Gay Rights Movement Quotes

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.

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

I got lost in the music in 1963 at Stonewall... No! No, it was Stonewall - it was 1967 that I got lost. In 19 - oh my dear, Stonewall, I got lost at Stonewall. Heard it through the grapevine. 1969! I got lost in the music and I couldn't get out.

Lesbians have never been more popular.

I always thought that the film would be successful if we captured Harvey Milk, like the way Harvey really was-the personality, the humor, the corny bad jokes, all of it.

Any of us who work on the task of solving the climate crisis have at times an internal struggle between hope and despair. But that's one of the things that connects this climate movement to the previous great moral revolutions, like the civil rights movement and more recently the gay rights movement. So those who feel despair should be of good cheer, as the Bible says. Have faith, have hope. We are going to win this.

I am sick and tired of the myopia in the gay and lesbian movement. It'll doom the movement.

I am hopeful that there are three or four Harvey Milks. It would be nice to have one in California and one in New York and one in Texas and Oklahoma-it would be fantastic. Maybe even one in Salt Lake City. I would like that.

In the '70s, the gay movement was really making strides. Huge strides. And then AIDS came along and slapped a judgment on it all and the Right Wing religious movement was like, 'See. This is why, we told you.' And it pushed back the movement 30 years.

I had about five years as a gay guy in New York after college before the whole Grindr explosion happened, where people were still going out to meet each other.

I watched Sean Penn, you know, bring Harvey Milk to life. I was on the set every day.

I grew up a witness to gay politics in its early days. I remember seeing Harvey Milk and been moved by him.

I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time.

For a long time, I lived in West Hollywood and watched young gay men strolling through life having no idea what came before. They didn't know about the riots at Stonewall, the vice squad, the raids.

Anita Bryant is an important figure in gay history because she enraged a generation of people who got active.

We didn't, with 'Will & Grace,' set out to change the gay world. We just set out to be funny.

There was a point in the latter 1990s at which, suddenly, every sitcom and drama in sight had to have a gay or lesbian character or couple. That was good news as a voucher of the success of the gay rights movement, but it still grew a bit tiresome: 'Look at us! Our show is so hip, one of the characters is homosexual!'

When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important.

For the gay establishment, the death of right and wrong began when gaining civil rights ceased to be enough.

The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens.

Karla Jay's intimate account of life in the early years of feminism and gay liberation is as irresistible as a novel, but as credible, humorous, and unexpected as real life.