I have never imagined that I would get married and that I would become a father.
— Dustin Lance Black
You can't keep treating people differently under the law because of their differences. That's not America. I dare say that's not even a good conservative value. We're all supposed to have an equal shot.
I never wanted to be a writer initially. It was not my thing, but I was an avid reader.
For Coca-Cola to take a pro-diversity, pro-equality stance creates a lot of goodwill in the LGBT community.
Being right is overrated! If someone is saying that they're right about the future, that's a claim only a fool would make.
You're either Mormon or Southern Baptist in my family. They're incredibly conservative and I love my family.
I say to my pupils, 'You can pitch me any thing you've got, but tell me why you're the only person who can write it in the world. Keep digging.'
I was about 15 years old when I moved to the Bay area.
Children are raised by single parents all the time. Those children - I'd like to claim myself as one, I was raised by a single mother who raised me incredibly well.
Hold onto power and you lose your moral compass.
People are always going to disagree politically, because we all come at the law from a different perspective with different needs.
My mom had grown up in the South. Louisiana and Georgia. She had been deeply religious. Baptist, then Mormon. She had worked for the U.S. military. She had voted for Ronald Reagan and Bush Senior.
I think that our view of love and family informs our work, the way we empathize with people.
We love and adore our surrogate, we speak to her and her family constantly, I'm sure our son will speak to her for the rest of his life as well.
I've never encountered homophobia in casting from the studios or networks - not once, not ever. Where you encounter it is with the agents and the managers, they're the ones who have an outdated notion of the price an actor might pay if it's discovered that they're LGBTQ.
I'm always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren't always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them.
Too many of my heroes have been cut down, but do I want security guards? No. I've been offered them in the past. But the more you present yourself as someone afraid of being attacked, the more people see you as someone to attack.
Every single person in this world is a minority in one way or another. It just depends on how you slice the pie.
In this miraculous, beautiful universe of ours, where it's an absolute miracle that our eyes and ears can witness it all, we somehow have bought into this lie that the highest plane of existence is whether we put an R or a D on our voter registration card. That's insanity.
I'm industrious. Ambitious. I'm like the gay Mitt Romney... That's a terrible thing to say.
If you do something with acceptance and kindness, you can create a true friendship.
I think people in the U.K. best know me as the guy who will take their picture when they run into Tom Daley. But I'm also his husband and the dad to our child.
I am sick and tired of the myopia in the gay and lesbian movement. It'll doom the movement.
'Milk' had to be a financial success, following the success of 'Brokeback Mountain.' It had to make money so studios would develop other LGBT projects.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that this is somehow a stranger who is carrying your child. And this is absolutely not true. Your surrogate becomes one of your best friends and a member of your family.
There's a difference between fame and fame for fame's sake.
Having a son has made it all the more important for me to stay in close contact with my family in Texas and Arkansas, whom I know full well voted for Trump. Though I didn't, and have deep problems with this administration and many of them don't. But I'm not going to let that cut the tie from my son to his own history and family.
When I was in my twenties, I would always read my horoscope.
Just like my mom, when things get bad, I get quiet. The worse they get, the more silent I become.
Through my political work in D.C., and having done 'Milk' I got to know a lot of gay octogenarians. They are lovely and they like to tell their stories, and I like hearing them.
What's beautiful about the journey of surrogacy is that relationship you build with your surrogate, when it's done in places with good law. These aren't women you stop speaking to once your child is born, this is someone who's part of your family.
I have no respect for someone who lies about their sexuality. At the very least say 'no comment', just keep your personal life personal. If you're going to closet yourself, that sends a negative message.
Anyone who says a movie about history is a historical document is crazy.
I'd say I'm not sure about Christianity, but I sure do like their Christ and the lessons about turning the other cheek, about forgiveness, of yourself and others.
My mom was paralyzed from polio at the age of 2, abandoned by her husband, left with a 2-year-old, a 6-year-old and a 10-year-old, and so, we were raising her as much as she was raising us.
That's what I learned most about directing on my own - you've got to build a family, a filmmaking family.
It's 'When We Rise,' not 'When Gay People Rise.' It's about how everyone benefits when we lift up any one group in this country.
I'm drawn to making films that in some way move the social conversation.
Gay and lesbian people want to love and be loved. Some of us want to get married. Some want to have and build families. We want our kids to have their lives be a little bit better than what we've had.
I wrote 'Milk' for me. I wrote it for the younger version of me that had no clue that there are people who'd ever fought for my rights.
I was very lucky to hear the story of Harvey Milk, it was life-saving for me. I wanted to share it in case it helped others, but the story of one gay man isn't going to do it.
For people who have fertility issues - and certainly gay men have fertility issues - there's several options for having a child and surrogacy was one of them.
Whenever you write script without a director, you put in things that point toward a style in which the story will be told, a subjective style.
I tend to read 'The New York Times' and 'The Washington Post' online, and I go to the website for the BBC. I am a junkie when it comes to the news.
Although my mom and I had often disagreed politically and personally, she'd led our family by example, instilling in us a can-do attitude that often defied reason - an optimism many would call foolish, ignorant, and naive, but an optimism that occasionally shocked our neighbors and our world with its brazen veracity.
To be gay means you are drawn to the same sex. You can be gay and abstinent. But it's a part of who you are, an identity, not an act.
The real power of any movement is how we work together with other social justice movements.
I'm my mother's son, so when it comes to altruism and understanding how to do things to benefit a person's life... the women in my life have been much better than the men.
Directing was liberating and intimidating. It's something I've always wanted to do.
Do I think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? Yes. Do I think he cross-dressed? No.