To all my friends in Los Angeles: the Sultan of Brunei, owner of the Beverly Hills Hotel, has signed legislation calling for gay people to be stoned to death.
During those days when you're exhausted and during those days when you're frustrated, during those days when you're being attacked by your own people for doing what you think is right, remember you're part of a progression that goes back a long time of ordinary people who are doing their best to make it a better world.
If you tell me I can't understand you because of my color or you can't understand me because of your sexual orientation or she can't understand us because of her faith, well, if you can't have empathy how will you ever have solidarity?
A movement that seeks to advance only its own members is going to accomplish little
Marches work, rallies work, civil disobedience works, direct action works, voting works, writing letters works, speaking to churches and schools works, rioting works.
I believe we are entering into a period of political chaos. Out of that chaos is the potential for great evil, but there is also the possibility of great good.
I don't even want to go to the Pride marches anymore. The politics have been removed almost entirely. They're just huge corporate showcases.
Even today every year we lose an awful lot of young people, teenagers, who take their own lives because they're - they are gay or transgender.
I think that a big part of the energy that was going into fighting AIDS was reduced when we saw that more of the new infections were among our black and brown young people. That's a sad truth to have to claim, but I believe it's true.
If I had to say what my one greatest achievement is, it's that I lasted, and I'm still happy. I hope that comes through.
I don't blame younger generations for their lack of awareness. Americans in general are not interested in history.
This is a terrible time to be young, I think. It's really hard.
The majority of new infections in America are among young gay and bisexual men of color, and the full resources that could be brought to bear simply are not.
There was no way to have a decent life and to be gay. So I was terrified that I was going to be caught, and I had already experienced quite a bit of bullying. And, you know, I just thought that only misery lay ahead, and that if I - when I got caught that would be the solution. I wish I could say that was a thing of the past. But, you know, it's not.
I am not proud to be gay any more than I am proud to be right handed or to breathe oxygen.
I am tired of fighting state by state, county by county, city by city, for fractions of equality. I am tired of compromises and I am tired of the strategy that divides us from each other. It is time for us to unite across state boundaries in a truly nationwide movement to win full, actual equality, which can only come from the federal government. That's not my opinion. That's a fact.
I think support of the straight community is very important and I think there has been a profound shift in public opinion seen reflected in many ways. We do not need straight people to speak for us but we do want straight people to stand with us.
People who say that violence doesn't accomplish anything have not read history. I don't celebrate that reality, but there you have it.
When you lose the gayborhoods, you lose the political power that comes when you're concentrated in precincts, and you also lose the cultural vitality.
Hello! The world is a mess!
I go back to the parallels with 1963, 1964 when white America really became aware of the brutality of segregation, the cruelty of the apartheid system which existed in the south. Then white people began to get on the freedom buses and travel to the south and be part of the voter registration drives and they... some of them were beaten and some of them were murdered but they stood with the African-American community and the civil rights movement. It's time for straight people to do that today and it is time for gay people to insist that they do that today.
A whole lot of the way identity politics has gone seems to me to deny empathy.
People's lives can be transformed by the movement.
If we [gays] want to be equal under the law, we must now - as the great heroes of the Civil Rights movement of 1963 and 1964 showed us - turn our attention to the federal government.
The reality is that the "gayborhoods" are going away. It's because of many factors, including the internet and increased acceptance, but mostly it's the cost of housing.
