Gay Rights Media
Select Multimedia of the LGBT Civil Rights Movement
"You and you and you.. gotta give 'em hope!" ~Harvey Milk

“My feeling about gay people is that we have a responsibility not only to make gay marriage acceptable and to make gays feel accepted as much as heterosexuals…Gay people are downtrodden They are beaten. They are abused for their sexuality, and it goes across race. In the white community and the black community gay people are the bastards of the world. And in order for things to change, because any one of you could have gay children, or gay relatives, or gay friends…we have a responsibility to make this acceptable, to get all this bullshit so that some gay kid going to high school doesn’t get the shit beaten out of him just because he’s gay…I’m as heterosexual as they come. What is this hang-up about gay marriage? Who cares? Get on with your life!”

“I am not seeking your approval for the way I live. Your approval is not terribly important to me. This is not a request for acceptance. We don’t want it, we don’t need it from those people.”

“Where were these leaders of faith when college students of gay and lesbian orientation were beaten and often brutalized for expressing their feelings for each other? … Why didn’t they speak about that at the time when it was the other way around? See what really makes a democracy work is when you speak for others rights even when you disagree with them. I’m saying most of the religious leaders that I hear speaking out now did not do it at the time. Had they done so I think they would have better moral standing to speak at this moment on this legislation even though I disagree with them.”

“Contrary to the wishes of Perkins, we believe that pastors who commit felony violence against gay and lesbian Americans should be punished to the fullest extent possible. But they won’t be punished equally, unless sexual orientation is added to existing federal and state hate-crime laws, because at present most such laws treat violent crimes against a victim’s race or religion more harshly than violent crimes committed on the basis of the victim’s perceived sexual orientation.”

“As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.”