A Quote by Jose Antonio Vargas

One of the things I had to really wrap my head around is I have no control over what people call me: advocate, activist, gay, Filipino, undocumented person, gay person with an Asian face and Latino name.

Jose Antonio Vargas

Quote Topics

Activist Advocate Around Asian Call Call Me Control Face Filipino Gay Had Head Latino Me Name No Control One Of The Things Over People Person Really Things Undocumented Wrap

Quote Author

Jose Antonio Vargas
Filipino - Journalist
Born: February 3, 1981

I'm certainly not going to tell other people what they should do with their own personal lives. I think it's certainly easier for a director to be out. The public is not going to see a movie because the director is gay or straight. It's maybe a little harder for an actor or actress because of, you know, the love roles and stuff. But gay people have been impersonating heteros in the movies for years. So, hopefully, that is becoming less of an issue. I think it would have been really great if a gay person had played a gay person. That's brave!

John Waters

I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or the potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed with themselves.

Harvey Milk

People have to stop saying that just because someone is an anti-gay activist they might be gay. They're DEFINITELY GAY!!

Bill Maher

In my real life, both my bosses are gay. On the 'Real Housewives of Atlanta,' Andy Cohen is gay, everybody at Bravo is gay - we call them the gay mafia. Over at 'Glee' and 'The New Normal,' my boss Ryan Murphy is gay. On the show, my boss, played by Andrew Reynolds, is gay in real life. I'm surrounded by all my gay bosses.

NeNe Leakes

Words can mean different things to different people. It is important to understand what people mean when they use a certain word. Let's make an example. Take the word gay. Fifty years ago, gay meant exclusively cheerfulness, lighthearted excitement, merry or bright colors. Today this word has a different meaning. You won't call a cheerful person gay because it could be understood as something else.

Ali Sina

To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.

Jose Antonio Vargas

Actual gay people can make many others feel uncomfortable and paranoid because they don't know and can't articulate what makes a person gay, and they worry that maybe they themselves are gay.

Dan Savage

For years I was the only publicly out gay person who was not a full-time gay activist: my position as a quasi-foreigner gave me a privileged perch, and my ability to earn money by writing for western publications made me almost impervious to discrimination. Other Russians were not in a hurry to come out.

Masha Gessen

Really, darling, it's a no-brainer. You know, I understand not everybody is for gay marriage. But if you're not for gay marriage, don't marry a gay person. That's what I say

Whoopi Goldberg

Faggot never meant "gay" when I was a kid. You kind of knew that you could call a gay person faggot if you were ignorant, but nobody ever called someone a faggot if they were gay.

Joe Rogan

I've known gay people - men and women - since I was a young person. To me it's just naturalistic and realistic to portray gay characters in a humanistic light. As a young man, I knew enough gay people as people not to fear them. On the other side of the coin, I like to irritate conservatives and homophobes.

Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero

I couldn't imagine a book with many characters in it and one of them not being gay. It would have felt like a glaring and problematic omission for me. But I also wanted to write that character as a person, not just a gay person.

Ayana Mathis

I haven't been a gay activist. I haven't protested for gay rights or none of that, but one thing I can say is that a lot of the designers I wear are gay and I like their clothes.

ASAP Rocky

When I meet gay kids and they know who we are, I remember that's amazing because literally every gay person in every gay story I knew growing up was doomed to die. There weren't any positive gay stories and it's incredible that has changed.

Olly Alexander

It's so politically incorrect to make a character gay and then make them 'un-gay' again. Like, once you become gay, you've crossed over, or you're not allowed to be a person who doesn't want to be defined by a label like that.