Jai Rodriguez Quotes

The gay thing has always been hard for me.

As anyone who is gay will confirm, being that way is not something you become, it is a set of emotional and physical responses that just are.

I came out when I was 17. I was in the church; I was crying every Sunday for about a year. I came to terms with the fact with this is who I was - I wasn't going to be able to be a different person. At 17, you feel like a freak already, and so to have that fire and brimstone against your attraction is just screwed up!

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.

I wanted so badly to be straight like my friends. But I couldn't change it any more than I could change having brown eyes. And I knew I would never fit into what kids thought was normal.

I was homophobic because I obviously didn't know that I was gay.

It was my own internalised homophobia. I didn't want to be gay.

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.

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.

I had told one of my friends that I felt like I might be gay or that I just wasn't into girls, and I was abandoned.

Coming out as a gay man, it was very much about finding my own identity and dealing with labeling.

I used to look at gay men and think, 'I'm not like that, I don't want to be like that, that's not me.'

I'm gay. I just didn't think it was anybody's business.

Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.

Our intention is to really explore this transition and, beyond that, explore the particular things that someone comes up against when they're gay or lesbian.

You know, I'm gay and I grew up being aware of that at a very early age, in a fairly repressed family.

I can't speak for other people, but for me, I feel like gone are the days that you need to come out of a closet. I never felt like I was in a closet. I never did. I always felt comfortable with who I am and the decisions I made.

My mom doesn't get the whole gay thing, but she loves me.

I now realize that I am a gay man before anything else. Other gays may think they're a Jew first, or black, or a banker, but I'm gay.

My dad was a very conservative Republican businessman, so obviously I considered it a problem when I realized I was a lesbian.

When I was 16, I knew I was gay. I loved a lot. But I lived as a straight guy, because there are people in my town who don't understand my story. I never told. I never wanted to show what was inside my heart.

It's okay for me to be gay, but God didn't make me that way.

I don't think anyone wants to be gay.

I've had so many interviews where the last question is, Are you gay? I had to find very creative ways to say that I was gay, but that I wasn't going to talk about it.

What's it like to figure out you're gay and then begin the process of coming out? Well, for most of my life, I felt doomed. I could imagine no path that would allow me to realize my authentic self. I felt the need to lie, even to myself, insisting: I am straight.