Ryan Murphy Quotes

I think people feel threatened by homosexuality. The problem isn't about gay people, the problem is about the attitude towards gay people. People think that all gays are Hannibal Lecters. But gay people are sons and daughters, politicians and doctors, American heroes and daughters of American heroes.

But it's amazing how many people think that gay men should slink off into the shadows when it comes to having friendships with children.

There are a lot of myths about gay people.

Ironically, when I've asked my straight friends to join me in hanging a rainbow flag, they answer, 'But someone might think we're gay,' not realizing that is exactly the point. To be mistaken for the oppressed is to momentarily become the oppressed.

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.

I wouldn't want to lose out on my macho action movie just because I told people I was queer.

Americans don't want cowboys to be gay.

Personally speaking, growing up as a gay man before it was as socially acceptable as it is now, I knew what it was to feel different, to feel alienated and to feel not like everyone else. But the very same thing that made me monstrous to some people also empowered me and made me who I was.

It's upsetting that it is such a big deal. I wish it weren't an issue all the time. It's funny that people say it's a departure, because I've been acting since I was a child. I've played three gay roles out of hundreds.

In the 1980s, there weren't a lot of role models for gay teenagers.

Lesbians and gays... they still have to fight, even inside. It's not that simple, even if they seem to be accepted.

That was very difficult for me on 'American Idol' to feel like I had to be a certain way. It wasn't that the producers were saying that you shouldn't be gay or whatever, but there was this unspoken energy around saying you have to appeal to Middle America, and Middle America at that point was not ready for all that.

I am the most well-known homosexual in the world.

It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!

I think younger players probably just think they are who they are-they don't think about coming out. Unless you're number one in the world, nobody cares, usually.

A guy friend and I went to California Pizza Kitchen, and a group of pretty girls came over to us and said, 'You guys are gay, right?'

I've had so many interviews where the last question is, Are you gay? I had to find very creative ways to say that I was gay, but that I wasn't going to talk about it.

When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg, gay or straight, the default assumption is gay.

A lot of straight people think I'm nuts.

I grew up in a conservative small town, and the gay characters I saw on TV and in movies when I was growing up were all flamboyant and obnoxious and sometimes kind of annoying.

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

In my dictionary, and everyone's dictionary in the 1970s, the word 'queer' did mean strange and unusual. There was no slur to it.

Statistically, I'd say there are about as many gay figure skaters as there are gay football players. The majority are straight. There are just those few exceptions, and those are the ones who have gotten picked on and followed over the years.

I don’t believe that opposite sex and same sex marriages are the same, but I do believe, with growing numbers of Americans, that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same sex relationships are over.

Part of the new morality of the '60s and '70s is a new attitude toward homosexuality. The homosexual men and women have organized to fight for acceptance and respectability.