew and they cried as they smiled at me. Or maybe it was just because our limbs fit together, maybe because it tasted like salt water and was the colour of sunlight through grass. Or maybe it was just all these things. — Alison Evans

If you don't know for sure, then what's the big thing about trying stuff out?" Jamie said, looking not at me but looking out at that statue, just like Hennitz.
I still didn't have any of the right words. "It's more like maybe I do know and I'm still confused too, at the same time. Does that make sense? I mean, it's like how you noticed this thing about me tonight, you saw it, or you already knew it - it's there. But that doesn't mean it's not confusing or whatever. — Emily M. Danforth

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

The eye of youth is very observant. Youth has its moments of keen intuition, even normal youth
but the intuition of those who stand mi-way between the sexes is so ruthless, so poignant, so deadly, as to be in the nature of an added scourge ... — Radclyffe Hall

I left the bed as she had left it, unmade and rumpled, coverlets awry, so that her body's print might rest still warm beside my own.
Until the next day I did not go to bathe, I wore no clothes and did not dress my hair, for fear I might erase some sweet caress.
That morning I did not eat, nor yet at dusk, and put no rouge nor powder on my lips, so that her kiss might cling a little longer.
I left the shutters closed, and did not open the door, for fear the memory of the night before might vanish with the wind. — Pierre Louis

I oppose same-sex marriage but I would advance equal rights in employment for gay and lesbian people. I appointed a few judges who were gay and I had few people in my cabinet that I found out were gay. I never asked peoples sexual orientation. — Mitt Romney

What happened was private. I was in it with Rose. She had hurt me grievously and now I was forever attached. I was in it now with all the women in the world. I walked home glad. I will die, I thought with a bounce in my step. I'm whole. Not whole like anyone else, but whole like me. Painful, but simple. It was very simple now. — Eileen Myles

She had seen just now what she had only sensed before, that the whole world was ready to be their enemy, and suddenly what she and Carol had together seemed no longer love or anything happy but a monster between them, with each of them caught in a fist. — Patricia Highsmith

The less that women are visible as a research subject, the less we are likely to learn about lesbians. — Bonnie J. Morris

The only queer people are those who don't love anybody. — Rita Mae Brown

It's hard not to be a fighter when you're constantly under siege. — Cassandra Duffy

A review of 850 research papers concluded that people with religious involvement and belief system have better mental health outcomes. They have higher levels of psychological well-being such as life satisfaction, happiness, positive effect, and higher morale and less depression and suicide. If however you are gay or lesbian (in the closet or your sexuality/belief system unresolved) ... ... .. it is the exact opposite ... .it can drive you crazy or kill you (suicide). Also it should be noted that this research has shown that the very places where Christian young people should feel safest (in their churches, Christian homes, schools and with friends) are actually places of harm. — Anthony Venn-Brown

If you are in the closet and fall in love with someone of the same gender, it doesn't automatically remove the shame and fear that's kept you locked away. The love you are experiencing encourages you to face the reality that this is who you really are and also has the power to set you free. The richness, beauty and depths of love can only be fully experienced in a climate of complete openness, honesty and vulnerability. Love, the most powerful of human emotions, is calling you to freedom and wholeness. — Anthony Venn-Brown

I'm scared to fall asleep. I don't want to see it... — Rebecca Ybarra

One Saturday morning walking to the farmers' market with my lover she tells me she needs to look like a man on the street. She hates binding her breasts. Hates having breasts, hates not passing. I press her. I ask her, but what do you feel like when you're naked in bed with me? Do you like your body then? She is quiet. Later she tells me she had a dream. Her mother brought home a bottle of medicine from the hospital for her. The doctor says she has to take it. The medicine is testosterone.

On Shabbat I remember to pray for enough space inside of me to hold all the darkness of the night and all the sunlight of the day. I pray for enough space for transformations as miraculous as the shift from day to night.

Later when that lover has changed his name and an ex-boyfriend has come out to me as a lesbian I go to visit my best friend's sister-turned-brother-turned-sister-again and she tells me about the blessing of having many names and using them all at once. — M.J. Kaufman

The difference between being content and being blissfully happy is unquantifiable, and only those who experience the latter can understand just how mediocre the former can be. — Emma Shane

When these flies were put together in all-male groups they formed long, moving chains resembling conga lines, with each male attempting (unsuccessfully) to mate with the male in front of it. — Simon LeVay

I probably do the most for the gay and lesbian community, or LGBT, but I don't have one that I focus on. I just try and kind of do a lot for different charities. — Chelsea Handler

It shook Therese in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like death or dying or killing Those words were somehow future, and this was present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything for certain, had jammed itself in her throat for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. — Patricia Highsmith

Being lesbian isn't a way of life, it's a trivial attribute that doesn't change your character. — Lisa Wheeler

Acknowledging that my biological imperative may not include the drive to procreate, that I just might be attracted to XX chromosomes instead of XY? That's so stupid-minor in comparison to the fact that I might actually be in love for the first time in my life. It's with a girl...so what? Lesbian, bisexual, whatever! Thus isn't about categorisation or chromosomes. This is about how I feel about another person. — Kristen Zimmer

I imagined a time when being gay is as unquestioned and un-judged as is having blue eyes. Some might call it fantasy or science fiction. I'd like to think it's the future. — Missouri Vaun

We fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell. I was Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I was about to drown. However much we had to hide our love, however guarded we had to be about our pleasure, I could not long be miserable about a thing so very sweet. Nor, in my gladness, could I quite believe that anybody would be anything but happy for me if only they knew. — Sarah Waters

What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other's oppression. As our activist network grows into marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, we will hammer out language that demonstrates the sum total of our movement as well as its component communities.

Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. This is a very early stage for trans peoples with such diverse histories and blends of cultures to form community. Perhaps we don't have to strive to be one community. In reality, there isn't one women's, or lesbian, gay, bi community. What is realistic is the goal to build a coalition between our many strong communities in order to form a movement capable of defending all our lives. — Leslie Feinberg

The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them. — Rachel Maddow

He was wearing a gleaming cream-coloured linen suit, and a Panama hat. The weirdest thing about this was that he was not the most outlandish-looking person in the room by a long way. Not that Little Miss Dresses-Like-Bogart over here has a right to complain — Alexis Hall

The beauty of standing up for your rights is others will see you standing and stand up as well. — Cassandra Duffy

Although my understanding of exactly how much trouble I was in grew more specific over time, as a child I surely understood enough about my condition to know it was something I'd better keep private. By intuition I was certain that the thing I knew to be true was something others would find both impossible and hilarious. My conviction, by the way, had nothing to do with a desire to be feminine, but it had everything to do with being female. Which is an odd believe for a person born male. It certainly had nothing to do with whether I was attracted to girls or boys. This last point was the one that, years later, would most frequently elude people, including the overeducated smarty-pants who constituted much of my inner circle. But being gay or lesbian is about sexual orientation. Being transgedered is about identity. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she ever had been before. And why worry about defining everything? — Patricia Highsmith

If cheese was a woman, I'd marry her. I'd come home and eat her every night. — Solange Nicole

Maybe I grew up too fast, maybe that's my trouble. I feel so lost out here ... hung up between two worlds; half-kid and half-adult, half-boy and half-girl. And sometimes it seems like I get the dirty side of both. — Ann Bannon

Should I talk about [having breast cancer]? Because how many things could I have? You know black, lesbian - I'm like, I can't be the poster child for everything. At least with the LGBT issues we get a parade and a float and it's a party. — Wanda Sykes

Oh great, you too. So now I wear this label 'Queer' emblazoned across my chest. Or I could always carve a scarlet 'L' on my forehead. Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don't know what I am - polymorphous and perverse. Shit. I don't even know if I'm white. I'm me. That's all I am and all I want to be. Do I have to be something? — Rita Mae Brown

Was it love or wasn't it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn't even know. She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions. — Patricia Highsmith

She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn't she and Carol? — Patricia Highsmith

It's official, then. Everyone knew I was gay before I did. — Liz Kessler

Moreover, we were to each other aspects of a dream unrealized. I emblemized the excitement of freedom, a life untethered by the confines of constructs. She illustrated a sense of belonging, of ongoing laughter in the face of those constructs, a true lifeline within the walking dead. We were standing in different places, yet the same, seeing within each other a sense of truth within the lies, a radiant light that illuminated the dark. — Jackie Haze

The different strategies and visions of 'reformists' and 'radicals' are not the only subject of major debate within lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer politics. The fact is that only a tiny minority of non-heterosexuals are involved in any sort of political activism. Various writers and activists have noted with rising alarm an almost mass depoliticisation of lesbian and gay communities in the 1990s. The crass commercialism of the gay scene and the rise of the so-called pink pound and of 'lifestyle' as a signifier of sexual identity (and human worth) has allowed huge profits to be reaped. Playing on the insecurities of people sells 'packages' which can include everything from 'gay apartments' to 'gay holidays' and 'gay clothes' to designer drugs. — Richard Dunphy

It angered him that his sexuality was an issue at all. As far as he was concerned, who he decided to sleep with was his business alone. — Christina Westover

I am a strong, black, lesbian woman. Every time I say it, I feel so much better. — Brittney Griner

We do not choose the one we fall in love with, and our perception of happiness is our own and is determined by what we experience ... — Julie Maroh

But thats their image of us so we stay tense, holding our breath, hoping we wont be found out. - about being gay from the film Love My Life — Ebine Yamaji

If I was gay, I wouldn't need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn't have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn't say I'm 'just a slut' or 'faking it' or 'undecided' or 'confused.' I'm not confused. I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. Love doesn't fit into boxes like that. It's blurry, slippery, quantum. It's only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible. — Leah Raeder

Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.
And it's relentless. — Leah Raeder

The bag I wanted was beyond reason - something to hold my poems, twice as big as the universe and it must be androgynous. — Eileen Myles

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

What do you want?
I want to stop living in fear. I want to stop coming up with excuses about why I'm not interested in dating. I want my family to know me. I want to get to learn more about Lisa. I want to stop feeling like everything I am is inadequate or makes me unworthy of love because of something I can't help. — Sara Farizan

I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug. — Sarah Winman

Living with stress and secrets is both stressful and secretive. — James Dawson

That her own self-deception and self-absorption, her own slavery to the society and family in which she had been brought up, had reduced this blameless man to a weeping wreck struck her as horrific. She saw more clearly than she had ever seen before that she must change, or keep hurting the people who truly loved her. — Shamim Sarif

If you're reading this and you think that maybe you could love someone of the same gender (or nongender), all I have to say to you is this: Congratulations! You're perfect and wonderful and more alive than you ever knew. Be proud of who you are because you're already more than enough. — Hannah Hart

There's a Greek legend - no, it's in something Plato wrote - about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That's why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male. — Nancy Garden

I mean, really: He called me 33 percent lesbian, which was a gross underestimation of my lesbian-ness. — Reese Witherspoon

These glaring disparities, about how those with the most access within the movement set the agenda, contribute to the skewed media portrait, and overwhelmingly fail at funneling resources to those most marginalized. My awakening pushed me to be more vocal about these issues, prompting uncomfortable but necessary conversations about the movement privileging middle- and upper-class cis gay and lesbian rights over the daily access issues plaguing low-income queer and trans youth and LGBT people of color, communities that carry interlocking identities that are not mutually exclusive, that make them all the more vulnerable to poverty, homelessness, unemployment, HIV/AIDs, hyper-criminalization, violence, and so much more. — Janet Mock

This book is a compilation of the stories of eight gay and lesbian people that left straight marriages and came out as gay. Six of the eight have children. Each story is different. I wrote the book to help those people going through this difficult transition to help them realize they are not alone and that their lives will be much better once they are true to themselves and their families. — Michael Testa

'Star Trek' fans totally accepted my sexual orientation. There are a great number of LGBT people across 'Star Trek' fandom. The show always appealed to people that were different - the geeks and the nerds, and the people who felt they were not quite a part of society, sometimes because they may have been gay or lesbian. — George Takei

It's difficult to make the argument that one female fist inserted into one male ass
or, for that matter, dozens or even hundreds of fists inserted into as many asses
can really make a difference for, say, lesbian mothers fighting for custody of their children. -Katherine Raymond — Carol Queen

I am not here to entertain straight people. — Sarah Schulman