Gays Quotations

The Stonewall riots were a key moment for gay people. Throughout modern history, gays had thought of themselves as something like a mental illness or maybe a sin or a crime. Gay liberation allowed us to make the leap to being a 'minority group,' which made life much easier.

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.

Gay rights is just a matter of time. Look at the polls. Worrying about gay marriage, let alone gay civil unions or gay employment rights, is a middle-age issue. Young people just can't see the problem. At worst, gays are going to win this one just by waiting until the opposition dies off.

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

The hypocrisy and false piety of the deniers aside, the relationships of gays have no effect on heteros. Especially all the heteros who've done such a marvelous job of debasing marriage on their own all these many years.

It is my position that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.

Where gays and lesbians are the best organized and most concentrated in numbers are states that President Clinton must carry in order to be reelected in 1996. Among the states are California, New York, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois.

If bigots oppose gay marriage so vehemently, it must be because marriage is a defining institution for them; gays will never be fully accepted until they can marry and adopt, like anyone else.

I think that in many ways, gays are behind women and behind blacks, as far as rights go. But I always say, if you know one of us, it's hard to hate us.

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.

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.

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

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.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they're not discriminated on the job.

Sometime in the not too distant future, denying gays the right to marry will be viewed as historically corrupt - as corrupt as denying slaves their freedom.

Until politicos take a true stand in defense of marriage by proposing an anti-adultery amendment to the Constitution, stop demonizing gays and lesbians when the one debasing your marriage is the individual in the mirror.

The people leading the split claim they are representing people in the pews, but these are the same people who in 1954 would split the church over our support of Brown v. Board of Education and who would have split the church in 1976 over the issue of women's ordination. The issue now is gays and lesbians -- it's all part of the same struggle.

There are people who want their kids to read books about gays and lesbians. Therefore, we have an obligation to have those books. We select those books the same way we select all others -- based on their literary merit.

Shareholders are becoming aware that when they do the right thing, it's also the right business decision as well. Most corporations understand that they need to serve gays and lesbians, and they realize that extremist positions have no place in the business community.

People who agree with the Boy Scouts - they can do that. And they can take the fork in the road that goes down toward being a strictly private organization. Why can't one of these clubs that discriminate against women or gays or atheists be a club? But don't expect to have your meetings on government property, for instance. That's the distinction here.

On one hand there is no association between mental illness and homosexuality. On the other hand, we also know that gays and lesbians have higher levels of stress problems.

Bush gets it. He's open to gays and lesbians, and his vision is the most important thing. We are not electing the platform to be our next president. George W. Bush is going to be the one making the decisions, and implementing what he believes.

I have a lot of inner resource and I'm sure you could read and study in jail. Of course, all of this would have to go to court first and the constitutionality of not giving gays the right to marry would have to come up first.

I think that if there is a large number of people here that it will get the churches talking. I think it is going to be an opportunity for straight people to see with gays and lesbians think about the church.

I think that the Vatican is in a deep crisis of faith which they should be praying for. They don't trust theologians, they don't trust women, they don't trust gays and they don't trust nature. The rest of us who do and who are looking for answers should just get on with the work.

People judge gays before they meet them. They're really good, as you can see.

I think gays have great taste! I actually think their emotions are highly sensitive, and they're aware of when people are singing of truths or not!

The proponents of Proposition 22 say that (it) doesn't deny hospital visitation or inheritance rights for lesbians and gays, ... But in Florida and Virginia, arch-conservative legal organizations have used similar laws as tools in court to deny lesbians and gays fundamental rights -- like the right to visit a sick or injured partner in the hospital, the right to inheritance, or the right to health insurance.

Erasing persecution of gays from the history of the Holocaust repeats the tragic silence of most Germans in the Nazi years.

First, I was opposed to gay marriage because it seemed like one more way that gays were wanting to assimilate. When I realized the Christian right was so opposed to it, as well as tyrannical governments in Africa and Russia, I thought, 'It must be a good thing to fight for.'

These representations on reality television have really broadened people's perceptions of gays and lesbians.

(re: 9/11 attacks) "...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...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 thing in their face and say you helped this happen.

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.

AIDS had won gays sympathy; they no longer seemed the privileged brats that the general populace had resented in the 1970s.

A lot of people were worried that challenges would go up under President Bush, but the highest numbers were during the Clinton administration, ... I think that came from resentment among conservatives that Bill Clinton was president. You had the whole thing about gays in the military. You had people who believed that somehow Clinton was not a legitimate president.

It's just unfortunate that the governor thinks he can capitalize on discriminating against gays and lesbians. His motto for the state is 'unbridled spirit,' and it seems to me in the past week he's thrown that in reverse.

It wasn't until the early '60s that I began to hear of places where gays congregated. The lifestyle was not recognized and I was very, very lonely.

It's a gross misrepresentation to say gays were omitted from the grassroots report. African Americans were not mentioned in the report. It is a brief account of some of the things Dean did in his first year. It was not intended to list all of our outreach efforts.

The number of people who said that it made a difference to them that I'm out is the reason that I'm out. There are people who devote their lives to taking away the rights of gays and lesbians, and I think that visibility is very important. I'm trying to encourage more people to come out, and show everyone who they are, because it's harder to take away the rights of a human being. And this is a miracle state, because we can get married. And I think that these people working to take away our rights are going to lose, because of this generation.

Support for equal rights for gays and lesbians, while still far from overwhelming, increased significantly during the 1990s and appears likely to continue to expand slowly but surely,

I'm surprised by the level of homophobia ? bias against gays and lesbians ? there is on campus.

I know that he has said things in the past that have been offensive to some groups of people - gays, in particular to Jews. But I think that the invitation from the Nation of Islam to Jews and to gays may be a step in the right direction. I took it as such.

If you go back to 1989, her answers around AIDS were forward thinking, and she said she believed gays and lesbians deserve the same civil rights, even though she was not for overturning sodomy laws, ... Those answers were not all that out of line with people who were inclined to be fair at that time and who developed into fair-minded individuals over the years.

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 have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'

Gays and lesbians have compelling stories to tell. And I believe the vast majority of people are open to hearing those stories.