Desmond Tutu Quotes

Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.

God knows, as a minority, gay people have taken serious lumps for their sexual preferences. As has every minority.

People are killed because they're gay. I don't think, "What do I want to do today? I want to speak up on gay rights." No. It's God catching me by my neck. I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can't!

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.

They always try to make it like jocks discriminate against gay people. I've been a big proponent of gay marriage for a long time, because as a black person, I can't be in for any form of discrimination at all.

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs. ... The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in work, in action and in law.

Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.

Gay people don't have a personality problem. They have a problem with small-minded motherfuckers who can't conquer a 1-inch high curb.

What's great about it is that you see, the great struggle for gay people is that the politics is just not going to work for us.

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.

When the message out there is so horrible that, to be gay, you can get killed for it... we need to change the message!!

Homophobia is very, very difficult to root out, to extricate. That's why we have to bear witness. That's why we have to be so public about it, and that's why we can't just play footsie with it.

It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too

It's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights...

Discrimination is discrimination no matter who the victim is, and it is always wrong. There are no special rights in America, despite the attempts by many to divide blacks and the gay community with the argument that the latter are seeking some imaginary special rights at the expense of blacks.

We [Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppresed people in the society.

Gay and lesbian people, and the children they are raising, wrongfully face discrimination, and I want them to know that I'm on their side.

I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights.

We live in a country where people still get beaten to death because of their sexual orientation.

It became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.

No one should be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

It should never be a crime to be gay.

We have so much discrimination in this world - colour, race, creed, all of these things - and there is an issue here that the right of marriage in the civil law is not extended to same-sex couples.

Being a homosexual is not at all a crime.