Quotes

"Most times, the only gay or lesbian face people know of is who they see in the pride parade. To judge us on that would be like judging heterosexuals after watching Mardi Gras."
-- Lesbian Civil Rights Activist, Candace Gingrich (who is European-American)

"...without equality there can be no democracy."
-- Human rights activist and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and first lady and lifelong romantic partner of Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok) Eleanor Roosevelt

"I was writing and keeping a big log of daily harassment reports. Every day, I was going into the principal's office and writing down what happened--this person spit food on me, this person pushed a lunch cart into my side, this person pushed me into a locker, these people drew pictures of stick figures bending over and engaging in anal sex with each other. At least once a day, I was in the principal's office, writing a harassment report. And they did nothing about any of them. It gave the students permission to openly harass me, knowing that there wasn't going to be consequences for it. And each time, it got worse and worse and more intense."
-- Derek Henkle, who won nearly half a million dollars from his school district for failing to protect him from anti-gay abuse

"During that punk period, around 1979, wearing swastikas was very popular with punks. Because I was Jewish, it really disturbed me so I wrote this song 'Take Off Your Swastika,' and I performed it on acoustic guitar so the audience could hear the words. When I got heckled at some of the harder core shows, I would just throw it back at them. I've always really respected the audience. That young slam dancing crowd might be a wild crowd but it was very intelligent. So it was exciting. It was always thrilling for me to go out there alone."
-- Punk and folk artist, Phranc (who is Jewish, a lesbian, and a gender outlaw)

"The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden -- as an unpatriotic act -- that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood."
-- James Baldwin

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
- James Baldwin

"Every child's sense of himself is terrifyingly fragile. He is at the mercy of his elders, and when he finds himself totally at the mercy of his peers, who know as little about themselves as he, it is because his elders have abandoned him. I am talking, then, about morale, that sense of self with which the child must be invested. No child can do it alone. Children, I submit, cannot be fooled. They can only be betrayed by adults."
- James Baldwin, Dark Days

"Change your mind as often as possible. Just because you thought something yesterday doesn't mean you have to think it today. Don't ever become a prisoner of your own opinion."
-- author, actor Harvey Fierstein (who is Jewish, a gay man, and a gender outlaw)

"To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."
-- Leonard Bernstein

"Cultivate the positive and beautiful thing within yourself. It's individuality that's going to keep the world interesting,"
-- Me'Shell NdegéOcello