Beth Ditto Quotes

When I meet gay kids and they know who we are, I remember that's amazing because literally every gay person in every gay story I knew growing up was doomed to die. There weren't any positive gay stories and it's incredible that has changed.

I never thought I would be somewhat of a gay icon.

What was interesting was talking to older gay men about what it was like being gay in the Eighties.

When my brother-in-law, BIll Clinton, was elected, he had gay friends. That was a coming out.

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

America is off-the-hook gay. I will not go all Ann Coulter on you and say, 'Our gays are better than their gays,' but as far as countries go, we are in-your-face gay.

I knew I had to be the gay stereotype that was on the front of the papers every day. And I did my job well. I played the game.

I believe in civil liberties for homosexuals. I guess I'd have to say I'd draw the line at letting them teach in the schools.

When I came out publicly, some photo editors had a field day searching for pictures of me with a limp wrist or some other stereotypical gay signifier - as though, after decades in the public eye, they'd suddenly come across a trove of shots where I looked like a Cher impersonator.

I'm the only gay person my parents know.

My son wasn't gay. No way.

I've become this sort of icon for the gay community. I don't like the position.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn't have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men.

Though gay lifestyles have certainly moved into the open, there's little evidence that society has become more open in its basic attitudes or that entertainers should feel cozy in emerging from the velvet underground.

Homosexuals are riding high in the media.

Rock Hudson let his gay agent marry him off to his secretary because he didn't want people to get the right idea.

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.

One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.

I get why certain actors want to stay in the closet.

I didn't know of any homophile movements pre-Stonewall.

It's a good thing that columnists don't make homosexuality their last taboo anymore. But I wish the columnists themselves would come out too.

All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job.

Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?

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.

It's not being marketed as a gay show by a gay person. It's just Ellen DeGeneres.