Gay people

“ The campaign conveyed a message that gay people and relationships are inferior, that homosexuality is undesirable and that children need to be protected from exposure to gay people and their relationships. The most striking image is of the little girl who comes in to tell her mom that she learned that a princess can marry a princess, which strongly echoes the idea that mere exposure to gay people and their relationships is going to lead a generation of young people to become gay, which voters are to understand as undesirable. ”

“ In addition, it suggests that the fact that gay people are being asked to be recognized and have their relationships recognized is an imposition on other people, as opposed to an extension of fundamental civil rights to gay and lesbian people. ”

“ But as time went by, the gay people in the big cities started making a bigger and bigger deal out of being gay, and since all the information that the small towns consumed came from big cities, that information leaked into the small towns and more gay people moved to the big cities, built little gay zones where gay was normal. ”

“ For more than two centuries, our Nation has struggled to transform the ideals of liberty and equality from founding promise into lasting reality. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans and their allies have been hard at work on the next great chapter of that history—from the patrons of The Stonewall Inn who sparked a movement to service members who can finally be honest about who they love to brave young people who come out and speak out every day. ”

“ Whether because of disgust, confusion, or ignorance about homosexuality, lesbian and gay sexuality dominates the discourse of not only same-sex adoption, but all lesbian and gay issues. The classification of lesbians and gays as ‘exclusively sexual beings’ stands in stark contrast to the perception of heterosexual parents as ‘people who, along with many other activities in their lives, occasionally engage in sex.’ Through this narrative, lesbians and gays are reduced to one-dimensional creatures, defined by their sex and sexuality. ”

“ No rebukes or restraints of duty, no sordid cares or purposes, impaired the dream of youth and rapture which prevailed everywhere in the hearts of the people. Gay assemblages were ever to be found among the villages in the forests; singing their own delights and imploring the stranger to be happy also. ”

“ One of the stereotypes that is part of the stigma surrounding gay men and lesbians is that gay men and lesbians are incapable of, uninterested in and not successful at having intimate relationships. Gay men and lesbians have been described as social isolates, as unconnected to society and people who do not participate in society the way everyone else does —— as "a pariah, so to speak." ”

“ The piece is a very gay one; but when the gaieties, although approaching what are called ‘gaudrioles,’ are not indecent, they amuse without doing harm.{234} Gay people are not dangerous, and State troubles, conspiracies, assassinations, and all the horrors we read of in history of all ages show us that they have been conceived, ripened, and executed by reserved, sad, and sullen people. ”

“ Now, Therefore, I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2013 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people. ”

“ With each passing year the American people become more receptive to diversity and more open to those who are different from themselves. Our Nation is at last realizing that gays and lesbians must no longer be "strangers among friends," as the civil rights pioneer David Mixner once noted. ”

“ The development of an active rather than a purely formal sense of enjoying a common citizenship depends on recognising and accepting people as they are. The concept of sexual deviance needs to be reviewed. A heterosexual norm was established, gays were labelled deviant from the norm and difference was located in them. [46] What the Constitution requires is that the law and public institutions acknowledge the variability of human beings and affirm the equal respect and concern that should be shown to all as they are. ”

“ While recognising the unique worth of each person, [19] the Constitution does not presuppose that a holder of rights is as an isolated, lonely and abstract figure possessing a disembodied and socially disconnected self. It acknowledges that people live in their bodies, their communities, their cultures, their places and their times. The expression of sexuality requires a partner, real or imagined. ”

“ There are tens of millions of people around the world, and millions of people right here in America—and people right in your neighborhood—who may be or are perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender ”

“ None of these factors applies to other groups traditionally subject to discrimination, such as people of colour or women, each of whom, of course, have had to suffer their own specific forms of oppression. In my view, the learned author is quite correct when he concludes that precisely because neither power nor specific resource allocation are at issue, sexual orientation becomes a moral focus in our constitutional order. For this same reason, the question of dignity is in this context central to the question of equality. ”

“ Beside them was a group of frenzied worshippers cutting their naked bodies with flints; their cries broke in upon the silver of the Druids’ voices in notes of brass.
The youth upon the saddle had closed his eyes; he swayed a little as though he had already drunk of the mead which the people were spilling and drinking.
“You are ours,” cried the voice of the Druid, “ours! But you reel and sicken at our incense as the bee, fresh from the cell, reels and sickens at a field of clover!”
The young warrior opened his eyes. His face was as white as the Druid robes around him. ”

“ Little boys are taught that they will grow up and marry a girl. Little girls are taught they will grow up and marry a boy. And growing up with those expectations, it is not uncommon for people to engage in sexual behavior with someone of the other sex, possibly before they have developed their real sense of who they are, of what their sexual orientation is. And I think that's one of the reasons why... [gay men and lesbians have] experience [d] heterosexual intercourse.... [I] t is not part of their identity. ”

“ The first is that gays and lesbians cannot be forced to conform to heterosexual norms; they can now break out of their invisibility and live as full and free citizens of South Africa. The second is that those persons who for reasons of religious or other belief disagree with or condemn homosexual conduct are free to hold and articulate such beliefs. Yet, while the Constitution protects the right of people to continue with such beliefs, it does not allow the state to turn these beliefs—even in moderate or gentle versions—into dogma imposed on the whole of society. ”

“ The indignity and subordinate status may flow from institutionally imposed exclusion from the mainstream of society or else from powerlessness within the mainstream; they may also be derived from the location of difference as a problematic form of deviance in the disadvantaged group itself, as happens in the case of the disabled. [43] In the case of gays it comes from compulsion to deny a closely held personal characteristic. To penalise people for being what they are is profoundly disrespectful of the human personality and violatory of equality. ”

“ The ability of the Negro to become educated according to the highest standards of the times is one of the great marvels of the last half century. Never in the history of the world has any people met with such overwhelming opposition against acquiring such training as will fit them for the full duties of citizen, as have the Freedmen in the United States; never before has a people struggled as nobly and succeeded so well in mastering every branch of learning, as this people, practically all of whom were illiterate at the close of the Civil War ”

“ But when government by the whole body of the people becomes cumbersome and inconvenient through increase of numbers, the individual citizen loses none of his rights by intrusting their exercise to representatives, in choosing and instructing whom all have an equal voice. So when States are united in a confederacy each State has the same relation to that government that individuals have to each other in a single State. They are free and equal, and none has a larger share of rights in the confederacy because its people are more numerous, or because it is richer or more powerful, than the rest. ”

“ By owning land you become a landlord, and you gain that opportunity by thrift and economy.
Land is the soundest investment in the world, and it has always been one of the great objects and hopes of the people of the earth to own a small slice of its surface.
If you own land, you acquire a sense of responsibility to the community where it is located. You are invested with a dignity which you can not obtain in any other way. You possess a sense of security and independence that nothing else will give you. ”

“ For men to address each other as "citizen," as if the word had the new significance in America that it had just gained in France; to swear eternal fidelity to liberty, equality, and fraternity, as if these were lately discovered rights which had been denied the common people for centuries by kings and nobles, who had always lived in the next street in inconceivable luxury wrung from the blood and sweat of the poor ”

“ It is not for the state to choose or to arrange the choice of partner, but for the partners to choose themselves.
[118] ⁠At the same time, there is no reason why the concept of privacy should be extended to give blanket libertarian permission for people to do anything they like provided that what they do is sexual and done in private. In this respect, the assumptions about privacy rights are too broad. There are very few democratic societies, if any, which do not penalise persons for engaging in inter-generational, intra-familial, and cross-species sex, whether in public or in private. ”

“ Often had we heard since then of the dire threats that he breathed against the House of Mountjoy and all its people; but the King himself had declared our quarrel just and affirmed our rights to the lands of Mountjoy; and we gave little heed to the mouthings of one who had yet his spurs to win and his name to make ’mongst fighting men. But now the thought came over me of a sudden that I was but half a league from Teramore Castle, mounted on a gentle palfrey and with no weapon save the good sword at my side. ”

“ She may not get a faultless complexion—few people have this gift—but she can get that soft texture of skin, that buoyancy of spirit, that brightness of eye with the soul showing through. Let these be her models and the imitation will be of real worth. ”

“ The fact is, that while the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Scandinavians, Germans, and so on, wore skin coats, devoured their food raw, lived in caverns, and were busily engaged in cutting one another’s throats over dry bones, the ancestors of our Colored people in these United States were enjoying the highest arts of civilization, lived in palaces, and erected magnificent specimens of the most wonderful architecture in the world, and behaved generally like civilized people. ”

“ This fear of homosexuals as child molesters or as recruiters continues to play a role in debates over gay rights, and with particular attention to gay teachers, parents and married couples —— people who might have close contact with children.) ; Tr 1035:13-1036:19 (Lamb: Social science studies have disproven the hypothesis that gays and lesbians are more likely to abuse children.) . Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians. ”

“ "Why can't you fly now, mother?" "Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way." "Why do they forget the way?" "Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly." ”

“ It was the very scene to appeal to the hearts of the people. Cormac was recognised, in spite of his shrouding cloak. Cry after cry to his honour rang through the room. Weapons flashed, and clashed aloft.
“The Black Horse!” they cried, “Cormac of Fail! Cormac and Ethne! Children of Tuathal! Twigs from the tree of Tara! All hail! All hail!” ”

“ That ministers, high as yon steeple,
Have trodden low law, king, and people,
When virtue from preferment barred
Gets nothing save its own regard.
Courtiers—a set of knaves—attend them,
And arrogance well recommends them;
Who flatter them defame their foes
To lull the ministerial woes:
And if projectors fire a brain,
South Sea or silver mines in Spain,
The broker's ready in a trice
To satisfy e'en avarice.
A courtier's conscience must be pliant ”

“ When the Emancipation Proclamation was sounded the eagerness and determination of the Negro to obtain an education opened into full blossom, and the colored people consecrated themselves to the one great task of educating their children, so that these coming men and women might be able to live happier and better lives. ”

“ It is quite certain that the evils said to be afflicting the people of the earth can never be cured by optimistic fancies, no more than can the racking pains and galling sores of the bedridden be healed by their concealment, or by covering them with a blanket of joy. ”

“ We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one. ”

“ If they do nothing else, they are demonstrating that Colored Americans can do the same things, fill the same positions as the other races, and that they possess an equally balanced intelligence, and have the same brain power as others. They never spend their time quarreling with fate, but overcome fate, and manufacture opportunity and ride upon destiny as upon a fiery steed, curbing it with the whip and the lash of education and intelligence, mingled with energy and persistent determination. ”