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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

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.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Movement Rights Strong
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
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
Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Black Gay People
We are all one – and if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Hard Knows One Way
People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Fighting Given People
I believe there are certain types of movements which cannot be married.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Believe Married Movement
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
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.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Brother Goal Men
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
Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Fighting Gay Thinking
The new ‘niggers’ are gays. It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Barometer Change Nigger Social Vulnerable
When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn’t be here. You’re going to Mississippi to create social change and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Children Inspirational Love Men
If people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious. And that is the chief reason that every person who is gay should join some gay organization. Because he must prove to the world that he cares about his own freedom.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Gay Names Organization
You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Freedom Movement People
Both morally and practically, segregation is to me a basic injustice. Since I believe it to be so, I must attempt to remove it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Believe Political Three

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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