I would say except when I have been attacked the black community has seldom seen fit to even mention the gay aspect. And since when I have been attacked I have usually been defended by the black community,
BAYARD RUSTINLoving 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.
More Bayard Rustin Quotes
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When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. But when you’re right, you’re wrong anyhow.
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Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.
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If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherhood. If we can build such a society, then we would have achieved the ultimate goal of human freedom.
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The organizers and perpetuators of segregation are as much the enemy of America as any foreign invader.
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There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts.
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We are all one – and if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.
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If anyone thinks they’re going to get anything out of the Reagan administration for any particular group, they’re wrong!
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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. . .
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God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.
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You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
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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.
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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.
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Gays are beginning to realize what blacks learned long ago: Unless you are out here fighting for yourself then nobody else will help you. I think the gay community has a moral obligation to continue the fight.
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My activism did not spring from my being gay, or, for that matter, from my being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values that were instilled in me by my grandparents who reared me.
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My activism did not spring from being black…The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family.
BAYARD RUSTIN