"I have tasted freedom. I will not give up that which I have tasted. I have a lot more to drink."
~Harvey Milk
"The job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That’s our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment."
~Bayard Rustin
"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group. || We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say “common struggle” because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination."
~Coretta Scott King
"When someone asks me, “are gay rights civil rights?” my answer is always, “Of course, they are.” Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives: the right to equal treatment before the law. These are the rights shared by everyone. There is no one in the United States who does not, or should not, enjoy or share in enjoying these rights. Gay and lesbian rights are not special rights in any way. It isn’t “special” to be free from discrimination. It is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship."
~Julian Bond
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to.. fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."
~Judge Robert H. Jackson
"What would you do? …if you were thrown out of your house as a kid? …if you were beaten up in school and your teachers did nothing? …if you were fired from your job? …if you were banned from serving in our military? …if a landlord refused to rent to you? …if a doctor refused to treat you? …if you could not marry the person you love? …if your kids were taken away from you? …if the government denied 1,100 benefits to you and your spouse, but not to other couples? …if the government deported your spouse? …if the hospital prevented you from saying good-bye as your partner lay dying alone? Welcome To Our Lives. We are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans."
~The Dallas Principles
"As gay people are becoming more recognized as a demographic, a unique people with an innate and immutable attribute known as sexual orientation, the more that discrimination seems to be unAmerican and unChristian. And those who espouse it do, indeed, begin to be seen as cruel, discriminatory, hateful bigots unwilling to extend the rights they want for themselves to others who are not like them."
~Timothy Kincaid
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men."
~Matthew 6:5
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