If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.
Freedom is too enormous to be slipped under a closet door.
It takes no compromise to give people their rights.
Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight.
If I do a good job, people won’t care if I am green or have three heads.
Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.
We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it.
If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods.
I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or the potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed with themselves.
Never take an elevator in city hall.
Coming out is the most political thing you can do.
The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods.
If it were true that children mimicked their teachers, you’d sure have a helluva lot more nuns running around.
A reading of the Declaration of Independence on the steps of a building is widely covered. The events that started the American Revolution were the meetings in homes, pubs, on street corners.
It’s not my victory, it’s yours and yours and yours. If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We’ve given them hope.
To sit on the front steps – whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city – and to talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color.
We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets.
I have tasted freedom. I will not give up that which I have tasted. I have a lot more to drink. For that reason, the political numbers game will be played. I know the rules of their game now and how to play it.
All over the country, they’re reading about me, and the story doesn’t center on me being gay. It’s just about a gay person who is doing his job.
I finally reached the point where I knew I had to become involved or shut up.
Out of the bars and into the streets!