Top 100 Quotes About Gay Rights
#1. My own country's record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect.
Hillary Clinton
#2. I argue that in a world where people must support their opinions with evidence and reason rather than faith, we would experience less conflict over issues like assisted suicide, gay rights, birth control, and sexual morality.
Jerry A. Coyne
#3. Unfortunately, we don't have the option of marriage in our country. We could go to Britain or Spain or Argentina and do something symbolic, but that's not what I want. I want to have the rights of anybody else in my home country. I don't want to be a second-class citizen
Dick Cheney
#5. She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn't she and Carol?
Patricia Highsmith
#6. 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
#7. Before you echo 'Amen' in your home or place of worship, think and remember ... a child is listening.
Mary Griffith
#8. ... gay marriage rights coming and going, always being an issue for the voting public when it should be an individual's private choice.
G.A. Hauser
#9. Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera, is not a liberal or a conservative value. It's an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on.
Jerry Falwell
#10. I have gay friends, I support gay rights, I have nothing against the gay community, but when I see two guys kissing, I think it's gross. And, by the way, it's gross when 99% of straight people do it, too.
Artie Lange
#11. 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
#12. To me, celebrity doesn't mean a whole lot unless you're willing to use it. So I wanted to use it in a different way, with my AIDS work, the human rights stuff for the gay and lesbian community and the speaking I do.
Judith Light
#13. [Button] If Gay and Lesbian people are given civil rights, soon everyone will want them
James Howe
#14. I wanted to represent minorities in the respect of people who had been bullied in school or people who were gay or lesbian or trans or people who aren't blonde haired and blue-eyed. I have short hair, and I am covered in tattoos. I like showing people that it's within their rights to be different.
Ruby Rose
#15. If you believe in equal rights, then what do "women's rights," "gay rights," etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.
Thomas Sowell
#16. This is the gay agenda: equality. Not special rights, but the rights that are already written by [our Founding Fathers].
LZ Granderson
#17. I think the gay community should get smart and drop the word 'marriage.' Do you really need to change every right-wing Christian to make sure you get your equal rights? Eyes on the prize, we should be sticking to getting equal rights.
Ani DiFranco
#18. It seemed like this was one big Prozac nation, one big mess of malaise. Perhaps the next time half a million people gather for a protest march on the White House green it will not be for abortion rights or gay liberation, but because we're all so bummed out.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
#19. Lesbian and gay people are a permanent part of the American workforce, who currently have no protection from the arbitrary abuse of their rights on the job.
Coretta Scott King
#20. Gay rights to me that is the last civil right that we have not granted in America and I think it's an enormous embarrassment.
Jodi Picoult
#21. Gays and lesbians began to gain civil rights when Americans realized that their brothers, cousins, daughters were gay.
Nicholas Kristof
#22. We've made so many advances in other areas - civil rights, gay rights - but ageism is still an area that's taboo and not talked about and dealt with.
Madonna Ciccone
#23. Most importantly, the epidemic was only news when it was not killing homosexuals. In this sense, AIDS remained a fundamentally gay disease, newsworthy only by the virtue of the fact that it sometimes hit people who weren't gay,
Randy Shilts
#24. I'm a progressive. What I find is that a subsection within the left that instead of standing for consistency in progressive values, so feminism as applied to mainstream society, as well as within minority communities, gay rights to mainstream society as well as within minority communities.
Maajid Nawaz
#25. We see ... a future where no one-no one-is forced to live in the shadows of intolerance.
Joe Biden
#26. Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight.
Harvey Milk
#27. 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
#28. The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women's rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.
James McGreevey
#29. If you ask me about my views on the environment, on women's rights, on gay rights, I am liberal. I don't have a problem with that at all. Some of my best friends are liberal.
Bernie Sanders
#30. 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
#31. The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century ... unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today.
John F. Kennedy
#32. I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.
Tony Campolo
#33. Fundamentalist Christianity is not just a threat to lesbians and gays, but to all Americans who cherish democracy and the rights and protections guaranteed us by the U.S. constitution.
Mel White
#34. (well, LOVE and gay rights - three cheers for straight girls who max out on helping gay guys)
David Levithan
#35. There can be people who feel one way about gay rights, another way about gay rights. There can be people who have different views on abortion. But we respect each other. I think we learn from each other. And we understand that ultimately we have the same values.
Rudy Giuliani
#36. I've always opposed gay marriage. I believe that we should provide equal rights to people regardless of their sexual orientation but I do not believe that marriage should be between two people of the same gender.
Mitt Romney
#37. I'm coming for you, Skye! Ain't nobody gonna violate your rights as a Gay Homosexual American on my watch!
Alexa Land
#38. I am opposed to special rights for gays just as I am opposed to special rights for heterosexuals or smokers. I can attest to the fact that sexual orientation is not immutable and I urge the city council to vote no on this amendment.
Alan Chambers
#39. It's so simple: Right to marriage is a civil right, which like all civil rights should not depend on what state you happen to live in.
Annie Laurie Gaylor
#40. Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians.
Gore Vidal
#41. It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
Daphne Fielding
#42. I don't support gay marriage, but I also don't support a constitutional amendment banning it. However, I do support same sex unions that would give gay couples all the rights, privileges and protections of marriage.
Bob Casey Jr.
#43. Whether you're gay, straight, black, white, we all deserve the same rights. If there's anything I can do to champion the cause and further it, I will, shy of getting arrested.
Nick Symmonds
#44. Really, when it comes to gay rights, there's two wars going on. The first war is political. But the culture war is over.
Dan Savage
#45. The gay rights activists who yell 'bigot' at those who disagree with them are the Imams of America's cultural ghetto.
Erick Erickson
#46. You have to remember, rights don't come in groups we shouldn't have 'gay rights'; rights come as individuals, and we wouldn't have this major debate going on. It would be behavior that would count, not what person belongs to what group.
Ron Paul
#47. Gay rights is not something most of us think about - because most of us happen to have been born straight.
Jodi Picoult
#48. If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.
Jon Meacham
#49. I haven't been a gay activist. I haven't protested for gay rights or none of that, but one thing I can say is that a lot of the designers I wear are gay and I like their clothes.
ASAP Rocky
#50. One thing the gay rights movement taught the world is the importance of being visible.
Charles M. Blow
#51. I've fought for religious freedom and I can tell you that anti-gay 'religious freedom' bills aren't it.
DaShanne Stokes
#52. I somewhat resist the whole gay rights-vampire rights metaphor because it is fraught with problems. I don't want to be seen as a gay man as a blood-sucking killer. I don't think it is the way to win hearts and minds.
Denis O'Hare
#53. You talk about the Pro-Life movement being one of the great shames of our nation. I think, if you want number two, I think - I think it's that. I think it's absolute - it's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights.
Jon Stewart
#55. It is astonishing that gay and lesbian Americans are still treated as second-class citizens. I am confident that, very soon, the laws of this nation will reflect the basic truth that gay and lesbian people - like all human beings - are born equal in dignity and rights.
George Clooney
#56. I'm in a band. I don't go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I'm obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior.
Hayley Williams
#57. Joe Biden will speak to the nation's largest gay rights group during a human rights convention on Friday. Then on Saturday, he is scheduled to speak to them again to apologize for whatever he said in Friday's speech.
Jimmy Fallon
#58. Every one of my positions cuts - out half the country. I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-gay rights, I'm pro-immigration, I'm against guns, I believe in Darwin.
Michael Bloomberg
#59. I believe everyone on this planet deserves equal rights to their own pursuit of happiness.
Joel Madden
#60. Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.
Bayard Rustin
#61. Frankly, it's self-evident. As people of faith, it's our duty to love everyone, the way God loves everyone. There's no reason why any one group is less deserving of love - either the love of a church community, to the love of a family - than any other.
Robin Talley
#62. If a couple of gay guys want to throw the gayest, most fabulous wedding of all time, the only way it should offend you is if you weren't invited.
Orlando Winters
#63. The truth is, the notion that gay marriage is harmful to marriage, is sort of mind-boggling, because these are people trying to get married. But it seems to me, if you want to defend marriage against something, defend it against divorce.
Cokie Roberts
#64. Trans rights formation that mimics the models and strategies of the lesbian and gay rights framework is growing, and there are many significant strategy disagreements between those building that work and those doing racial and economic justice centered trans work.
Dean Spade
#65. It's only fair that stable gay relationships of long standing should have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. I know the image of gay marriage is to some people horrific and ludicrous.
Ian McKellen
#66. I've always been progressive on social issues: pro-choice, pro-gun control, and pro-gay rights - even when I was a Republican. The big difference is that I once believed the private sector would address America's social problems. But then I saw firsthand that this wasn't going to happen.
Arianna Huffington
#67. America- often called the land of milk and honey- tends to be sweeter, more generous to those who don't rock the boat.
Sarah Mullen
Erin Passons
#68. I filed the first gay rights bill in Massachusetts history in 1972 in the legislature, one of the first in the country.
Barney Frank
#69. I have the liberal dictionary right here ... let's see how they define water-boarding: 'Something done by the evil troops, who we don't support, to innocent terrorists violating their rights to bomb our cities and make us get gay marriage.'
Jon Stewart
#70. Being an American is about having the right to be who you are. Sometimes that doesn't happen.
Herb Ritts
#71. Coming up, at 89 years old, acclaimed sculptor Gerson Frank was finally able to marry his longtime partner, Bill. Their relationship has covered three decades and seen many changes in gay rights, but Gerson never viewed himself as an activist.
Jennifer Lopez
#72. Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#73. Gay rights are human rights, there is no separation.
Macklemore
#74. 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.
Gail Collins
#75. Another Thing I'm Sick of Hearing:
If I started that gay rights group,
I must be gay.
So if i start an animal rights group,
what does that make me?
A giraffe?
James Howe
#76. The fact that women are very young in obtaining their civil rights and African-Americans are young in obtaining their civil rights, I think it's about time that we extend that to all Americans, whether straight, gay, purple, green, black, brown.
Octavia Spencer
#77. It's not my victory, it's yours and yours and yours. If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We've given them hope.
Harvey Milk
#78. My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
W. Somerset Maugham
#79. The last time I checked, the only difference between my gay friends and I is who we choose to love. I'm not sure how that warrants a loss of rights, but it needs to stop. What ever happened to liberty and justice for all?
Pink
#80. On a serious note, I stand by Obama on marriage equality! I believe ALL families deserve the same rights
Connor Barwin
#81. Putting measures like gay marriage on ballots for elections only hurts the gay rights cause and elects more conservative politicians.
Roseanne Barr
#82. I will not vote for a candidate who thinks you can 'pray away the gay;' I will not vote for a candidate who thinks that he has more rights to my uterus than I do; I will not vote for a candidate who thinks that it's okay to dump toxic waste in the ocean.
Sophia Bush
#83. I believe there are too many children who need loving parents to deny one group of people adoption rights. A child will benefit from a healthy, loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.
Barack Obama
#84. Fundamentalists tell us to fear the specter of special rights for gay citizens, though of course gay Americans aren't after special rights - merely equal rights. The irony is that special rights actually do exist in this country-for religious groups.
Sean Faircloth
#85. Not all gays respond to the same stuff. Would Alexander the Great have loved Auntie Mame?
Bruce Bawer
#86. Just because I'm in favor of gay rights doesn't mean that I'm gay or doesn't mean I'm some kind of 'sissy' or something. That's the language that you hear in locker rooms.
Scott Fujita
#87. There were a lot of Romneys. There was the Romney who was ; going to be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy; now there's the Romney who checks with Rick Santorum on that issue.
Barney Frank
#88. One of the loveliest weddings I ever performed was that of a gay couple. To me if you are a good citizen, you pay your taxes, you work, you should have all the rights and responsibilities of everybody else.
Judy Sheindlin
#89. If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.
Harvey Milk
#91. all. Unfortunately, polarizing influences - such as unions that want what they want, gay rights groups, isolationists, and others who cannot or will not consider the opinions of others - have become stronger in recent years, robbing from the pool of moderate legislators and increasing the numbers
Ben Carson
#92. You've got these twenty million people who call themselves the Evangelical Christians who will put their hand up and say, I believe in the devil, I'm against abortion and gay rights, and we have to blow up the world. It's frightening.
Jeanette Winterson
#93. It's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights as someone else.
Jon Stewart
#94. The Stonewall riot may have been the start of a civil rights movement, but it was not the beginning of our history.
Tom Cardamone
#95. In an era when gay men like Beatles' manager Brian Epstein paid a fortune in blackmail to hustlers to keep their secrets safe, Andy Warhol took everything he was told to keep hidden and threw it right back in society's face.
Andrew Grant Jackson
#96. By in large in this country the issue of gay rights and equality should be past the point of debate. Really, there should be no debate anymore.
Scott Fujita
#97. You are not a bad person because you are gay. You are you because you are you and you were meant to be you so be you proudly.
Tegan Quin
#98. On the court, Jason Collins is not a huge basketball star, but he has already claimed his place in civil rights history as the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues.
Nancy Gibbs
#99. Jesus didn't fight against what was wrong. But he fought for what was right.
Ricky Maye
#100. The barometer for judging the character of people, in regard human rights, is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian. The judgment as to whether you can trust the future, the social advancement - depending on people - will be judged on where they come out on that question.
Bayard Rustin
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