Steven Levitan Quotes

Now, it's weird not to have gay characters on a show.

I don't think there is a guy that played more gay characters than I have done in my life.

Nobody knew if the pilot would even get picked up because it had two gay lead characters, which has never happened before. And now every show has at least two gay characters, if not many more.

I think it's very important that, you know, gay actors get to play gay characters.

I'm very passionate and believe that every time the LGBT community is featured in the media, people are learning about us.

If LGBT people can identify with our story, if they think, 'The Golden Lovers are my team,' I'm good with that.

Obviously, no LGBT person should be denied the ability to be who they are because their boss disagrees.

The 'Family Ties' role was the first of many gay roles that I've ended up playing. I remember that I made them laugh, and it made me feel good, 'cause it really cracked them up.

It seems to me the most important issue in the LGBT community is the right to be queer-the right to be free of the heterosexual assumption.

I kind of cheer the presence of any gay characters at all - I think the more we can saturate television with any gay character or lesbian character or transgender character, I think that's a really great thing. We're kind of getting past the fact that they're the punchline or that they're the novelty.

I think about 'Will & Grace,' and I think about 'Modern Family,' and the way that being gay has become sort of middle America... in the way that they show gay people in their specific way.

I love that we've chipped away at the celluloid closet and have wonderful programs that feature gay and lesbian characters in really rich, fully developed ways.

I think the world has a place for gay superheroes, certainly.

There's not a lot of gay programming on TV.

There should be more LGBT people on TV.

There are not actually many people in Finland who are openly gay together, let alone two women.

For more than two decades, GLAAD has combatted anti-LGBT images in the media and changed the national conversation about LGBT people.

Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was.

When I was a kid, there were hardly any gay story lines or characters on television that I recall. Then when I was in college, 'Will & Grace' started up.

No culture that has ever embraced homosexuality has survived.

The successes of the LGBT civil rights movement and the more prominent role openly gay people are playing in the public eye has actually turned up the temperature in middle schools and high schools for queer kids.

The only way to get gay issues off the front pages of Canadian newspapers is to grant gay and lesbian people our full civil equality and leave it alone.

I think growing up in skating, I was surrounded by the LGBT community, so I grew up very aware because I was around it so often, and some of the kindest people I know are gay figure skaters.

I've praised Obama's record on same-sex equality as enthusiastically as anyone: it's one area where his record has been impressive. I understand, and have expressed, the emotional importance for LGBT Americans of his marriage announcement as well as its political significance.

And I'd like to believe that's true, you know, kind of showing gay people in this kind of light and - where it's not about that, it's just about the characters for the first time, like those shows were.