Lgbt People

"Matthew Shepard should be a symbol. But it misses the point if it ends only with legislation. It misses the point if it’s about mere tolerance."

"I met Jeff when I was coming into the LGBT equality movement as a young activist. I was impressed with his passion and dedication. He introduced me to so many folks who I continue to work with and call friends. Jeff will be missed. The movement lost a champion who helped lay the foundation on which many of our achievements are now built."

"Matt’s murder is a parable for our times. It tells of what happens to the conscience of the country when it fails to be free for all and accord every person dignity. How we consume and destroy our children…our future."

"Is it any wonder that those who attack us feel they have a license to do so? A license to kill? Police won't investigate. Juries won't convict. The public still thinks our lives are a political issue, defined by the mythic "Gay Agenda.""

"We want to be able to move freely and safely in our daily lives, free from the threat of random hate violence.themselves by turning the Constitution on its head and claim protection and permission to demonize and denigrate us. Hiding behind the perversion of the concepts of religious freedom and political speech, those people have carved out a special right to impose their bigotry and hatred for us."

"America… You Kill Me! America kills all of us."

"While it is all too true that there is no single monolithic voice or unified agreement about what it means to be GLBT-identified, this “GLBT community” has been able to unite behind some basic consensus of what we need to achieve in order to claim the right of full citizenship."

"I'm so sorry to hear of Jeff's passing. He laid the groundwork in so many ways for the LGBTQ advocacy taking place across Michigan still today. He will be missed by many, though his legacy will live on through those he inspired throughout his life."

"We can not live as disposable people. The broader community, which has firmly established compulsory heterosexuality as the law of the universe, has to get over its problem with us."

"Anti-GLBT sentiment is a primary tool for organizing the far-right and it is stronger then ever as a means to split communities and reinforce constituencies."

"Our call to people of goodwill and justice, and especially to all gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people, and those who support and love us —our allies in the fight for liberty and justice for all— is to take action."

"This guy looks pretty gay to me. I'm willing to believe they didn't intend it to be a gay man, but I don't believe they're shocked someone would draw that conclusion."

"John Ashcroft is not a friend of liberty and justice. George Bush, the appointed president, is not someone who ---prior to a month ago--- ever demonstrated any insight or acuity about the world around him. Have these men been born again, again?"

"And let's not make any mistake, or gloss over that fact: Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are at risk every day of their lives. Not only are we the group most at risk of violence, we are most at risk of job discrimination, losing our families; homophobia retains its title as the last socially acceptable form of bigotry."

"We think this issue needs to matter to anyone who believes in true equal opportunity and justice. If we learned anything from our experience with the Proposal 2 battle, it's that these attempts to allow discrimination in Michigan must be stopped and a united effort by many communities is the only hope to stop them."

"Never repeat the words of your enemy. When you do, their words are heard twice and yours only once."

"I always return the bible to the front desk when I stay in a hotel. I’m not welcome in their house of worship and they’re certainly not welcome in mine."

"“Gay panic” is insidious. It appeals to juries, who are allegedly made up of random members of the community. What defense lawyers know is that most people are repulsed by the idea of gay —especially gay male— sex. Those lawyers know that a claim of defense against an alleged gay sexual advance will win points with the jury of peers."

"In a debate on “gay” marriage, the opponent said “Next thing you’ll be marrying horses!” Jeff responded, “Well, at least I’d be in a stable relationship!”"

"Pat Buchanan is a walking, living, breathing hate crime waiting to happen."

"Buchanan is worse than a child playing with matches because he understands the dangerous impact of what he says."

"He did so much for human rights in Michigan. So sad."

"It's going to be a heartbreaking moment for these couples, to come face to face with this discrimination against them."

"What kind of a society is this where a person can’t express attraction without fearing that they’re going to be murdered for it? If the person who came out with the secret was a Jewish woman or a black woman or an Asian woman, and he went over to her house the next day and killed her because he was so repulsed and she had embarrassed him that way on national television, nobody would be writing stories on the TV show’s responsibility. Everyone would be writing stories about this racist, this anti-Semite."

"When dealing with the press the most important thing to remember is that you have the right to remain silent, because everything you say can and will be used against you."

"GLBT people across this country only want equality and to be left alone, left to pursue our dreams and aspirations and our part of the American promise, which should be our birthright."

"Jeff was a true pioneer who made the world a much better place."

"No other local activist for LGBTQ rights and sexual freedom from the past twenty-five years has had the potent impact on our history as Jeffrey Montgomery."

"Michael Talbot started as a science fiction writer who later integrated many Indian ideas which he had learned via the works of other westerners such as physicist David Bohm, neurophysiologist Karl H. Pribram, and psychologist Stanislav Grof. All three had studied Indian thought for decades and later claimed originality in their 'independent' discovery of the nature of reality. Grof termed this 'holographic'."

"Consider for example the past-life memories of people under hypnosis. Whether these are actual memories of previous lives or not has yet to be proved, but the fact remains, the human inconscious has a natural propensity for generating at least apparent memories of previous incarnations. In general, the orthodox psychiatric community ignores this fact. Why?"

"As he sat alone at his corner table drinking a gin and Dubonnet, Ewing watched the stranger sitting on the barstool and examined his appearance for a while because there was no one else interesting or attractive to watch in Wayne's bar that evening."

"With an effort Ewing turned his gaze away from the far end of the bar. Slowly he spread out his hands on the table and examined them. Then he looked up at Wayne. His left eyelid had begun to quiver slightly like a leaf in a gentle breeze as he put the question, but the expression of his face remained unchanged. "Who's the new customer?" Ewing asked indolently."

"I think it’s more difficult to be vegan than gay. I think people have a harder time accepting it; people feel more uncomfortable with a vegan at their dinner table than they do a lesbian. It’s confronting. It’s kind of suggesting that what someone else is doing is bad or wrong, and it hits them on a more personal level. … If somebody is setting there eating a steak watching you eat polenta, they’re thinking that you’re trying to preach to them or you’re trying to convert them in some way. Whereas with being gay, I don’t think anyone’s concerned that that’s the agenda. “Hey, Mom, you also have to be gay. I’m gay and so should you be!” Certainly when I told her that I was vegan, it forced her to look at her habits."

"I’m vegan. It’s really changed, like, my eyes, my, you know, everything."

"Looking back, I can now see that Hood is part of a small but interesting body of lesbian novels of loss and bereavement (by people like Sarah Schulman, Marion Douglas, Sarah Von Arsdale, Carol Anshaw) written in the 1990s. We were catching up with the boys, perhaps; gay men really took the lead in writing honest and beautiful books about mourning."

"A true friend can be a blood or legal relation. They can be in the same clique or neighborhood or workplace. They can belong to the same racial, cultural, religious, or national group. But a true “friend” asks the right questions about category itself, and thereby transcends it. A true friend has the conversation."

"Feminism, or full and complete personhood for women, is an idea. And each human being has to do the work to explore it, build a relationship to it, and understand what their own changes must be in order to be part of it."

"Politics is a consequence of how a person understands their experience."

"Every person needs to be parented. By this I mean that every person needs to be helped, encouraged, and supported in becoming accountable to themselves and others. To not be threatened by taking other people into account. To not be frightened of difference."

"All human beings deserve to be heard and considered."

"If we are really feminists then we know that the mother is also a person. She has a body, she has a sexuality, she has dreams for her own life. She has things she wants and needs. Up until a certain point, these desires cannot be priorities over protecting and developing her children. But this information has to be integrated into the children’s world views so that they don’t grow up to become adults, especially adult men, who expect and believe that women are in the world to serve them for the remainder of those women’s lives."

"Despite how enriching it may be for a child to learn from their parents, school should be starting them on the journey of learning how to individuate, how to develop their own world, their own habits, responsibilities, and relationships; how to live on their own, support themselves, and help others. They need to have their own secrets, dreams, private experiences, and independence."

"All human beings, by virtue of being born, deserve care, recognition, protection, fairness, and opportunity."

"Growing up with chaos can make it harder to know how to create order as an adult."

"I believe that a truly “good” family is one that is deeply and in fact primarily concerned with the behavior of its members towards other people. That instead of reinforcing indifference, exploitative behavior, arrogance about class, race or gender, blind allegiance to the state, and cruelty towards sexual partners, they systematize methods of accountability. In this way, each family member would grow up with a loving practice of opposition, with the commitment to psychological insight, individuation, and a means of discussion that emphasizes context, objective, and the order of events. Blind adherence would be the definition of “disloyalty,” as it is detrimental to peace and justice. Our model for relationships within groups can be transformed from obedience to biology, biological assumption, or simulacra of biology, emphasizing instead the ethics of each individual’s actions, cumulative consequence, and the necessity of self-criticism. In other words: accountability."

"One of the fallacies in a queer context is the assumption that queer mothers are somehow inherently feminist because they managed to separate themselves from heterosexuality. Being attracted to or even loving a woman has no relationship to treating her, and by extension one’s self, as a person who matters. On one hand, lesbians give each other meaning in private, and yet this requires a transcendence of lifelong messages about women’s lack of worth. Treating another women with decency, care, forgiveness, and flexibility is certainly not an automatic impulse."

"There are options, and even though anxiety may make the reality of choices elusive, they still exist. Recognize the existence of the anxiety, then strive to overcome it in order to perceive other options."

"In the embodiment of the good group, through the therapist, a person can be helped to understand their own motivations, reactions, and choices, to achieve an ongoing desire for awareness."

"“Overindulgence” is a deprivation of constructive attention, a refusal to teach social/life skills, a refusal to teach self-regulation in social situations, a refusal to teach how to distinguish between wants and needs. Desires are indulged at the place where needs are starved. This is the abandonment of the child, and the responsibility to parent, disguised."

"When anxiety is at the wheel, we tragically project, blame, and then separate. We flee reality, which is the fact of conflict as part of life, rather than confront difference and expand our understanding of ourselves."