Pete Buttigieg Quotes

I forgot that San Francisco is not an angry city like New York. Gays have gotten what they wanted there over the years, unlike New York, where we had to fight for everything.

Harvey Milk was a friend of mine, an important gay leader in San Francisco in the '70s, and he carried a really important message about how important it was to be visible, how important it was to come out, and that was the single most important thing we had to do.

I think it's always good for gay people to come out, but it's also understandable why people might choose not to do so.

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

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!

Compared to being caught in the wrong body, being plagued by 'dysmorphic OCD thoughts,' being gay is commonplace and mostly accepted. What once seemed unimaginable and shameful has been revealed to be perfectly normal.

With 'Fellow Travelers,' I think I was consciously trying to imagine what my own life as a gay man might have been like if I'd been born exactly 20 years earlier.

I have no problem whatsoever with allowing gay people to live as they please, as long as they don't try to impose their lifestyle on everyone else.

There are plenty of lesbians in Hollywood, but they're not out. And that's their choice, but I can't do that, it's too important to me.

I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.

I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.

The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn't do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people's houses.

Most Americans don't care about gay marriage.

Gay marriage won't be more of an issue 25 years from now than interracial marriage is today.

I think it's interesting: What is the generational effect of the experience of being a gay person in America? For my generation, it was very difficult.

Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked.

It's not so much whether you're gay or not, but whether you can own up to being gay and still have your job or serve your country.

If it makes people mad, they'll forget it by 1990 … I put prostitutes and gays at about the same level, and I'd be hard put to give somebody life for killing a prostitute. I did what I thought was right.

I'm fine with gays. I have nothing against gays.

While it was refreshing to finally see an openly gay man speak at a Republican convention, it doesn't remove the stain of selecting Mike Pence, America's most anti-LGBT governor.

Traditional Anglicans - whether in Nigeria or Nottingham - have been wary, at best, of the acceptance and welcome given to gay men and women and their sexual choices by secular society.

If I had come out during my acting career in the 1950s, I would not have had a career.

Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot.

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

I was pursuing my acting career, but I was silent on the LGBT issue, the issue that was closest to me. I knew if I came out then, I'd have had to change careers.