Barack Obama Quotes

Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would have you believe, gay people mow their lawns and watch 'American Idol' and video their children's concerts and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do.

The death of anti-gay hate speech is no doubt being hastened by the head-spinning speed with which gays as a group - to say nothing of gay marriage - are becoming an unremarkable and even quite traditional parts of American life.

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.

I grew up in a pretty gay world - my brother's gay and he's been married to a man for 20 years, which is like 60 in straight-people years.

After singing 'Same Love' across the nation, it's given me faith that I've underestimated the straight world.

I have friends who are black whose families opened their arms to them when they came out; I have friends who were white where they were rejected.

I know gay parents, and I support them and their families. They are good parents and loving families.

I don't care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time - and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones - I think it's fine if they want to get married. I don't know how people can get so anti-something.

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.

I don’t think that gay people threaten my marriage and I don’t think that the nation is in danger from gays.

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

Gay and lesbian people want to love and be loved. Some of us want to get married. Some want to have and build families. We want our kids to have their lives be a little bit better than what we've had.

I grew up here in New York City and New Jersey, performing on Broadway shows, surrounded by some of my closest friends from the LGBT community. My father, a minister from New Jersey, shaped my view that love is love, that we are all equal.

On the gay issue, hey, you know what, if people love each other, Jesus, I mean come on.

There are plenty of organisations making a real difference to the lives of gay people around the country that do need our help, so why undermine the wonder of 'Strictly' by politicising it?

I think that more and more Americans are insistent that, at a minimum, gay couples should be treated with respect and when they see a political party trying to stigmatize a group of people who are hardworking, who play by the rules, who raise decent families, they're troubled by it.

Being gay is no longer a taboo subject in Germany.

We need more gay in the world! I really believe that.

I'm trying to tell kids if they are gay, it's OK to be gay. I've tried to tell families if they have a gay family member to accept them and love them as they always have.

I really want to be like my mom in some ways, because I already take a lot after her already. I really like the way she treats us and disciplines us, and I think that she's just great because of how she's balanced us and all of that.

Above all, we must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.

By in large in this country the issue of gay rights and equality should be past the point of debate. Really, there should be no debate anymore.

I grew up in a very small town, but it happened to be in western Massachusetts, where there were a lot of gay people. I remember my aunt going to a gay wedding when I was 11, and I thought it was the coolest thing.

I have so many gay friends that I love.

I oppose the attempts of homosexual activists to treat homosexual activity as a civil right to be protected and promoted by the government.