My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.
Dan SavageRead
When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the positive changes in the lives of openly gay individuals and the supportive communities around them.
In this quote, Dan Savage shares his personal experience of witnessing the lives of openly gay people in the fringe theater scene, highlighting how their happiness and support systems demonstrate a significant improvement in their lives. By emphasizing 'it got better,' he underscores the importance of acceptance and the transformative power of love and community, particularly within the LGBTQ+ context.
Themes
LgbtqAcceptanceCommunitySupportHappiness
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote at a pride event to inspire acceptance and support among audience members.
More from Dan Savage
All quotes →A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves.
Dan SavageRead
It's going to take generations of gay people marrying before these things start to feel natural. We haven't had it long enough to remake it as our own, so it does feel like you're getting dressed up in straight drag to do it.
Dan SavageRead
And that really captures the difference for the bullied straight kid versus the bullied gay kid, is that the bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. [...] And I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.
Dan SavageRead
A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.
Dan SavageRead
Like it or not children are being raised by gay and lesbian parents all over America - as many as 10 million children. And it does nothing to make their lives more stable and secure to attack their families, to attack their parents to prevent us from marrying each other.
Dan SavageRead
Similar quotes
It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.
E. B. WhiteRead
In fact, every woman I met seemed disposable and replaceable. I was experiencing seducer's paradox: The better a seducer I became, the less I loved women. Success was no longer defined by getting laid or finding a girlfriend, but by how well I performed.
Neil StraussRead
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.
Martin AmisRead
Then a strange thing happened. She turned to him and smiled, and as he saw her smile every rag of anger and hurt vanity dropped from him — as though his very moods were but the outer ripples of her own, as though emotion rose no longer in his breast unless she saw fit to pull an omnipotent controlling thread.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya AngelouRead
In some instances, you may care so much about the person who has hurt you, or be so unable to be angry with him (or with anyone), that you rationalize his hurtful acts by finding some basis in your own actions for his hurtful behavior; you then feel guilty rather than angry. Put in other terms, you become angry with yourself rather than with the one who hurt you.
Paul EkmanRead