WORTH REPEATING

Same-sex marriage, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” gay bullying—sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that we’re still discussing basic human rights in 2011, but alas, we are. Rarely do I think, “I couldn’t have said it better myself!” but when I heard what many of the most brilliant minds from history had to say on the subject of being gay—or unique in any way—I couldn’t help but ask...

MAY I QUOTE YOU ON THAT?

“When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” —Leonard P. Matlovich

“You don’t have to be straight to be in the military, you just have to be able to shoot straight.” —Barry Goldwater

“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?” —Ernest Gaines

“Why can’t they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand guys with M16s going, ‘Who’d you call a faggot?’” —John Stewart

“Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals. Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons.” —Letter to the editor, The Advocate

“Homosexuality is god’s way of insuring that the truly gifted aren’t burdened with children.” —Sam Austin

“Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.” —Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, 524 A.D.

“You could move.” —Abigail “Dear Abby” Van Buren (in response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood)

“Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.” —James Baldwin

“Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich were shaking hands congratulating themselves on the introduction of an anti-gay bill in Congress. If it passes, they won’t be able to shake hands, because it will then be illegal for a prick to touch an asshole.” —Judy Carter

“I’m a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being ... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.” —Paul Newman

“One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness.” —Towards a Quaker View of Sex, 1964

“It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It’s like disapproving of rain.” —Francis Maude

“Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories—fag and straight.” —Gore Vidal

“As long as society is anti-gay, then it will seem like being gay is anti-social.”
—Joseph Francis

“If Michelangelo had been straight, the Sistine Chapel would have been wallpapered.”
—Robin Tyler

“Some women can’t say the word lesbian ... even when their mouth is full of one.”
—Kate Clinton

“The Lord is my shepherd and he knows I’m gay.” —Troy Perry

“God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.” —William Shakespeare

“Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves?” —Friedrich Nietzsche

“Why don’t you want to look like what you are?” —Malcolm X

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” —Harvey Fierstein

“There is just one life for each of us: our own.” —Euripides

“If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.”
—Johann von Goethe

“There’s this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That’s completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.” —Boy George

“Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.” —Shakti Gawain

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”—Dr. Seuss

“If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would pretty much be left with Let’s Make a Deal.”
—Fran Lebowitz

“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.”
—Agnes Repplier

“To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying ‘Amen’ to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive." —Robert Louis Stevenson

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” —Anaïs Nin

“No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don’t love anybody.” —Rita Mae Brown

“The diagnosis of homosexuality as a ‘disorder’ is a contributing factor to the pathology of those homosexuals who do become mentally ill ... Nothing is more likely to make you sick than being constantly told that you are sick.” —Ronald Gold