77 Inspiring Homosexuality Quotes

In a world that thrives on diversity and the unique experiences that shape our identities, the voices and stories of the LGBTQ+ community are more vital than ever. Understanding and celebrating the rich tapestry of human experiences can empower us all to foster inclusivity and acceptance. This collection of 77 inspiring homosexuality quotes brings together profound words from activists, writers, and public figures who have bravely shared their journeys. Their insights not only encourage reflection and understanding but also celebrate the power of love in all its forms. Whether you are seeking affirmation, strength, or simply a sense of belonging, these quotes provide a beacon of hope and resilience, proving that love truly knows no bounds.

1. “My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.” - Stephen Fry

2. “In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.” - Simone de Beauvoir

3. “I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated "all my homosexual patients are quite sick" - to which I finally replied "so are all my heterosexual patients.” - Ernest Van den Haag

4. “I even tried to usher her into this century by explaining that wearing rainbows didn’t automatically mean a person was gay. The Lucky Charms leprechaun was not necessarily a homosexual. The Care Bear with the rainbow on his tummy did not have a life partner. He didn’t even have genitals. (6)” - Elna Baker

5. “No, I`ve never thought that I was gay. And that`s not something you think. It`s something you know.” - Robert Plant

6. “There's so few things men can talk about. If a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, I'm in trouble anyway: he don't like girls.” - Truman Capote

7. “An element of fantasy is needed when falling in love and I was unable to find the fantasy element with any of the male gender” - Novala Takemoto

8. “I have not once felt a thing for the male sex, I was only interested in the fairer sex. Mine.” - Novala Takemoto

9. “But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats.For they would surely kill us.” - Glenway Wescott

10. “And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women - except, of course —those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff, But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years - whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know - actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.” - Tina Fey

11. “Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias? On a couple of things, maybe. Compared to the American public at large, probably a slightly higher percentage of journalists, because of thier enhanced power of discernment, realize they know a gay person or two, and are, therefore, less frightened of them.” - Al Franken

12. “After the Second World War, San Francisco was the main point of re-entry for sailors returning from the Pacific. Out at sea, many of these sailors had picked up amatory habits that were frowned upon back on dry land. So these sailors stayed in San Francisco . . .” - Jeffrey Eugenides

13. “Well, while you were in the bathroom, I sat down at this picnic table here in Bumblefug, Kentucky, and noticed that someone had carved that GOD HATES FAG, which, aside from being a grammatical nightmare, is absolutely ridiculous. So I'm changing it to 'God Hates Baguettes.' It's tough to disagree with that. Everybody hates baguettes.” - John Green

14. “Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking.” - Derek Jarman

15. “The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maiden's?” - Umberto Eco

16. “It angered him that his sexuality was an issue at all. As far as he was concerned, who he decided to sleep with was his business alone.” - Christina Westover

17. “As the many male victims of rape in the regime's disgusting jails can testify, this state-run pathology of sexual repression and sexual sadism is not content to degrade women only.” - Christopher Hitchens

18. “Straight? So is spaghetti until you heat it up” - Jet Mykles

19. “I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.” - E.M. Forster

20. “I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows.” - E.M. Forster

21. “How deep congenital sex-inversion roots may be gathered from the fact that the pleasure-dream of the male Urning has to do with male persons, and of the female with females.” - Richard von Krafft-Ebing

22. “So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.” - Michael Levenson

23. “In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his female figures that is so,—the latter being mostly representative of woman in her part as mother, or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself especially with romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity of Michel Angelo's male figures are incontestable, and bear striking witness to that nobility of the sentiment in him, which we have already seen illustrated in his sonnets.” - Edward Carpenter

24. “In its various forms, so far as we know them, Love seems always to have a deep significance and a most practical importance to us little mortals. In one form, as the mere semi-conscious Sex-love, which runs through creation and is common to the lowest animals and plants, it appears as a kind of organic basis for the unity of all creatures; in another, as the love of the mother for her offspring—which may also be termed a passion—it seems to pledge itself to the care and guardianship of the future race; in another, as the marriage of man and woman, it becomes the very foundation of human society. And so we can hardly believe that in its homogenic form, with which we are here concerned, it has not also a deep significance, and social uses and functions which will become clearer to us, the more we study it.” - Edward Carpenter

25. “Homosexual,' generally used in scientific works is of course a bastard word. 'Homogenic' has been suggested, as being from two roots, both Greek, i.e., 'homos,' same, and 'genos,' sex.” - Edward Carpenter

26. “It would seem probable that the attachment of such a one is of a tender and profound character; indeed, it is possible that in this class of men we have the love sentiment in one of its most perfect forms—a form in which from the necessities of the situation the sensuous element, though present, is exquisitely subordinated to the spiritual.” - Edward Carpenter

27. “That men of this kind despise women, though a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears to be justified. Indeed, though naturally not inclined to 'fall in love' in this direction, such men are by their nature drawn rather near to women, and it would seem that they often feel a singular appreciation and understanding of the emotional needs and destinies of the other sex, leading in many cases to a genuine though what is called 'Platonic' friendship. There is little doubt that they are often instinctively sought after by women, who, without suspecting the real cause, are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic which they miss in the normal man.” - Edward Carpenter

28. “Lussurioso: "Welcome, be not far off, we must be better acquainted. Push, be bold with us, thy hand!"Vindice: "With all my heart, i'faith. How dost, sweet musk-cat? When shall we lie together?"Lussurioso: (aside) "Wondrous knave!Gather him into boldness? 'Sfoot, the slave'sAlready as familiar as an ague,And shakes me at his pleasure! -- Friend, I canForget myself in private, but elsewhere,I pray do you remember be."Vindice: "Oh, very well, sir.I conster myself saucy."Lussurioso: "What hast been? What profession?"Vindice: "A bone-setter."Lussurioso: "A bone-setter!"Vindice: "A bawd, my lord, one that sets bones together."Lussurioso: (aside) "Notable bluntness!” - Thomas Middleton

29. “Sadly for my wedding plans, I learned that Nestor is a bardash. I envy the men who enjoy his favors. He has always treated me with friendship which I now value more than my old romantic feelings.” - Tamora Pierce

30. “Well let's face it, who on earth besides antique dealers and gay couples actually still give dinner parties?” - Nigel Slater

31. “You know, there are several gay men on the faculty. Professor Montag makes jelly beans look colorless(...)” - Tara Lain

32. “By Hays' reasoning, penetrating a rectum with a penis is a violation of how God meant humans to function. However, penetrating a human body with a sword, a common way to kill people in biblical times, is acceptable. Apparently human bodies were designed to be penetrated by metal implements, but not by flesh.” - Hector Avalos

33. “For myself I couldn't care less, but I have a lover. Not a partner, Susannah, or a friend or a significant euphemism, but the love of my life. And he believes. And I've watched him tie himself in knots, as he struggles to find a place for himself in texts that were written thousands of years ago, with the deliberate aim of excluding him.” - Michael Arditti

34. “There's something very... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You've never changed sex, have you?' He shook his head. 'Or slept with a man?' Another shake. 'I thought so,' Yay said. 'You're strange, Gurgeh.' She drained her glass.” - Iain M. Banks

35. “I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.” - Alison Bechdel

36. “Like all men who look this good, Frank has no interest in women.” - Dennis Sharpe

37. “At times he entertained the dream. Two men can defy the world.” - E.M. Forster

38. “She divorced her husband, y' know. I never knew him, it was before I met Jane. Apparently she came back from work one mornin' an' found her husband in bed with the milkman. With the milkman, honest to God. Well, apparently, from that day forward Jane was a feminist. An' I've noticed, she never takes milk in her tea.” - Willy Russell

39. “It's miles worse for you than that; I'm in love with your gamekeeper.” - E.M. Forster

40. “It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.” - Alison Bechdel

41. “I'm not the kind of faggot who wants to put a rainbow sticker on a machine gun.” - CAConrad

42. “Rev. Pat Robertson says that if more states legalize gay marriage, God will destroy America. He did say that afterwards, gays will come in and do a beautiful renovation.” - Conan O'Brien

43. “Some lurid things have been said about me—that I am a racist, a hopeless alcoholic, a closet homosexual and so forth—that I leave to others to decide the truth of. I'd only point out, though, that if true these accusations must also have been true when I was still on the correct side, and that such shocking deformities didn't seem to count for so much then. Arguing with the Stalinist mentality for more than three decades now, and doing a bit of soapboxing and street-corner speaking on and off, has meant that it takes quite a lot to hurt my tender feelings, or bruise my milk-white skin.” - Christopher Hitchens

44. “There is, however, one way of speaking that I've tried to avoid. Rather than refer to someone as "a homosexual," I've taken care always to make "gay" or "homosexual" the adjective, and never the noun, in a longer phrase, such as "gay Christian" or "homosexual person." In this way, I hope to send a subtle linguistic signal that being gay isn't the most important thing about my or any other gay person's identity. I am a Christian before I am anything else. My homosexuality is a part of my makeup, a facet of my personality. One day, I believe, whether in this life or in the resurrection, it will fade away. But my identity as a Christian - someone incorporated into Christ's body by his Spirit - will remain.” - Wesley Hill

45. “I know that whatever the complex origins of my own homosexuality are, there have been conscious choices I've made to indulge - and therefore to intensify, probably - my homoerotic inclinations. As I look back over the course of my life, I regret the nights I have given in to temptations to lust that pulsed like hot, itching sores in my mind. And so I cling to this image - washed. I am washed, sanctified, justified through the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Whenever I look back on my baptism, I can remember that God has cleansed the stains of homosexual sin from the crevasses of my mind, heart, and body and included me in his family, the church, where I can find support, comfort, and provocation toward Christian maturity.” - Wesley Hill

46. “Washed and waiting. That is my life – my identity as one who is forgiven and spiritually cleansed and my struggle as one who perseveres with a frustrating thorn in the flesh, looking forward to what God has promised to do. That is what this book is all about.” - Wesley Hill

47. “One of the most striking things about the New Testament teaching on homosexuality is that, right on the heels of the passages that condemn homosexual activity, there are, without exception, resounding affirmations of God's extravagant mercy and redemption. God condemns homosexual behavior and amazingly, profligately, at great cost to himself, lavishes his love on homosexual persons.” - Wesley Hill

48. “I looked after that Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn't stand it no more.... I wish to God I'd told John Green Dudley he ain't going to hell. That he ain't no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to God I'd filled his ears with good things like I'm trying to do with Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts.” - Kathryn Stockett

49. “Marriage should be between a spouse and a spouse, not a gender and a gender.” - Hendrik Hertzberg

50. “Sexuality should not be seen as dualistic – all good or all bad – but as a good part of our created nature that is constantly in need of repair.” - David Kinnaman

51. “If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?” - Judith Butler

52. “Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth.Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights?It's impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures.” - Jaron Lanier

53. “My morality and faith are choices. My sexual orientation however isn't.” - Anthony Venn-Brown

54. “Even if you believe the Genesis record of creation you’ll see that God did not create a black and white world of male and female. Creation is not black and white, it is amazingly diverse, like a rainbow, including sexualities and a variety of non-heterosexual expressions of behaviour, affection and partnering occurring in most species, including humans. The ability to reproduce is only a small part of the creation. Before God created male and female he made an even more important statement; ‘it is not good for mankind to be alone’. This is fundamental to all heterosexual and same-sex relationships. Lasting relationships are based on love, trust and commitment, not sex or reproduction. So stop with the ‘God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve’ quote already. It’s boring and an insult to the creator of this incredible universe.” - Anthony Venn-Brown

55. “When we choose to live authentically we chip away at others prisons of pretend and create an opportunity for them to walk out of darkness into freedom.” - Anthony Venn-Brown

56. “I thinking gay and straight people use the same putters, it's not a matter of putters but a matter of hole selection.” - Jon Stewart

57. “Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally.....to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life.” - Anthony Venn-Brown

58. “Hugh had led men into battle with success and was on reasonably good terms with the king, though they would never be intimates; in any case, his father had been so close to his king that this would probably have to suffice for whole generations of Dipensers.” - Susan Higginbotham

59. “Social conservatives seem to see a bigger threat to marriage from committed gay couples who want in on it than from straight ones who opt out of it.” - Margaret Talbot

60. “Like the voice of a number of homosexuals, this is an insinuating blend of eagerness and caution in which even such words as "hello" and "goodbye" seem not so much uttered as divulged.” - Quentin Crisp

61. “And I have tried to forget him, I have tried to convince myself that it was just one of those things, but it’s difficult to do that when my body is standing here, eight feet deep in the earth of northern France, while my heart remains by a stream in a clearing in England where I left it weeks ago.” - John Boyne

62. “There is no unthreatened, unthreatening conceptual home for the concept of gay origins. We have all the more reason, then, to keep our understanding of gay origin, of gay cultural and material reproduction, plural, multi-capillaried, argus-eyed, respectful, and endlessly cherished.” - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

63. “The ability of anyone in the culture to support and honour gay kids may depend on an ability to name them as such, notwithstanding that many gay adults may never have been gay kids and some gay kids may not turn into gay adults.” - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

64. “It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.” - C.S. Lewis

65. “The thing about gay marriage is simply that it's not gay. It's marriage. If you are uncomfortable with marriage, you can not outlaw marriage. And, shocking, even if homosexuality makes someone uncomfortable, one can not outlaw identifying as or practicing homosexuality. So seeing as both homosexuality and marriage are legal, their being combined should be no big deal.” - Cristina Marrero

66. “Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.” - James Baldwin

67. “All our hope rests upon the possibility of a change of the laws which concern it, so that only rape or the comission of public offence, when this can be proved at the same time, shall be punishable.” - Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing

68. “...our witness, one Edward Littleton, was as gay as Elton John's handbag.” - Ann Somerville

69. “Nobody taught me to be like this. I was born this way. Since I opened my eyes to the world, I have never slept with a man. Never. Just imagine what purity. I have nothing to be ashamed of.[2000]” - Chavela Vargas

70. “At that time a psychologist appeared in Oslo, and wrote interesting articles in the paper about how to cure homosexuality. … This man is a pervert. He wants to change nature. He wants to change the natural growth of love between a woman and a woman, or between a man and a man. If society itself wasn't hostile to love, he would never have been allowed to do that. Can't you see? Why can't you ever get it out of your head that love is against nature? Because that's what you're saying when you say homosexuality is against nature. Didn't nature make me? Or was I the result of some mysterious embryonic experiment, conceived on another planet, and planted in my mother's womb? Because I can assure you: I was born a lesbian. I was a lesbian the moment I came out and said, Boooooo.” - Gerd Brantenberg

71. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.' (Leviticus 18:22). That means simply that it is foul to do to other men what men habitually, proudly, manfully do to women: use them as inanimate, empty, concave things; fuck them into submission; subordinate them through sex.” - Andrea Dworkin

72. “Unnatural, unorthodox, amoral: those pretensions crumble when confronted by true happiness. You shouldn't give another the authority to draw a line defining the boundaries of acceptable joy.” - Darrell Drake

73. “England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.” - E.M. Forster

74. “In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative.” - Peter Dubé

75. “Look at yourself! You're a priest. You know damn well that if I were setting out to make a girl at this moment instead of young Paolo, you'd take an entirely different view. You'd disapprove, sure! You'd read me a lecture on fornication and all the rest. But you wouldn't be too unhappy. I'd be normal... according to nature! But I am not made like that. God didn't make me like that. But do I need love the less? Do I need satisfaction less? Have I less right to live in contentment because somewhere along the line the Almighty slipped a cog in creation?... What's your answer to that Meredith? What's your answer for me? Tie a knot in myself and take up badminton and wait till they make me an angel in heaven, where they don't need this sort of thing any more? I'm lonely! I need love like the next man! My sort of love!” - Morris L. West

76. “Sex," the driver said, "Has no one ever told you about it?"I took the New York Times from my carry-on bag and pretended to read, an act that apparently explained it all."Ohhh," the driver said, "I understand. You do not like pussy. You like the dick. Is that it?" I brought the paper close to my face, and he stuck his arm through the little window and slapped the back of his seat. "David," he said, "David, listen to me when I am talking to you. I asked do you like the dick?""I just work," I told him. "I work, and then I go home, and then I work some more." I was trying to set a good example, trying to be the person I'd imagined him to be, but it was a lost cause."I fucky-fuck every day," he boasted. "Two women. I have a wife and another girl for the weekend. Two kind of pussy. Are you sure you no like to fucky-fuck?" If forced to, I can live with the word "pussy," but "fucky-fuck" was making me carsick. "That is not a real word," I told him. "You can say fuck, but fucky-fuck is just nonsense. Nobody talks that way. You will never get ahead with that kind of language."Traffic thickened because of an accident, and, as we slowed to a stop, the driver ran his tongue over his lips. "Fucky-fuck," he repeated. "I fucky-fucky-fucky fuck.” - David Sedaris

77. “The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.” - G.K. Chesterton