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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

I don’t want to seem intolerant to them and I think we have to say that to them with a great deal of affection, but remaining in the closet is the other side of the prejudice against gays. Because until you challenge it, you are not playing an active role in fighting it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Deal Intolerant Prejudice Remaining Think
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
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
I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Believe Creative Trouble
The proof that one truly believes is in action.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Action Believe Proof
Bigotrys birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Birth Mind Place Plot
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
If anyone thinks they’re going to get anything out of the Reagan administration for any particular group, they’re wrong!
BAYARD RUSTIN

Children Fighting School
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
I am a Quaker. And as everyone knows, Quakers, for 300 years, have, on conscientious ground, been against participating in war. I was sentenced to three years in federal prison because I could not religiously and conscientiously accept killing my fellow man.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Men War Years
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
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.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Gay Grandparent Spring
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
If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Democracy Desire Mean

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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