“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