4 Quotes & Sayings By Vito Russo

Vito Russo was one of the first people to write about gay culture and his groundbreaking research and writing helped to create the national consciousness we have today. He has been called "the father of the modern gay liberation movement." His books include: The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1981), An American Family: The Struggle to Define Father and Son (1986), The Celluloid Closet Companion: Queer Film History, 1945-1968 (1992). He is also credited with founding Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

1
Hollywood is too busy trying to make old formulas hit the jackpot again to see the future. Hollywood is yesterday, forever catching up with what's happening today. This will change only when it becomes financially profitable, and reality will never be profitable until society overcomes its fear and hatred of difference and begins to see that we're all in this together Vito Russo
2
American society has willfully deleted the fact of homosexual behavior from its mind, laundering things as they come along, in order to maintain a more comfortable illusion. The censors removed it; the critics said, "Well, look! It isn't there"; and anyone who still saw it was labeled a pervert Vito Russo
3
Any story dealing, however seriously, with homosexual love is taken to be a story about homosexuality while stories dealing with heterosexual love are seen as stories about the individual people they portray. This is as much a problem today for American filmmakers who cannot conceive of the presence of gay characters in a film unless the specific subject of the film is homosexuality. Lesbians and gay men are thereby classified as purely sexual creatures, people defined solely by their sexual urges. Vito Russo