Homosexuality

• "My mom blames California for me being a lesbian.'Everything was fine until you moved out there...' 'That's right mom - we have mandatory lesbianism and the Gay Patrol busted me, and I was given seven days to add a significant amount of flannel to my wardrobe..."
  • Coley Sohn

• "Somedays the line I walk turns out to be straight. other days the line tends to deviate."
  • Ani Difranco

• "In any marginalized community, whether people identify themselves or not affects us all."
  • Ani Difranco

You are gay! You are a homosexual! I know it, your family knows it, dogs know it! The only one who doesn't know it is you!

The Doctor, in Brain Candy by the Kids in the Hall

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

Erica Jong

There is probably no heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality.

Norman Mailer

Doy gracias a Dios por ser gay.

(I thank God that I'm gay.)

Fr. José Mantero

What I wanted to be was a family man,

But Nature had some alternative plans.

Pet Shop Boys, "Metamorphosis"

Inspector Roverini: È possibile che ha tendenze - omosessuali?

Peter (Tom's lover): [translating] He wants to know if you're a homosexual.

Tom: No!

Peter: [translating] No.

from The Talented Mr. Ripley

Norma: I think that the right woman could reform you.

Toddy: You know, I think the right woman could reform you.

from Victor/Victoria

How did you first know that you were gay...what did you feel?

Apparently, another girl.

Suzanne Westenhoefer

I didn't choose [to be gay] - I was chosen! Are you serious? I get to be queer? Oh, thank you. I didn't even fill out the application, I am soooo thrilled. No, I did. I bought the ticket, I scratched it off ... Look, I'm a lesbian! I won!

Suzanne Westenhoefer

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.

Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

-Girls seem to hang all over you... why don't you have a girlfriend yet?

-Because I have a boyfriend, Caine...

-But you can't let your friends hold you back from happiness...

-Goddammit, I'm gay, you baka!!

Caine and Holden, in Arcana

I discovered my own gayness, I realized it would make me an outsider in society. I began to identify with other groups of outsiders, people who had no control over their own lives. I identified with women in their struggles against oppression, with the working class in their struggles against exploitation and with the Third World in their struggles against imperialism and poverty.

Bob Cant

You're not listening to me! I am fucking gay!

Alyssa Jones, in Chasing Amy

Let's get one thing straight. I'm not.

Kate Clinton

When asked, "Shall I tell my mother I'm gay?", I reply, "Never tell your mother anything."

Quentin Crisp

My mother said to me, "Why do you have to call yourself a dyke? Why can't you be a nice lesbian?" "Because I'm not a nice lesbian, I'm a big dyke!"

Lea DeLaria

He looked me right in the face and said, "You fucking bulldyke!" And I thought to myself, "Oooh, what a smart man! Why, I'll bet he took one look at me and knew I was white, too!"

Lea DeLaria

Did you read [Holly Near's book]? Let me save you the trouble. This is the most exciting sentence in the book: ..."I feel like a lesbian when I'm making love to a woman." Gooooooooood, Holly! Well, the major difference between me and Holly Near is that I feel like a lesbian when I am BREATHING!

Lea DeLaria

Mom, I've been sitting around all day trying to decide whether to tell you it's just a phase, or to tell you the truth.

Eric, in Edge of Seventeen

Judy Fan: I'm about to go out with some friends... you're welcome to come. They're all friends of Dorothy. You are a friend of Dorothy, aren't you?

Winston: ...yeah, I guess I am.

Judy Fan: We're going to have to teach you to smile when you say that.

"A Friend of Dorothy", from Boys Life

We do not recruit. We can only impress.

Marga Gomez

As long as our culture makes coming out an act of civil disobedience, being gay will be a political statement. Accept, at least for now, that your sexuality has political ramifications.

Kenneth Hanes, "The Gay Guy's Guide to Life"

[describing a straight woman's infatuation with a gay man:] We had this electric moment when you said to me, "Why do you have to be gay?" and I said to you, "Me? Why do you have to be a woman?"

Nick, in It's My Party

My mother tells people, "My daughter... is a comedian... and a lesbian. ...Both... at the same time."

Elvira Kurt

I wrote [a National Coming Out Day card] for myself... Mine would go,

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I'm a lesbian,

And so is Aunt Phyllis.

Sabrina Matthews

Seishiro: So I suppose we can pick a date for our wedding now.

Subaru: Um, but I'm a boy...

Seishiro: So I noticed.

Nanase Ohkawa, Tokyo Babylon

And the day came when the risk it took to remain closed in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anaïs Nin

[Refusing heterosexual sex:] I've never tried communism, but I know I wouldn't like that. It's the same thing. Or grits.

Matt Mateo, in The Opposite of Sex

If I came out, it would kill Mother. ...I'll do it tonight.

Oscar Wildcat, in Queer Duck

...but here am I;

Once a caterpillar, now a butterfly.

Pet Shop Boys, "Metamorphosis"

I came out to my family on Thanksgiving. I said, mom, please pass the gravy to a homosexual. She passed it to my father. A terrible scene ensued.

Bob Smith

I came out to my sister, and she said, Oh my god, you're gay! Are you seeing a psychologist? I answered, No, I'm seeing a schoolteacher.

Bob Smith

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Jack: For your information, most people who meet me do not know that I am gay.

Will: Jack, blind and deaf people know you're gay. Dead people know you're gay.

Jack: Grace, when you first met me, did you know I was gay?

Grace: My dog knew.

Will and Grace

It is for the teenagers who can be hours away from slitting their wrists that I am out.

Courtney Wilson

Some people move in lesbian circles. I move in bisexual dodecahedrons.

Anonymous, posted on the Internet

But the base philanderer

Ogled with another;

So, of course, to despite her,

I decided to transfer

Affections to her brother.

John Barford, "Serve Her Right"

Cruise the Straits with BC Ferries

BC Ferries advertising slogan, 1980s

-Didja make your quota, Lois?

-Yup, kissed a woman from every state in the Union. Rhode Island was a drag queen, though. Do you think that counts?

Thea and Lois, in Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For

I love the word "faggot," because it describes my kind of guy! You see, I am a fag hag. Fag hags are the backbone of the gay community. Without us, you're nothing! We have been there all through history guiding your sorry ass through the underground railroad! ...We went to the prom with you!

Margaret Cho, I'm The One That I Want

I love my gay male friends, but when I was a little girl I always used to wish that I would be constantly surrounded by gorgeous guys, and I am, and I should have been more specific.

Margaret Cho, I'm The One That I Want

Thank God for gay men. Thank God for gay men, because if it were not for gay men, I would not talk to men at all.

Margaret Cho, I'm The One That I Want

If you're going to be gay, you might as well be fabulous. It's a birthright.

Frank deCaro

Grace, who's five, has a friend over and I hear her say to her friend, "Let's pretend we're gay." The friend goes, "What's gay?" And Grace says, "Gay is when two girls get together, dance and have fun."

Kate Clinton, Free your Mind

Loosen up. Being masculine doesn't mean being a statue. Wrists were made to bend.

Kenneth Hanes, "The Gay Guy's Guide to Life"

One [wedding] cake designer I called said, "We specialize in elaborate beautiful white flowers all over the cake." So I said, "I should tell you, this is for two men." There was a slight pause and she said, "I can put little baseball players all over it?"

Mark Harris, husband of Tony Kushner

And I'll stay away from Verlaine, too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.

Dorothy Parker, "The Little Hours"

He's here, he's queer, I'm buying him a beer!

Alexander, in Queer as Folk

I read that a big earthen dyke crumbled in Utah. Don't laugh. I knew her.

Karen Ripley

I always get the feeling that when lesbians look at me, they're thinking, "That's why I'm not a heterosexual."

George Costanza, in Seinfeld

This news [of the government's refusal to allow same-sex marriages] has sent shock waves through the gay community of the Northwest Territories. We go to him now.

This Hour Has 22 Minutes

He did Carol Channing better than I did.

Carol Channing, on drag queen Charles Pierce

Puisqu'il faut choisir, à mots doux je peux le dire

Sans contrefaçon, je suis un garçon

Et pour un empire, je ne veux me dévêtir

Puisque sans contrefaçon, je suis un garçon

(Since I have to choose, softly I can say it

Without counterfeiting, I am a boy

Even for all the world, I don't want to undress myself

Since without counterfeiting, I am a boy)

Mylène Farmer, "Sans contrefaçon"

Before you criticize queens, fairies or someone who acts "too queer", consider where we'd be without them.

Kenneth Hanes, "The Gay Guy's Guide to Life"

44 MEN AND 1 WOMAN ARRESTED FOR FEMALE IMPERSONATION

New York Post headline, c. 1968

When a gay man has way too much fashion sense for a single gender, he is a drag queen.

Miss Noxeema, in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

We've all got an image that we want to convey

And drag is something each of us does every single day

Romanovsky & Phillips;, "My Mother's Clothes"

I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear seven inch heels, four foot wigs, and skintight dresses?

RuPaul

-Wait'll you see MY act. Bertha Venation, in the Dance ... of the Virgin.

-Which she does completely from memory.

-Bitch!

Bertha Venation and Marsha Dimes, in Torch Song Trilogy

Now then, I hasten to repeat that these practices [S&M] are certainly not usual or universal among us, but rather are variants practiced by a minority that is not representative of all gay people, although they do make up an identifiable sector that I don't want to leave out (as do many politically correct gay people, who like to give the impression that gay men only sodomize each other on Versace cushions by candlelights to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach's Suites for Cello.)

Miss Shangay Lily, Mari, ¿me pasas el poppers?

I spent my whole childhood going, "Oh my God... All right, fine. I may be attracted to women, but I can't be a lesbian. I like Laura Ashley polished cottons! And I throw like a girl! And I cry for no apparent reason all the time! Oh my God, I'm a gay man!"

Vickie Shaw

Haven't you noticed that Jon is just a little bit... festive?

Marge, in "Homer Phobia" (The Simpsons)

A son was home from college and tells his dad, "I think my roommate's becoming a queer!"

"What makes you think so?" asked the dad.

"Because he closes his eyes when I kiss him!"

Anonymous

People...do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing at a game and that we do it to shock them.

James Baldwin

Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy

Who were the one they could talk about around town as they put you down

And as hard as they would try to hurt, they made you cry

But you never cried to them, just to your soul...

You leave in the morning with everything you own in a little black case

Alone on a platform, the wind and the rain on a sad and lonely face...

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away...

Bronski Beat, "Small Town Boy"

I don't think we're born self-hating. It's how we respond to bullies. And if any place in the world grows tough bullies, it's this country. They're our chief export. George Bush cut his bully teeth on people like me.

Kate Bornstein

As everyone knows, a fag is a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room.

Truman Capote

It's always Leviticus. "Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman." Well, I don't.

Maggie Cassella

Amid this whole uproar [over gays in the military], the most apt comment I heard was on my local eleven o'clock TV news when they interviewed a woman on the street. She said, "I don't understand somethin'. These guys are supposed to travel all over the world, live in trenches, sleep in mud, and walk over minefields. But they can't take some guy lookin' at 'em?"

Sara Cytron and Harriet Malinowitz, Take My Domestic Partner... Please!

What do you mean, you "don't believe in homosexuality?" It's not like the Easter Bunny, your belief isn't necessary.

Lea DeLaria

They are preserving the sanctity of marriage, so that two gay men who've been together for twenty-five years can't get married, but a guy can still get drunk in Vegas and marry a hooker at the Elvis chapel! The sanctity of marriage is saved!

Lea DeLaria

I'm at West Virginia University to do a show, right, and they've done all this fucking publicity about it...so when I get to my show, who's waiting for me but five hundred Christian protestors with great big signs. "Lea DeLaria is going to hell." Not generic "gay is not good;" "Lea DeLaria is going to hell." Which is what I need five hundred strangers to tell me, like twelve years of Catholic fuckin' school wasn't enough, right?!

Lea DeLaria

Even though adult homosexuals have fought hard to win rights and liberties... too many people are still scandalized by the mere idea that youth discovering their gay orientation could be given the same liberties and possibilities as straight ones. Whereas the discovery of heterosexual desire is celebrated as the sign that "he's becoming a man" and therefore largely encouraged, without anyone seeing any sort of proselytizing in it, it's a completely different story when it's homosexual desire that's surfacing. Everything happens as if gays and bisexuals under 18 didn't exist, or at least shouldn't exist.

Dr. Michel Dorais, Mort ou fif

It's you straights who have all the special rights. You straights have the special right to marry. You straights have the special right to be in the military, go out on a date with the person you love, talk about it the next day, and not get kicked out for it. You straights have the special right not to be prevented from visiting your loved one in the hospital.... To say that gays and lesbians are asking for special rights is the height of lunacy.

Elijah Elders

If we're going to be killing people for their lifestyle, you or I may end up being dead tomorrow.

Ron Gaither, uncle of fatal gay-bashing victim Billy Jack Gaither

Anyone who thinks that love needs to be cured has not experienced enough of it in their own lives.

Joan Garry

Okay, yes, there is a homosexual agenda, okay? There's just two things on it:

1) don't get killed;

2) a decent brunch. That's it!

Elvira Kurt

Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.

Miss Manners (Judith Martin), Miss Manners Rescues Civilization

Someday, I want to go to this town in Michigan called Dyke. Every year, all the women on their way to the Michigan Womyn's Festival make a pilgrimage to Dyke to have their picture taken at the Dyke city-limits sign... Apparently, the citizens of Dyke don't appreciate this yearly pilgrimage... If they don't want us to visit, just change the name of the town. Change it to "Uptight Straight White Guy" - we'll stay away.

Sabrina Matthews

Jackie Biskupski is running for a seat in the Utah Legislature, and she's attracting a lot of attention because she's a lesbian. Her Republican opponent, Dan Alderson, is a staunch Mormon, and is running a negative ad campaign calling her lifestyle abnormal and deviant. His six wives agree.

Rick Mercer, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, October 12, 1998

She's made you some kind of laughing stock

Because you dance to disco and you don't like rock

She made fun of you and even in bed

Said she was going to go and get herself a real man instead

Pet Shop Boys, "Can You Forgive Her?"

The more that you hate, the more that it grates.

Pet Shop Boys, "Up Against It"

Wherever it has been established that it is shameful to be involved with sexual relationships with men, that is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice on the part of the governed.

Plato

He told me to pull my socks up; find a nice girl and get married. I told my doctor I wanted to see a psychiatrist. He said I was a namby-pamby. He told me to get a piece of paper and draw pictures of nude women. I think he was off his rocker.

Michael Schofield, A Minority

The church says we should get down on our knees and repent! Well, excuse me, but didn't being on my knees cause most of my sins?

Bob Smith

-Mr Garrison, can I ask you a question?

-Of course, Stanley. What is it?

-What's a - homosexual?

-Oh. Well, Stanley, I guess you came to the right person. Sit down. ...Stanley, gay people - well, gay people are evil. Evil right down to their cold black hearts, which pump not blood like yours and mine, but rather a thick vomitous oil that oozes through their rotten veins and clots in their pea-sized brains, which becomes the cause of their Naziesque patterns of violent behaviour. Do you understand?

-I guess.

-Good. I'm glad we could have this little talk, Stanley. Now you go outside and practice football like a good little heterosexual.

Stan and Mr. Garrison, from South Park

Gays are not oppressed on a whim, but because of the specific need of capitalism for the nuclear family. The nuclear family, as the primary -- and inexpensive -- provider and carer for the workforce, fulfilled in the nineteenth century and still fulfills an important need for capitalism. Alternative sexualities represent a threat to the family model because they provide an alternative role model for people. Gays are going to be in the front line of attack whenever capitalism wants to reinforce family values.

Louise Tierney, "Looking to the Future"

[Pinky] said that I was a fairy, a weak person, and maybe didn't even deserve to live. OK, I'm not sure, but I think this means that me and Pinky, we're not best friends anymore.

Trevor

The pope runs all over the world condemning homosexuality, dressed in high drag. Now I ask you!

Robin Tyler

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that ages should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity. You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse.

Sharon Underwood

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that homosexuality "is a lifestyle I don't agree with." This is a trope you hear from the religious right a good deal... but it is a very odd thing to say. No one speaking rationally says, "I don't agree with the Pacific Ocean" or "I don't agree with the Grand Canyon."

Paul Varnell

Squeaky Fromme got life for missing Gerald Ford!

A courtroom spectator, after Dan White got two years for assassinating Harvey Milk and George Moscone

Thank God, now we can sodomize again!

Anonymous Florentine official, during riots against the influence of the monk Savonarola

They drew a circle that shut him out

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win.

We drew a circle that took him in.

Anonymous

¿A quién le importa lo que yo haga?

¿A quién le importa lo que yo diga?

Yo soy así, así seguiré,

¡y nunca cambiaré!

(Who cares what I say? Who cares what I do? I'm like this, I'll stay like this, and I will never change!)

Alaska, "¿A quién le importa?"

Wouldn't it be great if you could only get AIDS by giving money to television preachers?

Elayne Boosler

My voice rings down through thousands of years

To coil around your body and give you strength,

You who have wept in direct sunlight,

Who have hungered in invisible chains,

Tremble to the cadence of my legacy:

An army of lovers cannot fail.

Rita Mae Brown, "Sappho's Reply"

Why be nice to ignorant hicks? My advice to all of you gay boys that live in a horrible town is: be a BITCH and you'll never be afraid of walking down the hall. Be strong. Never let stupid people make you ashamed of who you are!

Chad, quoted in XY Magazine

Okay, conservatives have changed my mind. Allowing gay marriage, I have been persuaded, will destroy the family, weaken Western civilization, turn America into Sodom and Gomorrah, increase the trade deficit with Japan, endanger the family farm and promote tooth decay. The impeccable logic of conservative opponents is simply too powerful to deny.

Stephen Chapman

[quoting her friends from high school, Alan and Jeremy] "I do not need nobody tellin' me who I am! I know who I am!... I be walkin' down the hallway, they call me names. They call me faggot, they call me sissy, I say, 'Oh yeah? Well, you forgot, I'm also a model and a actress, so fuck you too!'"

Margaret Cho, The Notorious C.H.O.

John Paulk, the poster boy for the 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

[ ] makes me want to go commit sodomy.

"CrankyAsAnOldMan," posted on the Internet

[Among young gay men], it is the rebel who, in rejecting homophobia, develops a resistance that will protect him in a certain way from depression and suicide.

Dr. Michel Dorais, Mort ou fif

If you think that my partner and I deserve eternal torture for loving each other and sharing our lives together, then you are a monster, and your faith is evil and false.

"gobear," posted on the Internet

The more [gay people] are portrayed on screen as understandable human beings, the more threatening they seem off-screen. ...No one - whether supportive about gay rights or not - should confuse the fantasy tolerance of television with a culture in which gays are treated as equal citizens.

Richard Goldstein

When a straight couple's relationship fails, it's because of his/her drinking, inability to commit, infidelity, and so on. In other words, a straight couple's relationship fails because of personal flaws, not because its participants are heterosexual. But when a gay relationship fails, "they" say it's because gay relationships inherently can't work. Call this double standard what it is - a crock of homophobic crap.

Kenneth Hanes, The Gay Guy's Guide to Love

This redneck came up to me and said, "What do you want me to call you? Queer? Fag? Homo?"

I said, "You can call me... Paul Jacek."

Paul Jacek

What do you mean, since when did I become such a radical fairy? Since I started knowing twits like you, you twit!

Larry Kramer, Just Say No

This pioneer of sexology [Krafft-Ebing] even came to question whether homosexuality might be innate (and people began to forgive us for living, as if it would matter to anyone if being an Atlético de Madrid fan was innate or not.)

Miss Shangay Lily, Mari, ¿me pasas el poppers?

I was at NY Pride once and a Bible-belter actually waved his Bible at me ... and yelled, "Shame on you!" I looked right at him and said, "Shame on you for wearing that tie with that shirt!"

"Esprix," posted on the Internet

I was performing at a comedy club and when I said I'm a lesbian, a guy in the audience yelled out, "Can I watch?" I said, "Watch me what? Fix my car?"

Sabrina Matthews

[To a gay-basher] You'd better be careful. The last time I was this close to another man, we were slow dancing.

Antony, in The Other Side of the Closet

We got three whole days into the topic [of gay marriage] before someone compared the love and commitment of two consenting adult human beings to his desire to rut with a chimp. ...If you want to marry a chimp, you go right ahead. I guess, like the old song, you want a gal just like the gal who married dear old dad.

"Otto," posted on the Internet

But for all of those who don't fit in,

Who follow their instincts and are told they sin,

This is a prayer for a different way.

Pet Shop Boys, "Red Letter Day"

[to Dr. Laura] Get off the gay man's back and leave some room for me!

Queer Duck

[On whether ex-gays are really straight] Just because you sleep in a garage doesn't make you a car.

Gary Rimar

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work. "Hello. Can't work today, still queer."

Robin Tyler

Dear Abby: [We're upset because a gay couple has just moved in across the street.] How can we improve the quality of the neighbourhood?

You could move.

Abigail Van Buren

If they don't want us in the military, then I say that straight men can't be florists and straight women can't be UPS drivers.

Danny Williams

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

James Baldwin

Coming toward them, on the path, were two glittering, loud-talking fairies....Ida said, "I always feel so sorry for people like that."

;Ellis grinned. "Why should you feel sorry for them? They've got each other."

James Baldwin, Another Country

If it be sin to love a lovely lad

Oh there sin I.

Richard Barnfield, "The Affectionate Shepherd"

And what is she (quoth he) whom thou do'st love?

Look in this glasse (quoth I) there shalt thou see

The perfect forme of my faelicitie.

When, thinking that it would strange Magique prove,

He open'd it: and taking of the cover,

He straight perceav'd himselfe to be my Lover.

Richard Barnfield

Iuventius, if I were always allowed

to kiss your honey-sweet eyes,

I might kiss you three hundred

thousand times, and never be sated.

Catullus, Passion: To Iuventius

For death, or life, or toil,

To thee myself I join;

I take thy hand in mine,

With thee I would grow old.

From an ancient Chinese male-male wedding ceremony

I believe the more you love a man,

The more you give your trust, the more you're bound to lose,

Although, when shadows fall,

I think if only somebody splendid really needed me,

Someone affectionate and dear,

Cares would be ended if he really

Wanted to have me near...

Noel Coward, "If Love Were All"

Saturday night I at last was taken into the arms of love again! Seldom have I had such affection offered me. An athlete - very strong - 20 only - dark-haired - distantly Bohemian. I hope it will last a while - I deserve a little kindness and he was so kind!

Hart Crane

Years and years I have fear'd the shame

And the cruel speech of the world.

But over our heads in the darkness now

Is the banner of love unfurl'd,

(Lean closer, cling to me, kiss my lips,

Our love can despise the world.)

Gabriel Gillet

There's a man in the city, a wonderful, beautiful man, who loves me very much. And he's going to love you too. And we're going to be a family.

Sweet William, from The Hanging Garden

Every friend loves, but not all men

Who love are friends. You'll find this true,

Then, whomsoever you may love,

Be his friend too.

Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial)

A double brightness burned me: rays

There were which travelled in the gaze

Of that boy's eyes, the beams of Love;

And others from the Sun above.

Meleager

He pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married... Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg- a cosy, loving pair.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

–Well, people always feel pain in their hearts. The heart is easy to wound, that's why living is painful. In particular, your heart is fragile like glass.

–Me?

–It's worthy of being loved.

–Loved?

–I'm saying that I love you.

Kaworu and Shinji, from Neon Genesis Evangelion

Here are a few that i could think of right now that i enjoyed :)

As Good As It Gets

Melvin Udall: Never, never, interrupt me, okay? Not if there's a fire, not even if you hear the sound of a thud from my home and one week later there's a smell coming from there that can only be a decaying human body and you have to hold a hanky to your face because the stench is so thick that you think you're going to faint. Even then, don't come knocking. Or, if it's election night, and you're excited and you wanna celebrate because some fudgepacker that you date has been elected the first queer president of the United States and he's going to have you down to Camp David, and you want someone to share the moment with. Even then, don't knock. Not on this door. Not for ANY reason. Do you get me, sweetheart?

Kaworu-kun said "I love you." To me! For the first time, for the first time I heard those words. .... I loved him. Kaworu-kun should have been the one to survive. He was much better than I am. He should have survived.

Shinji, from Neon Genesis Evangelion

Remember when you were more easily led

Behind the cricket pavillion and the bicycle shed

Trembling as your dreams came true

You looked up into those blue eyes and knew

It was love, and now you can't pretend

You've forgotten all the promises of that first friend...

Pet Shop Boys, "Can You Forgive Her?"

To free in me the trust I never dared

I always thought the risk too great

But suddenly, I don't hesitate

So take my hand, don't think of complications

Now, right now, your love is liberation

Pet Shop Boys, "Liberation"

Sweet boy, gentle boy,

Don't be ashamed, you are mine forever:

The same rebellious fire is in both of us,

We are living one life.

I am not afraid of mockery:

Between us, the two have become one,

We are precisely like a double nut

Under a single shell.

Alexander Pushkin

When she left, she wept

a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be

endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."

I said, "Go, and be happy

but remember (you know

well) whom you leave shackled by love."

Sappho

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, tradition,

Yet now of all that city I remember only a man I casually met there who detained me for love of me,

Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long been forgotten by me,

I remember I saw only that man who passionately clung to me,

Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

Again he holds me by the hand, I must not go,

I see him close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

Walt Whitman, "Once I pass'd through a populous city"

If all lesbians suddenly turned purple today, society would be surprised at the number of purple people in high places.

Sidney Abbott & Barbara Love, Sappho was a right-on woman, 1972

here are some homosexuals whom we would do well to take seriously.

[Robertson Davies]], The Manticore

am a homosexual. Hath not a homosexual eyes?... If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you throw us down on a bed and lick chocolate sauce off us, do we not moan? (OK, I added that one.)

"gobear", posted on the Internet

If you remove all the homosexuals and homosexual influences from what is generally regarded as American culture, you are pretty much left with Let's Make a Deal.

Fran Lebowitz

Dear Miss Manners: What should I say when I am introduced to a homosexual "couple"?

Gentle Reader: "How do you do?" "How do you do?"

Miss Manners (Judith Martin), Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

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

Francis Maude

To being an "us" for once instead of a "them:"

La vie bohème!

Rent, "La Vie Bohème"

The ongoing psychopathic hatred of same-sexuality has made the United States the laughingstock of the civilized world. In most of the First World, monotheism is weak. Where it is weak or nonexistent, private sexual behavior has nothing to do at all with those not involved, much less the law. At least when the Emperor Justinian, a Christian monotheist, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our monotheists, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that loony text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.

Gore Vidal, (The Great Unmentionable) Monotheism and its Discontents, essay

The Religious Right dislikes both abortions and homosexuality. But who has fewer abortions than gays?

George Carlin

According to the Gospels, Jesus did not devote any serious time or effort denouncing either "abortion" or "homosexuality" though he did devote serious time and effort denouncing the "rich" along with self-righteous religious hypocrites. Maybe today's Religious Right could learn a few things about "prioritizing" from Jesus?

E.T.B.

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work. "Hello, can't work today. Still queer."

Robin Tyler

I was raised Roman Catholic, and according to the Catholic Church it's okay to be homosexual, as long as you don't practice homosexuality. Which is interesting, because I think it's okay to be Catholic, so long as you don't practice Catholicism.

Bob Smith

I love Christians who tell me something sweet and Christian, like, "You're going to hell!" It's not hard for me to picture gay hell. "The scorching wind from the fiery pit messed up my hair, there's no mousse? No blow-dryer? This is hell! There's nothing on TV but Hee Haw. My furniture is from Levitz! I'm living in a trailer park! Aaaah!"

Danny McWilliams

Gays started the Renaissance. It was probably two gay guys at a party saying, "Wouldn't it be fun to make religious paintings of hot naked guys, and sell them to churches? Oh, that would be a hoot!"

Bob Smith

Alexander the Great? Another gay in the military.

E.T.B.

I thank God for creating gay men. Because if it wasn't for them, us fat women would have no one to dance with.

Roseanne

If AIDS is God's punishment for sex, why is a little piece of rubber so effective in avoiding it?

Rev. Jim Huber

If AIDS is a divine punishment does that make lesbians God's chosen people?

Source unknown

King James' favorite male lovers were the Earl of Somerset and the Duke of Buckingham.

Ben Edward Akerly, The X-rated Bible

James's sexual orientation was so widely known that Sir Walter Raleigh

joked about it in public saying "King Elizabeth" had been succeeded by "Queen James."

Catherine D. Bowen, The Lion and the Throne

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.

Butch Hancock

"See the nice boys dancing in pairs/Golden earring, golden tan, blow-wave in their hair/Sure they're all straight! Straight as a line/All the gays are macho; see their leather shine".

Joe Jackson, "Real Men"

Oh my GOD. You are NOT bisexual. Don't be stupid. I mean, I went to a bah mitzpah once, that doesn't make me Jewish.

"The Opposite of Sex"

I'm not saying that the religious right is wrong for condemning homosexuals and terrorizing them for thousands of years. I'm just saying...FUUUUCK YOU.

Christina Applegate (in magazine interview)

I said some things about homosexuals, particularly in the 60s when reporting about the popularity of discotheques, that I regret having said. Times are changing and we are learning that it is not a sickness, and frankly I never thought that it was. I said what was said to me as fact at that time. It's not a fact. It was damned stupid. We're all learning.

Barbra Walters

Our country is founded on a sham: our forefathers were slave-owning rich white guys who wanted it their way. So when I see the American flag, I go, 'Oh my God, you're insulting me.' That you can have a gay parade on Christopher Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float cheering, 'We're here, we're queer!' -- that's what makes my heart swell. Not the flag, but a gay naked man or woman burning the flag. I get choked up with pride.

Janeane Garofalo

I played at clubs in Washington, D.C. to these wonderful gay men. They taught me how to become a woman.

Tori Amos

Of course we let lesbians and gays march in our St. Patrick's Day

Parade. What would Ireland be without its fairies?"

City council member of Dublin

Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings.

Provebrbs 31:3, The Bible

Verified

"Well, maybe I'm a latent homosexual." He considered that for a moment. "Or maybe I'm a latent heterosexual. Anyway I'm pretty latent."

Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman, ISBN 0385491069.

At this mention of the one category of man who had never shown any interest in her, Ainsley's large blue eyes filled with tears.

Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman, ISBN 0385491069.

Oh! I want to put my arms arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me or I wouldn't be wearing it!

Eleanor Roosevelt, in a letter to Lorena Hickok, March 7, 1933

Concerning the Pope's claim that homosexuality is "unnatural". Perhaps the Pope is suggesting that it lies beyond the scope of "normal" human behavior. If so, this has uncomfortable implications for an association of old men who wear dresses, hear voices and practice ritual cannibalism. Self-enforced celibacy is all but unknown among other animal species. If any sexual behavior is out of tune with the natural world, it is surely that of the priesthood.

George Monbiot, The Guardian, July 13, 2000

• "There is object proof that homosexuality is more interesting than heterosexuality. It's that one knows a considerable number of heterosexuals who would wish to become homosexuals, whereas one knows very few homosexuals who would really like to become heterosexuals."
  • Michel Foucault, quoted in Aldrich, Robert and Wotherspoon, Gary (Eds.) (2001). Who's Who in Contemporary Gay & Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day. New York: Routledge. ISBN 041522974X.

"I'm queer, I'm gay, I'm homosexual I'm a poof, poofter, ponce, I'm a bumboy, baddy boy, backside artist, bugger, I'm Bent. I am that arse bandit, I lift those shirts. I'm a faggot arse, fudge packing, shit stabbing uphill gardener, I dine at the downstairs restaurant, I dance at the other end of the ballroom, I'm Moses in the parting of the red cheeks. I fuck and I'm fucked, I suck and I'm sucked, I rim them and wank them and every single man's had the fucking time of his life. And I'm NOT a pervert."

Aiden Gillen as Stuart Allen Jones in Queer as Folk 2 (UK Series), written by Russell T. Davies.

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

T-shirt worn by Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls during a network-TV interview.

• "The homosexual never thinks of himself when someone is branded in his presence with the name homosexual. ...His sexual tastes will doubtless lead him to enter into relationships with this suspect category, but he would like to make use of them without being likened to them. Here, too, the ban that is cast on certain men by society has destroyed all possibility of reciprocity among them. Shame isolates."
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in Who's Who, from Sartre's Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (New York, 1963)

• "I maintain that inversion is the effect of neither a prenatal choice nor an endocrinal malformation nor even the passive and determined result of complexes. It is an outlet that a child discovers when he is suffocating."
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in Who's Who, from Sartre's Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (New York, 1963)

• "I said to my dad, who's a Methodist minister, you know...one day...a niece or a nephew, sooner or later we're going to get a gay or a lesbian, so he might as well get used to it!"
  • Tori Amos, spoken on VH1 Storytellers before performing her song "Raspberry Swirl" (New York, 1999)

• "We come out of our mothers naked; everything else is just drag!"
  • RuPaul in her book "Letting it All Hang Out"

• "If it wasn't for gay men, I wouldn't talk to men at all."
  • Margaret Cho in her stage show "I'm the One That I Want". (Extensive exclusion of Ms. Cho's opinions on homosexuality at her wiki-link.)

• "Fag hags are the back-bone of the gay community. We were there when you came out to your mom. We went to your prom."
  • Magaret Cho in her stage show "I'm the One That i Want".

Sources

• Aldrich, Robert and Wotherspoon, Gary (Eds.) (2001). Who's Who in Contemporary Gay & Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day. New York: Routledge. ISBN 041522974X.

See also: sexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality