I'm on the younger end of Gen X, and for me, growing up gay was not cool.
Being 'out and proud' can feel like a real luxury of Western culture, where people are often white and see existing white gay people in their culture. That's a kind of privilege people don't know they possess.
If I want to go to a party with a few male friends, it doesn't mean I'm gay.
I was homophobic because I obviously didn't know that I was gay.
I never had a moral problem with being gay.
Knowing you're gay, as a kid in the '80s, is a very scary thing.
Unless you're of a certain age, you may not know my name, but you can Google it - I was a pretty big movie star in the 1950s. Oh, and another thing: I was - am - gay.
Eight times a week, I got to be a gay man, a remarkable gay man, and every night, that felt as full, as true, as passionate, and as authentic as I ever felt in my life.
I'm not only in touch with my feminine side, I'm in touch with my gay side as well.
I'm not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off the homophobes.
I was insecure and ashamed. Unless you're gay, being gay has never been looked at as being cool. And I wanted to be cool.
Ziggy Stardust, the Village People, and punk rock really shaped who I am as a person and as a gay man.
If I were gay, you know. I think Woody Allen is one of a long list of men I might go gay for.
I'm not sure when I first knew that I was gay.
Being gay immediately placed me outside the values of the society I was growing up in. Apartheid was a very patriarchal system, so its assumptions seemed foreign to me from the outset. I've always had the advantage of alienation.
I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man.
I just want to be clear before we decide to do this together: I'm gay. My music is gay. My show is gay. And I love that it's gay. And I love my gay fans, and they're all going to be coming to our show. And it's going to remain gay.
I've been openly gay since I can remember.
To my friends, I’m kind of sexually gay but ethnically straight.
As somebody who happens to be gay, I particularly resent that minorities are being encouraged to be fragile and bitter.
I think honestly, some people who think they're gay, they're confused.
You can't just go gay, its not like buying a ladder.
For the record, I am gay.
I was fat and ugly and never 'wanted to hook up - for a gay guy that's unheard of. I was like a monk or a priest.
First and foremost, I'm an athlete. And I'm an Olympian. I'm not a gay Olympian. I'm just an Olympian that's also gay. I don't mind reading that - like, 'gay Olympian Adam Rippon.' It's fine. I hope that, in a way, it makes it easier for other young kids who are gay. If they go to the Olympics, they can just be called Olympians.
