Lgbt Rights Activists

"You and your oven are capable of great things, Remember, no two ovens are the same."

"There just aren't many people in the world with balls that big and talent that awesome."

"He is Mr Piano Man, I am Miss Piano Man."

"Sometimes when I'm flying over the Alps I think, 'that's like all the cocaine I sniffed."

"It's very important to have two tiaras when you're on the road, you never know when you'll be invited to something really formal."

"People should be very free with sex, but they should draw the line at goats."

"Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours."

"Chefs aren't celebrities: they're chefs."

"The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there, communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today."

"Welcome to the world of bullshit, my dear. You have arrived."

"Be sceptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests. Be daring, show imagination, take risks. Fight against the greatest human rights violation of all: free market capitalism, which has created a world divided into rich and poor, where hundreds of millions of people are malnourished, homeless, without clean drinking water and dying from hunger and preventable diseases. Don’t accept the world as it is. Dream about what the world could be – then help make it happen."

"In contrast to earlier gay law reform and equality-oriented movements, the 1970s LGBT liberation movement did not seek to ape heterosexual values or secure the acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities within the existing sexual conventions. Indeed, it repudiated the prevailing sexual morality and institutions - rejecting not only heterosexism (heterosexual supremacism) but also male machismo, with its oppressive predisposition to rivalry, toughness and aggression; the extreme expressions of which are the rapist, queer-basher, racist murderer and war criminal."

"As a condition of equal treatment, we homosexuals are expected to conform to the straight system, adopting its norms and aspirations. The end result is gay co-option and invisibilisation. We get equality, but the price we pay is the surrender of our unique, distinctive queer identity, lifestyle and values (the important insights and ethics that we have forged in response to exclusion and discrimination by a hostile straight world). [...] Meanwhile, all the sex-repressive social structures, institutions and moralities remain intact, and the "bad gays" remain sexual outlaws."

"It is quite evident that the Soviet system today represents the exact opposite of almost everything that the left in the West is striving for - obsessive state secrecy rather than freedom of information, centralised bureaucratic control instead of devolved decision making and public accountability, total state power over the individual as opposed to inalienable civil liberties, authoritarian economic management rather than trade union freedom and industrial democracy, and a government-manipulated media instead of greater diversity and choice in news and information sources."

"The Bible is to gays what Mein Kampf is to Jews."

"Debates and parliamentary divisions are fruitless cosmetic exercises given the Tories' present Commons majority. And if we recognise this, we are either forced to accept Tory edicts as a fait accompli or we must look to new more militant forms of extra-Parliamentary opposition which involve mass popular participation and challenge the Government's right to rule."

"Can you help me? I'm bent, I'm so scared that I'll never get put back together."

"Everyone's trusting in their hearts, like their heart don't lie"

"If I fall along the way, pick me up and dust me off; If I get too tired to make it, be my breath so I can walk; If I need some other love then, give me more than I can stand; When my smile gets old and faded, just wait around I'll smile again; It shouldn't be so complicated, just hold me and then, just hold me again"

"Some things you don't need until they leave you, they're the things that you miss"

"I'm the flame I can't get burnt"

"I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell; I know right now you can't tell; But stay a while and maybe then you'll see; A different side of me"

"Wrong step, you got off track, you need someone to help us back, now."

"We're all looking for something, something to be."

"So yes, the roles are getting more and more like me. But that's because Xena was so entirely unlike me. Most people aren't really aware of that."

"Lucy's got two feet on the ground; she's very, very strong and yet has a wonderful soft side that she reveals here. She's a dream to work with."

"It took me a long time to adjust and narrow down my life. I made my shift to the mind-set … there's time for my daughter outside work and that's all. This is my new life. This is not drudgery. This is fun."

"I never thought I'd be an action star, but now they're going to make little Xena action figures for kids. I still want to be a fine actress one day; it's just a matter of putting in the time and passion."

"Feminists might identify with me because I'm unapologetic in what they think is a male-dominated world … no, I guess, what is a male-dominated world."

"Up until I came here this week, and I met so many women and young girls who feel, to use their word - and I'm a bit embarrassed, but it's a good word - empowered, by watching. I realized this isn't a burden, this is an honor."

"Growing up, I looked up to real women. I didn't go in for hero worship and I still don't. Everybody has feet of clay."

"They're also surprised I'm only 6 feet tall. They expect someone much bigger. They say I'm younger and prettier in person, which I like."

"At first, being a female role model really terrified me. But it hasn't turned out to be an awful burden. I get a lot of letters from women who tell me that, after watching Xena, they have bought the Harley-Davidson they always wanted or left an abusive relationship."

"When you decide to become an opera singer, it's a commitment that allows nothing else to interfere. Even your family - and I have a young daughter - has to take second place."

"What's Buffy got? A wooden stake, some garlic. Xena has a full arsenal of weapons."

"I'm gonna walk off wearing the outfit and I'm going to drive home in it."

"The role was very physically challenging and I am not athletic and have never wanted to be. I hate it in fact. I don't go to gyms and for me to have to stay in shape for the role became mind over matter."

"They either overcompensate for the way they feel and are incredibly sycophantic or incredibly brusque in order to prove they don't think you're superior."

"My voice likes rock music. My problem is, I can do a lot of things, but I have to find my own voice."

"The gay rights movement is not a party. It is not a lifestyle. It is not a hair style. It is not a fad or a fringe or a sickness. It is not about sin or salvation. The gay rights movement is an integral part of the American promise of freedom."

"Now then, I hasten to repeat that these practices [S&M] are certainly not usual or universal among us, but rather are variants practiced by a minority that is not representative of all gay people, although they do make up an identifiable sector that I don't want to leave out (as do many politically correct gay people, who like to give the impression that gay men only sodomize each other on Versace cushions by candlelights to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach's Suites for Cello.)"

"This pioneer of sexology [Krafft-Ebing] even came to question whether homosexuality might be innate (and people began to forgive us for living, as if it would matter to anyone if being an Atlético de Madrid fan was innate or not.)"

"Inside any vigorexic queen, any muscle queen, any macho queen, any aloof queen, any of us, ultra-masculine gays, there's a flaming faggot fighting to come out. When we finally let her blossom, she'll be so busy chatting with the other internalized flaming faggots, that we'll finally be able to sexually enjoy the boring sexual macho that we all also carry inside us. Versatility, darlings, that's the recipe for success in bed (well, having a bed can also help)."

"I hate being referred to as a comedian. Being a homosexual and a comedian is like being a pig and P.R. of the slaughterhouse: absurd. I'd rather consider myself a satirist. According to Thesaurus: a humorist who uses ridicule and irony and sarcasm... but i also puke a lot in the face of frustration; so then again i must be a supermodel."

"There are two moments in the life of any fag that you can never forget: your first kiss with another man and your first argument with a heterosexual friend that doesn't get the difference between being a homosexual and wanting to be a woman. On first sight I can't calibrate which will be repeated more times during our sexually emancipated lifetime. Lucky enough, I can tell which we all prefer to be repeated: the argument with the heterosexual friend... if it ends in a long , wet, passionate kiss."

"I suppose not many people dress up with insults to go out. We, the homosexuals, have no other choice. Insults are for us almost an epistemological variable: we have learned to know our fellow beings -for, as much as it surprises us, they are our fellow beings- through their insults, and they, on the other hand, have learned to know us in spite of the exhausting job -a hard duty impossed by society- of insulting us."

"Bourgays are the doom of queer revolution."

"Religion is not black and white. It's much more complicated. Spirituality is much bigger than that. God is much bigger than that. I don't believe in a wrathful God. I believe he's much more forgiving and inclusive than some religions. The things that are done in her name or his name are horrible."

"It's great to see people who find joy in service and don't close their eyes and aren't afraid."

"Every relationship starts out with a dream of what you think it's going to be, and you either have the tool kit when you get to the hard spots where you'll make it through, or you need to move on."