Bayard Rustin Quotes

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.

Nobody's free until everybody's free.

In the women's movement, women needed men to stand up and say, 'This isn't right.' In the civil rights of the '60s, it took people of all color to demand equal rights.

Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted.

I don't believe that the fight for trans rights or African American rights is different from the fight against war, or the fight for refugees.

Where was the libertarian right during the great struggles for individual liberty in America in the last half-century? The libertarian movement has been conspicuously absent from the campaigns for civil rights for nonwhites, women, gays and lesbians.

Like being a woman, like being a racial religious tribal or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.

A lot of people criticized me for speaking out, not long ago, about gay marriage. I could not remain silent any longer. It's the civil rights of our day. It's the issue of our day.

Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians.

We don't have rights until we claim them.

Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera, is not a liberal or a conservative value. It's an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on.

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.

I have defended democracy, human rights, and brotherhood between peoples. And I'll keep doing so for as long as I live.

[Button] If Gay and Lesbian people are given civil rights, soon everyone will want them

Freedom must be demanded and defended, by those who have been denied it and by those who are already free.

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.

Freedom is a struggle, and we do it together. Not only together as black citizens, but black and white together.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in issues of social justice, political freedom, and civil rights.

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

If you are for freedom and equal rights, which we hear a lot of talk about these days, then you have to include the LGBTQ community in that. And if you're not willing to put your time where your mouth is, then I don't know quite what you mean by commitment in your life.

As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.

I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality and fraternity.

You got to fight for quality art and equality and all the things that we're fighting for, the things we believe in. Choice and preference and all those things that we support. We don't want to give up that fight. You got to keep doing it.

Minority rights have to be protected. That is America’s great contribution to the world.