A poem is a liminal space that can offer a sensation of belonging. A poem won't bring you a cold beer, but it may offer you a stool where you can sit down and feel momentarily at home. LGBT folks need intergenerational spaces where their lives and experiences are foregrounded.
From my own experience, there are so many people who believe that the individual can change. The individual doesn't have to be LGBT.
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.
How dare you make my life a felony.
You cannot demand your rights, civil or otherwise, if you are unwilling to say what you are.
I want you to understand that racial justice is not about justice for those who are black or brown; racial justice is about American justice. Justice for LGBT Americans is not about gay and lesbian justice; it's about American justice. Equality for women isn't about women; it's about United States equality. You cannot enjoy justice anywhere in this country until we make sure there is justice everywhere in this country.
I think it's really important to depict complex, flawed LGBT characters, because we are all connected by our humanity.
There have been times where, let's say on LGBT issues, when we were trying to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I got the Pentagon and Bob Gates, a Republican holdover from the [George W. ] Bush administration, to authorize a study of how you might end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, headed up by Jeh Johnson, who at that time was a council to the Justice Department. And it was going to take a year to conduct that study, issue a report, and figure out how it might be implemented, what effect it would have on unit cohesion and military effectiveness.
Laws that discriminate validate other kinds of discrimination.
There are very few ethnic LGBT characters on television, so I am honored to represent them. I love supporting this cause, but it’s a big responsibility, and sometimes it’s a lot of pressure on me.
I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming.
Above these universal themes Truth Will Set U Free is also a song composed for those who were born gay. I am a straight man so I do not profess to understand or know what a LGBT person experiences but I do recognize injustice when I see it.
I am fully supportive of 'open service' and committed to LGBT military families.
I have a half-brother who is very, very, very gay, many cousins, best friends who are all members of the LGBT community, and for me to not say anything would be hypocritical. There is a lot of prejudice. People think it is abnormal. No, its just another normal.
Violence toward women isn't cultural; it's criminal.
Gay rights and human rights are. . . one and the same.
In a lot of states LGBT people can be fired for just being gay or for just being trans. That's totally legal.
I didn't come out and pay a really painful price often, to be LGBT, to not claim my sexuality at the same time. It's not all right with me to not talk about it so I don't make anybody nervous.
There's nothing wrong with being gay, so to deny it is to make a judgment.
I think there's a tremendous sense of complacency in the LGBT community. AIDS has lost the edge of horror it possessed when it swept through the world in the '80s. Today's generation sees it more as something to live with and something to be much less fearful of. And that comes with a sense of, dare I say, laziness. We need to be really vigilant and open about the fact that these drugs are not to be taken to increase our ability to have recreational sex.