Pride Quotes

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Quotations from Harvey Milk, James Baldwin, Leslie Jordan, Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Elliot Page. Art by KBW. (c)2023

A sample of quotations from a diverse group of LGBTQIA and Allies.

  • “Gender is who you are, and sexuality is who you want.” — C.N. Lester, “Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us”
  • “Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.” — Julie Anne Peters, “Keeping You a Secret”
  • “When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.” — Barack Obama
  • “Love is never wrong.” — Melissa Etheridge
  • “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” — E.E. Cummings
  • “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” — Brené Brown, “The Gifts of Imperfection”
  • “Where there is love, there is life.” — Mahatma Gandhi
  • “We declare that human rights are for all of us, all the time: whoever we are and wherever we are from; no matter our class, our opinions, our sexual orientation.” — Ban Ki-moon
  • “To realize a world of equality and dignity for all, we will have to change laws and policies; we will also have to change hearts and minds.” — Rick Parnell
  • “Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”— Ernest J. Gaines
  •  “What I liked about the rainbow is that it fits all of us. It’s all the colors. It represents all the genders. It represents all the races. It’s the rainbow of humanity.” — Gilbert Baker

More quotes can be found here.

Pride

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For the next four weeks, I’ll be posting some information, links, art, and photos for Pride and hopefully including some LGBT+ history. I’d like to start by saying that last week I heard some complaints by folks with nothing better to do asking why Pride gets a month and our veterans only get one day. This is obviously meant to create an issue where there is none. First, Memorial Day is not about veterans in that way; it’s about the war dead, which most people are glad to ignore until it suits their agenda. If they really felt this way, they’d spend Memorial Day at the cemetery, at a house of worship, volunteering instead of barbecuing and at baseball games and concerts. Second, there are many, many veterans (and war dead) who are in the LGBT+ community, and Pride is as much for them as any other person. Third, for those who declare that “pride” is a venal sin, I’d like to suggest that those divorced, adulterous, lying, hypocrites stay quiet and/or remove the log from their eye.

I wonder if, when these people see a rainbow in the sky if they shake a fist at it and complain loudly to the Creator about how woke He is.

Pride was born in revolution, even though LGBT+ people were around long before 1969. The ones who are out and open and celebrate Pride are not only celebrating themselves but are celebrating those of the community who are still not out, for personal reasons as well as safety ones.

My friend has a denim vest with the stenciled words: The first pride was a riot. I’ve used that to influence the art I created last night for this post. Sometimes the simplest designs tell a greater story.


Marsha P. Johnson

Sylvia Rivera

Stonewall Riots

Library of Congress Research Guides: 1969: The Stonewall Uprising

(c)2023