Gilbert Baker Quotes

Sedaris, in his essay in the It Gets Better book, writes that when he was growing up nobody called him gay because you might as well have called him a warlock. Nobody knew what gay was.

When I was I younger I didn't want to be gay. Not because I was scared of the sexual thing; I didn't want to be a clone. Now this was in the late '70s.

Why is being outed such a big deal? When I find out that someone's gay, my respect for them increases tenfold.

In retrospect, the most unnerving aspect of being openly gay was that it turned out to be as disappointingly normal as being straight.

I would certainly never suggest that any lesbian should be ashamed of her sexual preference.

Growing up in Fife, you were aware that there were these creatures called lesbians, but it was in the realms of complete freakishness. And I didn't feel like a freak.

Says he, 'I am a handsome man, but I'm a gay deceiver'.

My sexuality is something I'm completely comfortable with and open about. There's a lot of prejudice toward us but the more people talk about it, the less of a big deal it will be. And that will be better for everyone.

I knew that I was different when I was six years old, but it wasn't until I got to about 10 or 11 that I realised I was a gay man.

'Milk' doesn't imply that all gay men who stayed in the closet were cowards.

A lot of people thought I was gay.

One funny thing I realized is how many people had no idea that I was gay because they don't bother to look it up or ask.

When your doctor and neighbours and child's schoolteachers know you are gay, there is no closet for you to hide in.

One of my best friends since I was eleven years old is a gay man, and I knew his struggle. It was a tough life, you not accepting yourself.

I was insecure and ashamed. Unless you're gay, being gay has never been looked at as being cool. And I wanted to be cool.

I had to try to understand how much of a taboo it was. My mum worked in ballet and theatre when she was younger, and I had been brought up around lots of gay people, so I had never had any issue and couldn't imagine how hard it was to be out.

Being gay, you're kind of forced to ask, I suppose, very existential questions from a very, very early age. Your identity becomes so important to you because you're trying to understand it, and, I think, from the age of, like, 9, you're being forced to ask questions... that other kids maybe don't have to ask.

Being gay facilitated my capacity for shame. As a child, I carried around this thing that gradually became this big dark secret. When I came out in a newspaper interview at 30 I was expecting the reaction the following day to be like the climax of 'Dead Poets Society,' but actually no one really cared.

It's not like we wanted to talk about the fact that we're gay all the time, but the world has forced it to be an issue.

When you're coming out, you have to deal with the whole world saying 'Oh! You're an abominable snowman'.

Every gay person must come out.... Once they realize we are indeed their children, we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all.

A lot of people think that telling people you're gay is something someone might say just to get attention.

When I first started teaching at Berkeley in 1958, I could not announce that I was gay to anybody, though probably quite a few of my fellow teachers knew.

Kinsey kick started a lot in shocking people with how much homosexual activity there is.

The gay community just recognizes what their closets are and we straight have to spend years trying to figure out which closet we are trapped in.