A man was walking on the beach and he noticed a boy throwing starfish back into the ocean. The man asked, why? The boy said the 'tide is out and the starfish will die.' The man said 'you can’t save all of the starfish there are miles and miles of beach.' The boy picked up a starfish and threw it into the ocean and said ‘ I made a difference for that one.’
~ Loren Eiseley 1978 Star Thrower
Monday, December 14, 2009
"Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life." - Malcolm X
"Some kids go to the library ... Others to the street. But they can't go to the libraries if the libraries are closed." - Officer Dombranski, NYPD
"Kids are living stories every day that we wouldn't let them read." -Josh Westbrook
"The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don’t have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result." - Louis Sachar
"Our schools are filled with kids who have been treated badly all their lives. They don't tell anyone, because there is shame in being treated badly. Many-girls and boys-have been sexually mistreated. Still others struggle in fear with sexual identity. They respond with eating disorders, cutting, suicidal thought or action. I can't tell you how many letters I've received from kids who found a friend in one of my books, a character who speaks to them. And if I get those letters, think of the letters Walter Dean Myers, or Lois Lowry, or Judy Blume get, thanking us for letting them know, through literature, that they are not alone. In light of all that, there's really only one thing to say to the censors. Shut up."-Chris Crutcher
"Some kids go to the library ... Others to the street. But they can't go to the libraries if the libraries are closed." - Officer Dombranski, NYPD
"Kids are living stories every day that we wouldn't let them read." -Josh Westbrook
"The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don’t have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result." - Louis Sachar
"Our schools are filled with kids who have been treated badly all their lives. They don't tell anyone, because there is shame in being treated badly. Many-girls and boys-have been sexually mistreated. Still others struggle in fear with sexual identity. They respond with eating disorders, cutting, suicidal thought or action. I can't tell you how many letters I've received from kids who found a friend in one of my books, a character who speaks to them. And if I get those letters, think of the letters Walter Dean Myers, or Lois Lowry, or Judy Blume get, thanking us for letting them know, through literature, that they are not alone. In light of all that, there's really only one thing to say to the censors. Shut up."-Chris Crutcher
Monday, May 11, 2009
“It is undeniable that the experience of African Americans differs in many important ways from that of gay men and lesbians; among other things, the legacy of slavery and segregation is profound. But differences in historical experiences should not preclude the application of constitutional provisions to gay men and lesbians who are denied the fight to marry the person of their choice.”
-- NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., in commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia in the June 12, 1967 historic Supreme Court decision that advanced racial and marriage equality in the U.S.
“I want American history taught. Unless I'm in that book, you're not in it either. History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.”
-- James Baldwin
It is not who you attend school with, but who controls the school you attend.
-- Nikki Giovanni
“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”
-- Helen Keller
"To discriminate against our sisters and brothers who are lesbian or gay on grounds of their sexual orientation for me is as totally unacceptable and unjust as Apartheid ever was."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."
-- human rights advocate, Dr. Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 - Jan. 30, 2006)
“I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
-- human rights advocate, Dr. Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 - Jan. 30, 2006)
"We don’t believe they have the right to marry. In fact, we don’t think they have the right to exist."
-- Douglas Sadler, member of the Ku Klux Klan, in protesting attempts to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa
"The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.”
-- Andrew Sullivan
"When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him."
-- openly gay, Quaker, African-American civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin
"What have you done today to make yourself Proud?"
-- Proud by Heather Small
"Resisting being called 'defective' and 'broken' is not intolerant; it is standing up for one's rights as a citizen and one's value as a human being. Asking to not be hit is not intolerant; asking not to be called 'fag' is not intolerant, asking for the same rights that hetero folks enjoy is not intolerant. I will never accept that being 'tolerant' means allowing myself to be regarded as inferior. I don't care if bigots get hurt feelings because I fend off the hand that hits me."
-- "gobear," posted on the Internet
"Never do anything you are ashamed of. If you're ashamed that means somewhere inside you think it's wrong; and if you think it's wrong, you shouldn't be doing it."
-- Harvey Fierstein
“I burned out on AIDS and did no AIDS work for a couple of years. I was so angry that people were still getting this disease that nobody can give you - you have to go out and get it!”
-- Harvey Fierstein
"I pay your taxes. I take care of your loved ones when they are sick. I am the best I can be. I am tired of being debated."
-- Kevin Hook, a registered nurse in Indianapolis, responding to a recent City Council vote that killed a bill that would have extended equal rights to gay people
"Freedom means freedom for everyone. ... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."
-- Dick Cheney
“First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"Standing up for yourself can have consequences, but not standing up for yourself can, too."
-- Chris Crain, executive editor of the Washington Blade, in a blog entry about being attacked recently in Amsterdam
“There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision. When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you.”
-- Copyright © 2000 Stacey Charter
“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”
-- Cesar Chavez
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.”
-- Jane Austen
“Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself.”
--Football Coach, Paul Bryant
“You can't give people pride, but you can provide the kind of understanding that makes people look to their inner strengths and find their own sense of pride.”
-- American Nun, Charleszetta Waddles
"It shouldn't be a big deal to anybody. I know I've played with gay players and against gay players and it just shouldn't surprise anybody or be any issue."
-- Charles Barkley, retired NBA player, on ex-player John Amaechi's coming out, as quoted in the Washington Post
-- NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., in commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia in the June 12, 1967 historic Supreme Court decision that advanced racial and marriage equality in the U.S.
“I want American history taught. Unless I'm in that book, you're not in it either. History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.”
-- James Baldwin
It is not who you attend school with, but who controls the school you attend.
-- Nikki Giovanni
“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”
-- Helen Keller
"To discriminate against our sisters and brothers who are lesbian or gay on grounds of their sexual orientation for me is as totally unacceptable and unjust as Apartheid ever was."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."
-- human rights advocate, Dr. Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 - Jan. 30, 2006)
“I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
-- human rights advocate, Dr. Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 - Jan. 30, 2006)
"We don’t believe they have the right to marry. In fact, we don’t think they have the right to exist."
-- Douglas Sadler, member of the Ku Klux Klan, in protesting attempts to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa
"The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.”
-- Andrew Sullivan
"When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him."
-- openly gay, Quaker, African-American civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin
"What have you done today to make yourself Proud?"
-- Proud by Heather Small
"Resisting being called 'defective' and 'broken' is not intolerant; it is standing up for one's rights as a citizen and one's value as a human being. Asking to not be hit is not intolerant; asking not to be called 'fag' is not intolerant, asking for the same rights that hetero folks enjoy is not intolerant. I will never accept that being 'tolerant' means allowing myself to be regarded as inferior. I don't care if bigots get hurt feelings because I fend off the hand that hits me."
-- "gobear," posted on the Internet
"Never do anything you are ashamed of. If you're ashamed that means somewhere inside you think it's wrong; and if you think it's wrong, you shouldn't be doing it."
-- Harvey Fierstein
“I burned out on AIDS and did no AIDS work for a couple of years. I was so angry that people were still getting this disease that nobody can give you - you have to go out and get it!”
-- Harvey Fierstein
"I pay your taxes. I take care of your loved ones when they are sick. I am the best I can be. I am tired of being debated."
-- Kevin Hook, a registered nurse in Indianapolis, responding to a recent City Council vote that killed a bill that would have extended equal rights to gay people
"Freedom means freedom for everyone. ... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."
-- Dick Cheney
“First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"Standing up for yourself can have consequences, but not standing up for yourself can, too."
-- Chris Crain, executive editor of the Washington Blade, in a blog entry about being attacked recently in Amsterdam
“There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision. When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you.”
-- Copyright © 2000 Stacey Charter
“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”
-- Cesar Chavez
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.”
-- Jane Austen
“Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself.”
--Football Coach, Paul Bryant
“You can't give people pride, but you can provide the kind of understanding that makes people look to their inner strengths and find their own sense of pride.”
-- American Nun, Charleszetta Waddles
"It shouldn't be a big deal to anybody. I know I've played with gay players and against gay players and it just shouldn't surprise anybody or be any issue."
-- Charles Barkley, retired NBA player, on ex-player John Amaechi's coming out, as quoted in the Washington Post
Friday, March 13, 2009
"Silence kills the soul, it diminishes its possibility to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing."
-- Marlon Riggs
"Always admit when you're wrong. You'll save thousands in therapy later -- and a few friendships too." -- Harvey Fierstein
"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."
-- Jane Addams
"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty." -- Georgia O'Keefe
"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress."
-- Marcel Proust
"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."
-- Harvey Fierstein
"If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." -- Audre Lorde
"A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled." -- James Baldwin
“Equality is more than tolerance, compassion, understanding, acceptance, benevolence, for these still come from a place of implied superiority: favors granted to those less fortunate. These attitudes suggest that there is still something wrong, something not quite right that must be overlooked or seen beyond."
-- Suzanne Pharr
"The trouble is that not enough people have come together with the firm determination to live the things which they say they believe."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
"To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin." -- Thomas Edward Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia")
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands." -- Michelangelo Buonarroti
"They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who's getting beaten up at school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn't know how to promote homosexuality. Do I hire Don King?"
-- Barney Frank U.S. Representative
"....Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?"
-- United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best night and day to make you everyone else, means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight, and to never stop fighting."
-- e.e. cummings
"Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge." -- Gordon W. Allport
"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot." -- Horace Greeley
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -- Aldous Huxley
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
-- Joe Ancis
"Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win."
-- Jonathan Kozol
"Wanting to be someone you're not is a waste of the person you are."
-- Kurt Cobain
“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
“Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.”
-- Martin Fraquhar Tupper
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
-- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.”
-- Seneca
"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech."-- Susan Sontag
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ---Winston Churchill
-- Marlon Riggs
"Always admit when you're wrong. You'll save thousands in therapy later -- and a few friendships too." -- Harvey Fierstein
"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."
-- Jane Addams
"I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty." -- Georgia O'Keefe
"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress."
-- Marcel Proust
"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."
-- Harvey Fierstein
"If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." -- Audre Lorde
"A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled." -- James Baldwin
“Equality is more than tolerance, compassion, understanding, acceptance, benevolence, for these still come from a place of implied superiority: favors granted to those less fortunate. These attitudes suggest that there is still something wrong, something not quite right that must be overlooked or seen beyond."
-- Suzanne Pharr
"The trouble is that not enough people have come together with the firm determination to live the things which they say they believe."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
"To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin." -- Thomas Edward Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia")
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands." -- Michelangelo Buonarroti
"They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who's getting beaten up at school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn't know how to promote homosexuality. Do I hire Don King?"
-- Barney Frank U.S. Representative
"....Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?"
-- United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best night and day to make you everyone else, means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight, and to never stop fighting."
-- e.e. cummings
"Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge." -- Gordon W. Allport
"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot." -- Horace Greeley
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -- Aldous Huxley
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
-- Joe Ancis
"Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win."
-- Jonathan Kozol
"Wanting to be someone you're not is a waste of the person you are."
-- Kurt Cobain
“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
“Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.”
-- Martin Fraquhar Tupper
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
-- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.”
-- Seneca
"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech."-- Susan Sontag
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ---Winston Churchill
Monday, January 26, 2009
“We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”
-- Barack Hussein Obama, January 20, 2009
"Cowardice asks, is it safe? Expediency asks, is it politic? Vanity asks, is it popular? But conscience asks, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him, it is right."
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail - 1963
"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
"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people. 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 spreads all too easily to victimize the next minority group. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the civil rights movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."
- Coretta Scott King, in 1999 at the 25th Anniversary luncheon for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund
"Homophobia is hate, and hate has no place in the beloved community." ~ Martin Luther King III, in August 2003 at the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington
"Some say let's choose another route and give Gay folks some legal rights but call it something other than marriage. We have been down that road before in this country. Separate is not equal. The rights to liberty and happiness belong to each of us and on the same terms, without regard to either skin color or sexual orientation."
-- U.S. Congressman John Lewis, D-Georgia, who was a close associate of Martin Luther King
"Something is happening to the very soul of America. It's more than same-sex marriage. It's more than whether you're gay or straight, black or white. It's about where we are going as a nation. I say this from my heart and gut, as someone who was beaten and arrested on the freedom rides. We've got some real fights ahead of us. But America is ready. So stand up tall and straight. Hold your head high. And do the work. Because we're not gonna go away."
-- U.S. Congressman John Lewis, D-Georgia
"When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him."
-- Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1964 March on Washington at which Dr. King made his “I Have a Dream” speech, in the book Strategies for Freedom, p. 42
"People...do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing at a game and that we do it to shock them."
-- author and activist, James Baldwin, who was African-American and gay
"People should not be discriminated against in the exercise of their civil rights, and the right to marry who you want to marry is one of those rights ... Interracial marriage was regarded with much the same hysteria years ago as gay marriage is today."
-- U.S. Ambassador Carol Mosely Braun, who, as far as we know, is heterosexual
"It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success."
-- inventor, scientist and educator, George Washington Carver, who was African-American and gay
"Good parents are good parents - regardless of their sexual orientation. It's clear that the sexual orientation of parents has nothing to do with the sexual orientation of their children."
-- Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who, as far as we know, is heterosexual
"A family doesn't have to be a man, woman and children. A family can be two men or two women and children. A family can be nearly anything you want it to be as long as it is full of genuine love, respect and care."
-- Clarence J. Fluker, who is a staff person at National Youth Advocacy Coalition, Next Generation Editor for Arise magazine, and sits on the Board of Directors for DC Black Lesbian & Gay Pride, the largest annual Black pride festival in the world.
"Silence kills the soul, it diminishes its possibility to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing."
-- documentary filmmaker, Marlon Riggs, who was an African-American man and who died from complications of AIDS in 1994
"I think that gay rights is a human rights issue like the rights of anyone else. I have said throughout my career, less known this campaign, that unless people are prepared to say that gay and lesbian people are not human -- and I don't know anyone in their right mind that would say that -- then why are they not afforded the same rights as any other human being?"
-- former U.S. presidential candidate, Rev. Al Sharpton
"To discriminate against our sisters and brothers who are lesbian or gay on grounds of their sexual orientation for me is as totally unacceptable and unjust as Apartheid ever was."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from a sermon delivered one year ago this month. Read the text of the sermon at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/37/50/acns3772.cfm"We have inflicted on gay and lesbian people the tremendous pain of having to live a lie or to face brutal rejection if they dared to reveal their true selves. But oppression cuts both ways. Behind our ‘safe’ barriers of self-righteousness, we deprive ourselves of the rich giftedness that lesbian and gay people have to contribute ..."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"For death, or life, or toil,To thee myself I join;I take thy hand in mine,With thee I would grow old."-- From an ancient Chinese male-male wedding ceremony
"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality."
-- James Baldwin
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."-- James Baldwin
"Penguins accept same-sex commitments. Why do some people have so much trouble with the idea?"-- Canadians for Equal Marriage, headline
"Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate."-- comedian and activist, Margaret Cho, weblog, 01-15-04. Cho is Korean-American. She's married to a man but generally, in interviews, avoids labeling her sexual orientation.
"Where there is great love, there are always miracles."-- Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Willa Cather, believed by many historians to have been lesbian and who, at the very least, transgressed gender in various ways (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html; http://mtmt.essortment.com/whowaswillaca_rlui.htm)
"Anyone who thinks that love needs to be cured has not experienced enough of it in their own lives."-- Joan Garry, Executive Director of GLAAD, the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
"Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."-- novelist, poet, essayist, translator and children's author, Ursula K Le Guin who writes from a feminist perspective, often with gender-bending or non-heterosexual characters and who's been married to a man, Charles Le Guin, since 1953
"One Year Of Love Is Better Than A Lifetime Alone."-- Freddie Mercury, born Farok Bulsara in Zanzibar in 1946, openly gay lead singer of the band Queen, who passed away in 1991 from complications of AIDS
"For me [marrying] is about finding that person you call home. Realizing that you're traveling with someone that at times may be behind you, beside you or in front of you. We can be completely fine with that without having to prove anything."
-- Denise Newman, discussing her upcoming wedding to Vallerie Wagner in an interview with journalist MacArthur H. Flourney in Arise magazine
"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love."-- author, Anais Nin, who was bisexual
"It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death."
-- human rights advocate and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Eleanor Roosevelt
"Oh! I want to put my arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me or I wouldn't be wearing it!"
-- Eleanor Roosevelt, in a letter to Lorena Hickok, March 7, 1933
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1. (Some historians believe that Shakespeare wrote love sonnets about men as well as women)
"The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.”
-- Andrew Sullivan
"It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the 'Love that dare not speak its name,' and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it."
-- Oscar Wilde, at his trial
"Who, being loved, is poor?"-- Oscar Wilde
"There is no good reason for denying these [same-sex] couples the rules, the responsibilities, and the respect of marriage. Allowing these families to be stronger is not going to take anything away from anybody else."
-- Evan Wolfson
-- Barack Hussein Obama, January 20, 2009
"Cowardice asks, is it safe? Expediency asks, is it politic? Vanity asks, is it popular? But conscience asks, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him, it is right."
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail - 1963
"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
"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people. 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 spreads all too easily to victimize the next minority group. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the civil rights movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."
- Coretta Scott King, in 1999 at the 25th Anniversary luncheon for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund
"Homophobia is hate, and hate has no place in the beloved community." ~ Martin Luther King III, in August 2003 at the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington
"Some say let's choose another route and give Gay folks some legal rights but call it something other than marriage. We have been down that road before in this country. Separate is not equal. The rights to liberty and happiness belong to each of us and on the same terms, without regard to either skin color or sexual orientation."
-- U.S. Congressman John Lewis, D-Georgia, who was a close associate of Martin Luther King
"Something is happening to the very soul of America. It's more than same-sex marriage. It's more than whether you're gay or straight, black or white. It's about where we are going as a nation. I say this from my heart and gut, as someone who was beaten and arrested on the freedom rides. We've got some real fights ahead of us. But America is ready. So stand up tall and straight. Hold your head high. And do the work. Because we're not gonna go away."
-- U.S. Congressman John Lewis, D-Georgia
"When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him."
-- Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1964 March on Washington at which Dr. King made his “I Have a Dream” speech, in the book Strategies for Freedom, p. 42
"People...do not believe there can be tears between men. They think we are only playing at a game and that we do it to shock them."
-- author and activist, James Baldwin, who was African-American and gay
"People should not be discriminated against in the exercise of their civil rights, and the right to marry who you want to marry is one of those rights ... Interracial marriage was regarded with much the same hysteria years ago as gay marriage is today."
-- U.S. Ambassador Carol Mosely Braun, who, as far as we know, is heterosexual
"It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success."
-- inventor, scientist and educator, George Washington Carver, who was African-American and gay
"Good parents are good parents - regardless of their sexual orientation. It's clear that the sexual orientation of parents has nothing to do with the sexual orientation of their children."
-- Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who, as far as we know, is heterosexual
"A family doesn't have to be a man, woman and children. A family can be two men or two women and children. A family can be nearly anything you want it to be as long as it is full of genuine love, respect and care."
-- Clarence J. Fluker, who is a staff person at National Youth Advocacy Coalition, Next Generation Editor for Arise magazine, and sits on the Board of Directors for DC Black Lesbian & Gay Pride, the largest annual Black pride festival in the world.
"Silence kills the soul, it diminishes its possibility to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing."
-- documentary filmmaker, Marlon Riggs, who was an African-American man and who died from complications of AIDS in 1994
"I think that gay rights is a human rights issue like the rights of anyone else. I have said throughout my career, less known this campaign, that unless people are prepared to say that gay and lesbian people are not human -- and I don't know anyone in their right mind that would say that -- then why are they not afforded the same rights as any other human being?"
-- former U.S. presidential candidate, Rev. Al Sharpton
"To discriminate against our sisters and brothers who are lesbian or gay on grounds of their sexual orientation for me is as totally unacceptable and unjust as Apartheid ever was."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from a sermon delivered one year ago this month. Read the text of the sermon at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/37/50/acns3772.cfm"We have inflicted on gay and lesbian people the tremendous pain of having to live a lie or to face brutal rejection if they dared to reveal their true selves. But oppression cuts both ways. Behind our ‘safe’ barriers of self-righteousness, we deprive ourselves of the rich giftedness that lesbian and gay people have to contribute ..."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"For death, or life, or toil,To thee myself I join;I take thy hand in mine,With thee I would grow old."-- From an ancient Chinese male-male wedding ceremony
"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality."
-- James Baldwin
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."-- James Baldwin
"Penguins accept same-sex commitments. Why do some people have so much trouble with the idea?"-- Canadians for Equal Marriage, headline
"Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate."-- comedian and activist, Margaret Cho, weblog, 01-15-04. Cho is Korean-American. She's married to a man but generally, in interviews, avoids labeling her sexual orientation.
"Where there is great love, there are always miracles."-- Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Willa Cather, believed by many historians to have been lesbian and who, at the very least, transgressed gender in various ways (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4925/Willa.html; http://mtmt.essortment.com/whowaswillaca_rlui.htm)
"Anyone who thinks that love needs to be cured has not experienced enough of it in their own lives."-- Joan Garry, Executive Director of GLAAD, the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
"Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."-- novelist, poet, essayist, translator and children's author, Ursula K Le Guin who writes from a feminist perspective, often with gender-bending or non-heterosexual characters and who's been married to a man, Charles Le Guin, since 1953
"One Year Of Love Is Better Than A Lifetime Alone."-- Freddie Mercury, born Farok Bulsara in Zanzibar in 1946, openly gay lead singer of the band Queen, who passed away in 1991 from complications of AIDS
"For me [marrying] is about finding that person you call home. Realizing that you're traveling with someone that at times may be behind you, beside you or in front of you. We can be completely fine with that without having to prove anything."
-- Denise Newman, discussing her upcoming wedding to Vallerie Wagner in an interview with journalist MacArthur H. Flourney in Arise magazine
"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love."-- author, Anais Nin, who was bisexual
"It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death."
-- human rights advocate and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Eleanor Roosevelt
"Oh! I want to put my arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me or I wouldn't be wearing it!"
-- Eleanor Roosevelt, in a letter to Lorena Hickok, March 7, 1933
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1. (Some historians believe that Shakespeare wrote love sonnets about men as well as women)
"The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.”
-- Andrew Sullivan
"It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the 'Love that dare not speak its name,' and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it."
-- Oscar Wilde, at his trial
"Who, being loved, is poor?"-- Oscar Wilde
"There is no good reason for denying these [same-sex] couples the rules, the responsibilities, and the respect of marriage. Allowing these families to be stronger is not going to take anything away from anybody else."
-- Evan Wolfson
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