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You have to all combine and fight a head-on battle – in the name of justice and equality – and even that’s going to be difficult. But if we let ourselves get separated so that we’re working for gays or school children or the aged, we’re in trouble.

Bayard Rustin

Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Character Gay Rights
The moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Firsts Looks Men
To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Afraid Behave Truth
Every indifference to prejudice is suicide because, if I don’t fight all bigotry, bigotry itself will be strengthened and, sooner or later, it will return on me.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Fighting Prejudice Suicide
Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Conflict Law States
Since Israel is a democratic state surrounded by essentially undemocratic states which have sworn her destruction, those interested in democracy everywhere must support Israel’s existence.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Country Democracy Support
If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will, thereby, have the power to turn on me.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Degree Fighting Turn
Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Homosexuality Kings Numbers
The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn
BAYARD RUSTIN

Body Needs Weapon
Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Destroyed Enraged Injustice
I would say that the black newspapers have played it very straight. If I was attacked they simply published that I was attacked.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Attack Newspaper Play Publish Straight
The real radical is that person who has a vision of equality and is willing to do those things that will bring reality closer to that vision. . .
BAYARD RUSTIN

Radical Real Vision
Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it at which point they can become human too.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Human Manifest Situation Social
When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Acknowledge Dignity Society
We are all one – and if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Hard Knows One Way
I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Issues Military War

You have to all combine and fight a head-on battle – in the name of justice and equality – and even that’s going to be difficult. But if we let ourselves get separated so that we’re working for gays or school children or the aged, we’re in trouble.

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You have to all combine and fight a head-on battle – in the name of justice and equality – and even that’s going to be difficult. But if we let ourselves get separated so that we’re working for gays or school children or the aged, we’re in trouble.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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