Bayard Rustin Quotes

If people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious. And that is the chief reason that every person who is gay should join some gay organization. Because he must prove to the world that he cares about his own freedom.

You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people. Therefore join the movement as individuals against anti-Semitism, join the movements for the rights of Hispanics, the rights of women, the rights of gays. In other words, I think that each movement has to stand on its own feet because it has a particular agenda, but it can ask other people.

You have to take your hat off to the homosexual and gay community cause right now they're as strong as black people USE to be when it comes to their rights.

It's not my victory, it's yours and yours and yours. If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We've given them hope.

Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign are standing up and fighting the important fights that have to be fought.

To me gay rights is the last civil right that we have not granted in America and I think it's an enormous embarrassment.

I've spent fifteen years of my life fighting for our right to be free and make love whenever, wherever... And you're telling me that all those years of what being gay stood for is wrong... and I'm a murderer. We have been so oppressed! Don't you remember how it was? Can't you see how important it is for us to love openly, without hiding and without guilt?

Yeah, I know I should be fighting for gay rights, but who wants to join the army or get married anyway?

The gay rights activists who yell 'bigot' at those who disagree with them are the Imams of America's cultural ghetto.

I think it's ridiculous that we even have to talk about gay rights as rights...It's gonna be as shocking as the treatment of slaves someday.

There are a lot of people that form movements around particular commitments, like gay rights. It is important, but it does not link easily to, say, economic rights, and it often looks like it's opposed to them. The attempt to bring these together has yet to be done in a truly effective way, and I think it can be.

Gays have become colossal bores. Once interesting and iconoclastic, all they seem to crave nowadays is the State's pension and seal of approval. They ought to go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police's violations of privacy and private property were the object of their anger and activism.

We have the history of slavery or inequality to women, and now the civil rights movement of the 21st century is the struggle for equality for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. And I think it's important for Americans to know about the times that we failed.

I suppose that the first organized effort that might be considered something of civil rights was the Young Negroes' Cooperative League. Now, this offers certain contradictions at this point, perhaps, because it was stimulated by the writings of George Schayler who, at this point, is considered an arch-conservative, I understand.

For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. 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.

In terms of the revolution, I believe that the revolution will be a revolution of dispossessed people in this country: that's the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican American, the American Indian, and black people.

Evan Wolfson is a dear friend of mine. Almost more than any other, Evan is responsible for bringing the issue of marriage equality to the forefront of our struggle for civil rights. He is a courageous pioneer who has been relentless in this battle for marriage equality.

Abolition didn't just happen - people made it happen. Women's suffrage didn't just happen - people made it happen. Civil Rights legislation didn't just happen - people made it happen. And marriage equality didn't just happen, either - people made it happen.

The essence of Ferguson is the spirit of the people, and I'm so happy to see the spirit because I haven't seen it like that since the Civil Rights Movement.

I think if transvestites don't stand up for themselves, nobody else is going to stand up for transvestites.

My friend Patsy Mink was a champion for social and economic justice, equality and civil rights for women and marginalized communities. She was a trailblazer who never backed down from a challenge and whose work in Hawaii and Congress brought positive change to the lives of women, children, and minorities in Hawaii and across the country.

We have to fight for what's right the same way the brothers and sisters that came before us did. The ultimate example, and there are many others, was The Stonewall Inn. They were pushed until they could take no more.

I don't get this shitty attitude that only gays should care about gay issues and only women should care about women's issues.

I am a gay activist and I say that proudly. I voted no on Prop 8.

Yet and still, Peter Norman took into account that the aboriginals were suffering just as much in Australia as Blacks in the United States were suffering.