Lgbt Rights Activists

"Shame...is a first rate form of social control. Shame is what keeps us in line, what prevents us from discovering not so much who we are, but what we might become."

"LGBT people are simply Americans-no less and no more. The idea of America has existed, in some form, for five hundred years. LGBT people, despite enormous struggles to be accepted and to be given equality, have made America what it is today-that great, fascinating, complicated, sometimes horrible, sometimes wonderful place that it was in the beginning."

"in many ways my personal life (which I wrote about a lot) was really a public life. This may not be the case for many, even most people, but for me my private and public life became one. People can say what they thought – and did – but what I was doing, felt perfectly natural to me."

"many LGBTQ people did create art (writing, painting etc) that was recognized if their sexual identity was not well known. And sometimes even if they were more open, they were recognized because they were seen as exotic, or ‘different,’ or unusual (outside the norm) but not threatening. There are ways that some types of people can get around the strictures of the power structures. It is very easy to say that all minority groups are oppressed by the dominant power structure – but the reality is that groups are oppressed in different ways. Often one of the ways that they are oppressed is that the dominant culture lets one or two members of that group become noted: “She is a great woman artist” or “He is a very talented black actor.” And by singling out individuals, it makes them stand apart from their group and therefore retains the stigma for the entire group"

"There are many times that these representations – novels, songs, films, graphic novels, tv shows – make us laugh or cry because we recognize parts of ourselves in them. That’s great. But we shouldn’t think that these representations actually represent us. Rather can’t. We are all much too complicated to be represented in this way. But nevertheless the longing to see our lives represented is powerful – and we need it. It is great to feel connected to a community because of popular culture – we just have to realise that almost any artefact of popular culture that – by its nature becomes popular – is never the whole truth of people’s lives. It is a consumer item – and that’s fine.; just don’t compare it to the authenticity of human experience, to understand the uniqueness of an individual life."

"Books that get banned – historically and now in many, many states in the U.S. – are banned not because they are immoral (under accepted and promoted religious ideologies) but because they challenge a current orthodoxy. Often this orthodoxy is about sexuality, gender and sometimes race. But this is only part of what causes this – for the most part what we call “art” (good or bad art) is a product of the imagination. The nature of the imagination is to, well “imagine” – to think outside of the frames of the real, the material world, what is possible, what is considered acceptable. So this is the reason why “art” gets challenged most often by censorship --- it is, or can be, by its nature, a challenge to the status quo to what we are expected to accept as “normal"."

"Humans are taught to think in dualities – left/ right, good/ evil, sacred/ profane, sin/ grace, clean/ dirty – the American Dream necessitates the creation of an American Nightmare. Who gets to be in the Dream v/s who is forced into the Nightmare is dependent on many factors: race, gender, class, income, physique, standards of beauty, sexual identity. In the past 40 years some queer people -- those who fit into standards of certain acceptability – were allowed into the Dream; but not all. Many LGBTQ people (those who were in the Dream) saw this as progress. But it is not progress until there is no more divide between the Dream and the Nightmare. There is an old Gay Liberation slogan which is “we don’t want a piece of the pie – the pie is poisoned.” So is the dichotomy between this Dream and the Nightmare."

"I have no “vision” as a professor. I think the best I can do is give my students interesting, provocative material they cannot find on their own and make them think – think deeply – about it. In many ways I learn more from my students than I think they learn from me. Education has to be a two-way street of knowledge and information and thoughts should be freely flowing, both ways. Of course I know more “facts and “statistics” etc. than my students but I do not necessarily know better what they mean or how to think about them in complicated ways. An “educated society” is a society that just spends more time thinking and trying to understand itself: its impulses, its desires, its fears, and its dreams. That is what I hope happens in my classroom!"

"Since the 1960s, there have been movements to include those people who have been "left out" of American history. So we see Women's History, African-American history, Latino history, Native American history. And certainly when we think about Gay and Lesbian or GLBT history, that's the same impulse--to bring Gay and Lesbian people back into American history. When I began writing the book, it struck me that the more research I did, that while this project was well-intentioned, it was rather unnecessary. That in fact gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people, African-American people, Latino people, women have always been in American history. So the very process of separating people out in order to put them back in seemed to me to be shortsighted. So the purpose of the book as I began writing it became clearer and clearer--it was simply to identify and find the LGBT people that are in American history already. The more I did this, what I discovered was that there were so many people, so many events, people's lives, people's personalities were so intertwined with what we think of as American history that there was no separation at all."

"I think that when we look at the larger picture, the queerness, the sexuality, the really complicated sexual relationships, are integral to these people's desire to change the world and make it better."

"Whatever sexuality means today and did not mean before, the word, like others before it, has always attempted to describe something we know is not reducible to a word, an identity, or even a set of behaviors."

"language is both an entryway and a dead end."

"I love my country, and that means a lot to me."

"My desire is to take long deserved rest and spend time with my family."

"I understand my introverted nature makes it uncomfortable for people to reach out to me but I am pretty much an open person when it comes to issues I am passionate about."

"I was ready. I wanted to take time to do the important work on myself before making a public confession."

"I, sure, have an awareness that could help folks out there."

"If your belief system disagrees with my humanity then we can’t be friends. How can I expect you to love someone you don’t see as a human being?"

"Feminism to me, is an ideology of love."

"I spend a lot of time dreaming of and trying to imagine a feminist future. My utopia has happy woman."

"Don’t be intimidated by all those fellows."

"My feminism is rooted in love for Woman and love for myself. Love for humanity as well because feminism for me is directed not just at the ending of sexist oppression, but at ending all oppression including homophobic, transphobic, racist, capitalist oppression, etc."

"Society has for long dictated what platforms are right for women to express their views on specific issues. This belief is slowly changing as a result of an increasingly boarder blurred global community."

"I've been spat at; (my wife and I) have had people harass us in public; we've had stones thrown at our roof at night. There have been many things over the years,""

"I had a newspaper out me. I've had to fight the Methodist church on the radio and on TV, which was really hard to do as I'm a very private person,""

"Eighty-four percent of LBT women and gender non-conforming people (who do not typically behave in traditional male or female roles) have reported intimate partner violence,""

"We are women who are also experiencing poverty, but also want to talk about bullying in schools or the experience of ecological development in the Pacific."

"There are many different things we care about as human beings," said Nabulivou, a self-confessed workaholic who says she has drawn fresh inspiration from her young daughter. "I want a world for her that is amazing, in which she can be liberated and free."

"We have the capacity, we don’t lack anything, the economy is growing so we shall be able to sustain ourselves."

"If I am given a chance to show my work, I don’t want things to disappear on the floor."

"You’re always running, trying to be safe."

"If you are young and living with your parents, you need to consider that they might kick you out."

"You are not privileged and living in a safe area, you can get mugged or you can lose your life."

"There is a lot of mug justice in the streets. You can walk down the road and be harassed as a gay person."

"“Are these people here for me?”"

"“I don’t appreciate how certain members of society have continued to address me as a ‘he’ instead of a ‘she’. I gave my time to some people, opening myself up and sharing intimate details of my life but my experiences are being sensationalized. As of now, I will choose when and how to engage the public,”"

"“Thank you for coming…”"

"[There is] a familiar pattern in minority identity politics in US history: it is often the most privileged elements of a population affected by a particular civil injustice or social oppression who have the opportunity to organize first. In organizing around the one thing that interferes with or complicates their privilege, their organizations tend to reproduce that very privilege."

""There's no courage", The Prophet said, "before the war has begun." Drunkards vaunt their bravery when you speak of war. But in the blaze of battle they scatter like mice. I'm astonished by the man who wants purity And yet trembles when the harshness of polishing begin... When a man beats a carpet again and again It's not the carpet he's attacking, but the dirt in it."

"The branch might seem like the fruit's origin: In fact, the branch exist because of the fruit."

"The Hindu tradition provides exquisite, firm guidance toward this attunement because it has always recognized that different temperaments take different paths into the Sacred Marriage. It has not only recognized the validity of other religions, but has also acknowledged within itself a variety of paths...Perhaps the supreme gift of Hinduism to the world is that its Tantric traditions have kept the truth of the splendor, majesty and power of the Bride vibrant and alive in all her unbridled fullness. Worshipping Her as Devi, Ambika, Durga, Lakshmi or Kali, the Hindu Tantric mystics have known how to adore Her both as Queen of Transcendence and Earth Mother, and love Her both in Her terrifying, life-devouring aspects and as infinitely benign and tender."

"I told myself to be true to me, even if I have just one day left to live. Life is so precious to live in deceit. Coming out was a way to exonerate myself and be and live free."

"I belief, we as Africans, can begin to live change once we have access to information that is vital for our well being."

"It still officially describes both gay people and homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered”."

"I am not too surprised about myself – some will say I have an audacity of courage."

"I believe I was born this way. If there could be any influence from the environment or society, they it will do well to surpress me instead."

"I come from a country where we are so limited simply by the things we don’t know. And there is so much out there that we are not aware off and which exist for free."

"it is sad to see opposition to homosexuality continuing despite the headlines carrying the rheorical question, “who am I to judge?”"

"Today, I have earned the respect of many and have been very conspicous in the general public for the various things I do represent."

"It started as a passion for knowledge and then of becoming an information dessiminator."