I think these last 10 years have seen just a huge shift in the psyche of this country as regards gay people. I think AIDS had a lot to do with it. So many families who really believed they'd 'never met one' were suddenly confronted with their sons becoming ill, and friends of sons. I think that brought a lot of it into the open.
When my brother-in-law, BIll Clinton, was elected, he had gay friends. That was a coming out.
Young, gay and stuck in Arkansas? Sounds like a horror flick.
When I went into 'Fiddler,' I wondered about the response I'd get - the backlash because I'm openly gay. There was none. I toured Canada and America, and not one single review suggested that I played the role gay or that I seemed anything but Tevye.
No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq.
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.
I did a women's movie, and I'm not a woman. I did a gay movie, and I'm not gay. I learned as I went along.
Anyone who watched George W. and Karl Rove while the former was governor of Texas will recognize a familiar pattern. Like much of Bush's social policy - from faith-based social services to railing against gay marriage - women's issues are one of the bones they've decided they can throw to the Christian right.
I'm not gay, and I'm not a superhero.
I had a hell of a time convincing people I was gay - which was so annoying!
There are people that very strongly identify themselves as gay and then lesbian, and then I think there are a lot of people who are kind of some percentage or some version of that.
I think people now - you know, a lot of athletes have come out and said, I would definitely accept, you know, a gay male athlete in the locker room and on my team.
You can't just look at someone and guess their sexuality. There's no point in assuming that every gay man has just one personality type.
When I was a kid, I don't think I even knew what being gay was, and now it's just part of our culture. It's changing so rapidly right now. It's great.
I don't think you choose whether or not you're gay.
I believe very firmly that gay people of every stripe and age should be role models for all children, and that means interacting with them.
My dearest friend in the movement is Jack Nichols. If there were no such thing as gay or straight, we would still talk and share experiences till the end of time.
One thing Jim McGreevey wants the world to know: Leading a double life as a gay man trying to appear straight was easy for him to pull off. He was 'good' at it. Not only that - it helped him become a better politician.
I think many of the ideas that opened up in the '60s got implemented in the '70s and that certain minority voices that were not being heard in the '60s, like women and gay people, were being heard in the '70s. Black Civil Rights had also found its foothold, and those ideas were also very pertinent.
I think the fact that I'm so well known to be gay makes it very difficult to have a convincing relationship with a woman on screen. It wouldn't be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman - I'll kiss a frog if you like.
Above these universal themes 'Truth Will Set U Free' is also a song composed for those who were born gay. I am a straight man so I do not profess to understand or know what a LGBT person experiences but I do recognize injustice when I see it.
I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage.
There's no Hollywood tradition of maybe not telling people that you're gay to protect your future ambitions. The YouTube world is a little unprecedented. I think what people are seeing is that the more true to yourself you are, the more an audience will connect with you.
I don't think I'm a gay icon. I have no axe to grind. I mean, I'm clearly not homophobic! I'm not pro or con.
A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves.
One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.
My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.
Judy Garland's father was gay. That seems to be the consensus. They left Minnesota and went to California because he got caught with some boy backstage.
And we have done more in the two and a half years that I've been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it's ending 'don't ask, don't tell,' making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.
It's not being marketed as a gay show by a gay person. It's just Ellen DeGeneres.
While I don't often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have 'chosen' is to be in a gay relationship.
I didn't want the responsibility, I didn't know how to handle the responsibility of speaking for the gay community. I always felt like I owed them a huge apology for coming out too late.
I used to shake my head when I heard about mothers who were shocked - shocked! - when their kids came out. I didn't understand how they had missed seeing something so essential when looking at their children. But too many parents see only what they want to see, and that's true whether our kids are gay or straight.
To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.
I think a lot of gay kids in the midwest or in places not in New York have to overachieve in order to sort of get through the fear of what they're going through.
I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.
