Songfacts®:

• Lemonheads lead singer Evan Dando wrote this with his Australian collaborator Tom Morgan. The song is written from the perspective of a lovelorn gay man asking for understanding.
  
  Dando met many colorful characters in his travels, and this was based on one of them. "That was from my friend who was renting this house from this rich steward who had all this gay art on the wall," he said in a Songfacts interview. "We called it 'the big gay house' and it just sort of went on from there."
• This song is meant to discourage gay bashing. Dando, an avowed heterosexual who was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" the year it was released, makes his point by showing how a heartache song can work from a gay perspective as well. "It was a combination of a comedy song and some political activism," he told Songfacts. "It was a bit wacky, that song, and it caused a lot of people to wonder. But it was just a really weird song, and we finished it, and decided to record it."
  
  Dando and his buddy Kurt Cobain shared the view that gay bashing was absurd. Cobain made a statement of sorts when he put these lines into the Nirvana track "All Apologies":
  
  What else could I say
  Everyone is gay
• On the album, the song was listed as "Big Gay Heart (Against Violence)," the subtitle making the intention clear.
• A session musician named "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow played the pedal steel guitar on this track. He was a top hired gun on the instrument, appearing on tracks by George Harrison, Linda Ronstadt, Little Feat and many others.
• Evan Dando told Uncut magazine the story behind this song.
  
  "I understand how people get freaked out because it's one of these half jokes that turns into a crusade to end discrimination against gay people. But it all started because we were living in a house which was rented from a rich steward. We put all the homoerotic art in the closets and stuff – it was really graphic – and we're like, 'Okay, this is called the big gay house.'"
  
  Dando called Tom Morgan, who he was writing with all the time back then, and it ended up being written in Perth, Australia. "We were having fun with the idea, but then it ended up being kind to serious (we figured) it will confuse people and it will cut back on the teenage girls, which is good – I needed to cut back anyway," he said. "So that's what we were doing with that, being a bit in your face weird and trying to free the word 'gay' from homosexuality, and also saying gimme a big thumbs down to violence against gay people."