What's been said by and about gays, lesbians and bisexuals, from Plato to Pat Robertson,
conveniently divided into occasionally tongue-in-cheek topics.
What's been said by and about gays, lesbians and bisexuals, from Plato to Pat Robertson,
conveniently divided into occasionally tongue-in-cheek topics.
[Feminism] is a Socialist, antifamily political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians. - Pat Robertson
Some professions shouldn't be open to women because they can't handle certain jobs, like construction work. Lesbians, maybe, but not women. - Muhammed Ali
Prejudice and Pride
I have never known anyone who took great exception to homosexuals...that there wasn't something drastically wrong with that very person himself. - Richard Burton
The poor homosexuals - they have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution. - Pat Buchanan, on the AIDS epidemic
Some Reagan Administration supporters have gone on record as saying that AIDS is God's judgment on homosexuals, but you have never heard one of them say that Legionnaire's Disease was God's judgment on the right-wing views of the American Legion. - H. Carl McCall
If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nailbiters. - Anita Bryant
If God dislikes gays so much, how come he picked Michelangelo, a known homosexual, to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling while assigning Anita to go on TV and push orange juice? - Mike Royko
It is better to be hated for what one is than loved for what one is not. - Andre Gide
What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, "Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't dislike these people any more." But by the strangest coincidence, they haven't taken away the injustice; the laws are still on the books. - Christopher Isherwood
We maintain that we have the right to exist after the fashion which nature made us. And if we cannot alter your laws, we shall go on breaking them. You may condemn us to infamy, exile, prison - as you formerly burned witches. You may degrade our emotional instincts and drive us into vice and misery. But you will not eradicate inverted sexuality. - Victorian writer John Addington Symonds
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves, and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
- A. E. Housman
I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation. - Coretta Scott King
Religion
In spite of misleading English translations which may imply the contrary, the word "homosexual" does not occur in the Bible: no extant text or manuscript, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, or Aramaic, contains such a word...it is doubtful in this particular case whether a concept of homosexual behavior as a class existed at all. - John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, and therefore we cannot see that it is in some way morally wrong. An act which expresses true affection between two individuals and gives pleasure to them both does not seem to us to be sinful simply because it is homosexual. - Towards a Quaker View of Sex, 1964
It is fair to expect that if biblical fundamentalists are going to follow the dictates of Leviticus to the literal letter, they will show equal nicety in adhering to the rest of the "original" (pre-exegetical) biblical code of behavior. Which means they will no longer break the Sabbath by attending movies or joining bowling parties. That the men among them will grow luxuriant beards and the women silken hair on their legs. That they will no longer engage in any sexual act other than missionary intercourse - and then only when procreation is the goal. Perhaps on one matter a little hypocrisy should be tolerated; since Kinsey has shown that more than half the male population had extramarital relations, we nonfundamentalists would not demand that adulterers be stoned to death in the streets. We, too, after all, are patriots; we do not wish to see the country decimated. - Martin Duberman
More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion! - Harvey Milk
The last time people in this society cared about my rights was when I was a fetus. - Sara Cytron
What's the actual Bible actually say? Here are the seven - count 'em, seven - supposed Biblical references to homosexuality that all the fuss is about.
The Trial of Oscar Wilde
"The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare...It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it...That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. - Oscar Wilde's testimony at his trial
The crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that one has to put stern restraint upon one's self to prevent one's self from describing, in language which I would rather not use, the sentiments which must rise to the breast of every man of honor who has heard the details of these two terrible trials...It is the worst case I have ever tried. - Sir Alfred Wills, the judge at Wilde's trial. (Didn't this guy ever try rapists and murderers and people who robbed little old ladies? Sheesh!)
Gays in the Military
If only there were a way to start a city or an army made up of lovers and the boys they love! Theirs would be the best possible system of society, for they would hold back from all that is shameful, and seek honor in each other's eyes. Even a few of them, in battle side by side, would conquer the world, I'd say. For a man in love would never allow his loved one, of all people, to see him leaving ranks or dropping weapons. He'd rather die a thousand deaths! And as for leaving to boy behind, or not coming to his aid in danger - why, no one is so base that true love could not inspire him with courage, and make him as brave as if he'd been born a hero. - The speech of Phaedrus, in Plato's Symposium
If the General pleases I will be happy to do this investigation...But, sir, it would be unfair of me not to tell you, my name is going to head the list...You should also be aware that you're going to have to replace all the file clerks, the section heads, most of the commanders, and the motor pool...I think you should also take into consideration that there have been no illegal pregnancies, no cases of venereal disease, and the General himself has been the one to award good conduct commendations and service commendations to these members of the WAC detachment. - WWII WAC sergeant Johnnie Phelps, when ordered by General Eisenhower to ferret out the lesbians in her battalion; Eisenhower rescinded the order.
The Air Force pinned a medal on me for killing a man and discharged me for making love to one. - Vietnam veteran and former Air Force sergeant Leonard Matlovich
Why can't you be gay like your sister? - my dad, who doesn't want my brother to join the Marines
Incidentally, a partial listing of gays in the military includes Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus Caesar, and Richard the Lionhearted, none of whom did all that badly.
How to Spot 'Em: The Experts Speak Again
The boy who, at 14 or 15 is still deeply interested in cutting out paper dolls or embroidering initials on his pocket handkerchiefs; or the girl who, after the menstrual cycle has been definitely established, still gets a thrill out of swinging a pick and shovel, or carrying fifty-pound stones around to build a wall with, will bear watching. - Strange Loves, 1933 (You bet I'm watching!)
The female homosexual may chiefly be found in the haunts of boys. She is the rival in their play, preferring the rocking horse, playing at soldiers, etc., to dolls and other girlish pursuits. Love of art finds a substitute in the pursuits of the sciences. - Psychopathia Sexualis, 1965. (Well, good for her!)
I read that homosexuals could not whistle. I could whistle, so I didn't quite know what to make of that. I learned that the favorite color of homosexuals was green, and my favorite color was not green. - Barbara Gittings
In the light of all I had read and heard about dykes and bull-daggers, I reasoned that I had none of the obvious traits - I didn't wear trousers, or have big shoulders or go in for sports, or walk like a man or even want to touch a woman. - Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Is It A Disease?
Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness. - Sigmund Freud
I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated "all my homosexual patients are quite sick" - to which I finally replied "so are all my heterosexual patients." - Dr. Ernest Van Den Haag
Many people are made unhappy by their heterosexuality, but I do not believe the psychotherapist exists who would try to cure that. - New Statesman, 1965
If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work. "Hello, can't work today, still queer." - Robin Tyler
Is It Natural?
One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness. - Towards a Quaker View of Sex, 1964
I'm homosexual...How and why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green. - Jean Genet
I've never outraged Nature. I've always listened to her advice and followed it wherever it went. - Joe Orton
The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform. - Dr. Alfred Kinsey
Coming Out
I don't think homosexuality is a choice. Society forces you to think it's a choice, but in fact, it's in one's nature. The choice is whether one expresses one's nature truthfully or spends the rest of one's life lying about it. - Marlo Thomas
The more people come out, the less it will be an issue. If we are ashamed of ourselves, how the hell can we expect the rest of the world not to be ashamed of us? - Martina Navratilova
Deep down, my mom had long suspected I was gay...Much of her anger and hurt came from her sense of betrayal that she was the last to be told. - Chastity Bono
Love and Sex
The average homosexual, if such there be, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, or capable of, a lasting relationship like a heterosexual marriage. - Mike Wallace, on CBS Reports: The Homosexuals, 1967
It seems to me that the real clue to your sex-orientation lies in your romantic feelings rather than in your sexual feelings. If you are really gay, you are able to fall in love with a man, not just enjoy having sex with him. - Christopher Isherwood
When a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, no even for a moment. No one would think it is the intimacy of sex - that mere sex is the reason each lover takes so great and deep a joy in being with the other. - The speech of Aristophanes, in Plato's Symposium
Lesbians
In Czechoslovakia they think that all lesbians are women who are so ugly they can't get a man. - Martina Navratilova
Men think a woman homosexual could be turned around by a good night in bed with a man. It's not threatening, because they assume there couldn't be true love between two women. - Gloria Steinem
Women who love women are Lesbians. Men, because they can only think of women in sexual terms, define Lesbian as sex between women. - Rita Mae Brown
The male party line concerning Lesbians is that women become Lesbians out of reaction to men. This is a pathetic illustration of the male ego's inflated proportions. I became a Lesbian because of women, because women are beautiful, strong and compassionate. - Rita Mae Brown
Some rigid dyke once told me I wasn't a radical lesbian in her book because I eat meat and talk about sex out loud. I never said I was a radical lesbian! I don't understand that term! Wouldn't a truly radical lesbian sleep with men? Wouldn't that be the most radical thing a lesbian could do? Is it radical comma lesbian or what? - Diane DiMassa, Hothead Paisan
Bisexuality
By nature all human beings are psychically bisexual - capable of loving a person of either sex. - American Medicine, 1914
A short note about bisexuality. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't be tied to male privilege with the right hand while clutching your sister with the left. - Rita Mae Brown
Bisexuality is not so much a copout as a fearful compromise. - Jill Johnston
In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation. - Simone de Beauvoir
I could love anything on earth that appeared to wish it. - Lord Byron
I've had long-term sexual relationships with both men and women. If that classifies me as bisexual, then I'm bisexual. I'm very committed to people, so when I'm with somebody, I'm with them. - Sandra Bernhard
Women who call themselves bisexual - not because they are in transition or are afraid of their lesbianism - but because they choose to relate sexually to both women and men, are the only women who are really heterosexual. They are the only women who choose to relate to men after having known and experienced our non-compulsory alternative. - Marilyn Murphy
How About Hets?
Heterosexuality: an abnormal or perverted appetite towards the opposite sex - Dorland's Medical Dictionary, 1901
I think extreme heterosexuality is a perversion. - Margaret Mead
Heterosexuality is a serious health hazard for women at this time. - Lesbian Health Care, 1973
The Homosexual Lifestyle
I don't think there is a "gay lifestyle." I think that's superficial crap, all that talk about gay culture. A couple of restaurants on Castro Street and a couple of magazines do not constitute culture. Michelangelo is culture. Virginia Woolf is culture. So let's don't confuse our terms. - Rita Mae Brown
They talk about "gay sensibility"; I've never seen any sign of it. I've never seen any sign of "heterosexual sensibility." I always use the example of what did Lyndon Johnson have in common with Bertrand Russell, except that they both liked to fuck women...Did they share a heterosexual sensibility? I think not. - Gore Vidal
Nothing could be more ridiculous than to say, as some critics have, that I am anti-homosexual simply because I do not embrace every twitty gay fad that comes along. I think that a lifetime of listening to disco music is a high price to pay for one's sexual preference. - Quentin Crisp
Culture
If you removed all the of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with Let's Make a Deal. - Fran Lebowitz
Without homosexuals there'd be no Hollywood. - Elizabeth Taylor
Acting Out
When I grew up we had no positive images if we were gay...All I knew about gays was that they always got beaten up in some Philip Marlowe movie. - Harvey Fierstein
There are probably all of three lesbian killers in the entire country, and they're all in Basic Instinct. - Ellen Carton
People sometimes think I'm gay because I once played a gay in a movie. It's funny. Audiences don't think you're a murderer if you play a murderer, but they do think you're gay if you play a gay. - Perry King
As far as I know, Anthony Edwards can't actually practice surgery, so why must my credentials include actually sleeping with a man? - Straight actor Eric McCormack, on playing TV's first gay leading man in Will and Grace
In Making Love,, those two actors were granting interviews about how difficult it was to kiss another man, about how they had to think of their girlfriends while they were doing it. What a load of crap! Homosexual actors have been kissing women in films for fifty years without saying that it turned their stomach. - Armistead Maupin
When we were doing it, I was supposed to be very, very drunk. I said, "Why does she have to be very, very drunk?" I mean, if you're going to go to bed with a woman, and she looks like Catherine Deneuve, and she's as charming as Catherine Deneuve, why make me drunk? - Susan Sarandon, on the lesbian love scenes in The Hunger
I am an actor. Of course I can play a heterosexual! - Sir John Gielgud
Are You...I Mean, Did You Ever...You Know...
Of course. Who hasn't? Good God! If anyone had ever told me that he hadn't, I'd have told him he was lying. - Arthur C. Clarke
I'm certainly not going through life with one hand tied behind my back. - James Dean
I was once a homosexual, but it didn't work. - Richard Burton
Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed. - Marlon Brando
I say, "Normally, this would be none of your business. However, I will answer you...It's possible. I'm not practicing at the moment, but I will not say it will never happen or hasn't happened in my past. - Whoopi Goldberg
I don't care how anyone identifies me as long as I can do my work. - Lily Tomlin
I don't know, darling - he never sucked my cock. - Tallulah Bankhead, when asked if Montgomery Clift was gay.
Oh, you mean I'm homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too. But what's that got to do with my headache? - Edna St. Vincent Millay, when a doctor hinted her severe headaches were due to repressed lesbian impulses
Leigh Rutledge, The Gay Book of Lists (1987), Unnatural Quotations (1988), and The Gay Fireside Companion (1989).
Dell Richards, Lesbian Lists, 1990.
Rosemary Silva, Lesbian Quotations, 1993.
© 1999 zeugmagirl@geocities.com
Updated March 22, 1999
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