Gilbert Baker Quotes

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

But the fact that same-sex marriage is still an issue is insane. Thinking love knows a sex is ridiculous.

I've always felt I've related to women deeply because of being gay and feeling like there was always somebody trying to oppress me, to keep me down, to put me in my place.

Here in America, just as we see such incredible progress happening in one state, we see another state passing absolutely disgusting and oppressive laws against the rights of all sorts of people - transgender people, gay people, women.

Imagine living in a state where businesses can legally refuse to serve people based on their sexual orientation. Where parents can force their children to undergo conversion therapy to 'cure' them of their 'homosexual tendencies.'

As a gay person, my life has been marginalized.

All my life, the naysayers have told me that I can't win because I'm a progressive... because I'm a woman... even because I'm a lesbian.

I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.

It should never be a crime to be gay.

I've always felt very strongly about human rights for blacks, women, and gays. Our Constitution is about equality for all - that's got to mean something to all of us.

Everybody knows what my sexual orientation is. I don't need to scream it out. I won't, only because I live in a country where I could possibly be jailed for saying this.

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.

In many countries, same-sex relationships are illegal. Young people are forced to hide and deny their love and their identity. LGBTQI people are persecuted, harassed and even imprisoned. For me, this is totally inconceivable.

We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are - whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary (Clinton) mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.

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

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!

You have to understand what caused genocide to happen. Or it will happen again.

If two people of the same sex fall in love and want to marry, why would our government stand in their way?

I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.

You can't help but feel all the human-rights issues.

Like a majority of Americans in recent years, I came to understand that fear of homosexuality was leading our governments - including the one I ran as Governor of Mississippi - to deny the equal rights to an entire segment of our population that are afforded all of us under the Constitution.

The rights of some must not be enjoyed by denying the rights of others. Neither can we permit states' rights at the expense of human rights.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

If you're gay and you can't hold hands, or you're black and you can't catch a taxi, or you're a woman and you can't go into the park, you are aware there's a menace. That's costly on a psychic level. The world should be striving to make all its members secure.

All I did was ask for rights. I didn't attack anyone. I didn't harass anyone. I didn't oppose the system or the country or the authority. All I said is, 'Why can't I drive?'