Repost: Black History Month: Icons

African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, but escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, and subsequently became one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. 

Returning to the South more than a dozen times, she is generally credited with leading more than 300 slaves--including her parents and brother--to freedom, sometimes forcing the timid ahead with a loaded revolver. She became a speaker on the anti-slavery lecture circuit and a friend of the principal abolitionists; John Brown almost certainly confided his Harpers Ferry plan to her.

During the Civil War, Tubman attached herself to the Union forces in coastal South Carolina, serving as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, and spy, and in 1863 she played an important part in a raid that resulted in the freeing of more than 700 slaves.

African American civil-rights leader Julian Bond, was a student at Morehouse College, participating in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. In 1960 he founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--serving as its communications director until 1965, when he was elected to the Georgia assembly. Bond was denied his seat because of his statements opposing the war in Vietnam, but was reelected in 1966 and began serving after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his right to hold office. 

A state representative until 1974, he then served as a state senator from 1975 until 1987. Bond led a group of Black delegates to the 1968 Democratic Convention where he challenged the party's unit rule and won representation at the expense of the regular Georgia delegation. In 1986 he lost a Georgia congressional race to John Lewis. In 1998 he became chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

African American civil-rights leader Ralph David Abernathy was a Baptist minister who helped Martin Luther King, Jr., organize the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. 

He was treasurer, vice president, and, after King's assassination in 1968, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). 

An advocate of nonviolence as a means to social change, he led the Poor People's Campaign on Washington, D.C., after King's death. 

African American contralto, Marian Anderson was the first African American to be named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, as well as the first to perform at the White House.

Anderson first sang in Philadelphia church choirs, then studied with Giuseppe Boghetti. She began her concert career in 1924 and achieved her first great successes in Europe. Her rich, wide-ranging voice was superbly suited to opera, lieder, and the spirituals that she included in her concerts and recordings.

In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest and sponsored Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial.

In 1955 Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera. She was appointed an alternate delegate to the United Nations in 1958 and in 1963 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

African American author Ralph Ellison was a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute. Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved to New York City in 1936, where he met Langston Hughes, who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright, who radicalized his thinking.

Ellison's earliest published writings were reviews and stories in the politically radical New Masses magazine.

His literary reputation rests almost completely on one novel, Invisible Man. A classic of American literature, it draws upon the author's experiences to detail the harrowing progress of a nameless young Black man struggling to live in a hostile society. 

African American playwright and poet August Wilson was a largely self-educated man. Wilson first attracted wide critical attention with his Broadway debut, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 1984--a play set in 1927 that dramatized the clash between the blues diva and a member of her band, and the larger conflicts brought about by racist American society.

Wilson's plays center on the struggles and identity of African Americans and the deleterious effect of white American institutions on Black American life. Wilson's works draw heavily on his own experiences growing up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto where nearly all of his plays are set.

His characters are ordinary people whose histories, frustrations, and aspirations Wilson astutely portrays. His cycle of ten dramas written over a period of more than 20 years include various overlapping characters and themes. In addition to Ma Rainey, it includes Jitney in 1982; Fences, a Pulitzer prize winner from 1987; Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 1988; The Piano Lesson the 1990 Pulitzer prize winner; Two Trains Running from 1992; Seven Guitars from 1995; King Hedley II in 2001; Gem of the Ocean in 2003; and Radio Golf in 2005.

Acclaimed as landmarks in the history of Black American culture, these works focus on the major issues confronting African Americans during each of the decades of the 20th century. In 2003, Wilson starred in a production of his autobiographical one-man play How I Learned What I Learned. 

African American James Lafayette Armistead was a patriot of the American Revolution. A slave in Virginia, Armistead sought and received permission from his master, William Armistead, to enlist under General Marquis de Lafayette, a French officer who joined Washington's army during the Revolutionary War.

Lafayette was seeking men to spy on British general Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown. Impressed with Armistead's intelligence, Lafayette had Armistead pose as a laborer looking for work.

He was hired at Cornwallis's camp and was able to relay information about Cornwallis's plans to Lafayette. Armistead also earned the trust of Cornwallis, who asked him to spy on the Americans. As a double agent, Armistead was able to move freely between both camps. He provided Lafayette with critical information that enabled the general to intercept Cornwallis's much-needed naval support and ultimately defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in Oct. 1781, the decisive battle that ended the Revolution.

After the war, Armistead returned to the Armistead plantation as a slave. He met with Lafayette in 1784, when the general visited the United States. Lafayette wrote a glowing recommendation for his former spy, which Armistead used when he petitioned the Virginia House of Delegates for freedom.

He was finally freed on New Year's Day 1787, and assumed Lafayette as his surname. He spent the rest of his life as a farmer in Virginia. 

African American Stokely Carmichael lived in New York City after 1952 and graduated from Howard University in 1964.

Carmichael participated in the Congress of Racial Equality's “freedom rides” in 1961, and by 1964 was a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--in Alabama. As SNCC chair in 1966, he ejected more moderate leaders and set off a storm of controversy by calling for “Black power,” a concept he elaborated in a 1967 book. His increasingly separatist politics isolated him from most of the civil-rights movement, and he emigrated to Conakry, Guinea, in 1969.

There he spent the rest of his life, calling himself a pan-African revolutionary but largely relegated to the political fringe. 

African American Alvin Ailey, Jr studied dance in Los Angeles with Lester Horton, whose strong, dramatic style and views about multiracial casting influenced his choreography and artistic direction.

Ailey moved to New York in 1954, where he studied dance with Martha Graham and Charles Weidman and acting with Stella Adler. In 1958 he formed his own company, the American Dance Theater, which, multiracial since 1963, has been internationally acclaimed and has brought recognition to many African-American and Asian dancers via works that combine elements of jazz, modern, and African rhythms. 

African American Joycelyn Jones Elders briefly served as the surgeon general of the United States under President Clinton. 

She was confirmed in September 1993 and angered conservatives from the get-go, as she was vocal in her support of sex education, the distribution of condoms in schools, abortion rights, and the medical use of marijuana.

But it was her December 1994 statement that “masturbation is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught” that prompted President Clinton to seek and receive her resignation. 

African American Crispus Attucks was an American revolutionary patriot of mixed African and American Indian ancestry; Attucks was the slave of William Brown of Framingham, Massachusetts.

He escaped around 1750 to work on whaling ships. On March 5, 1770, Boston patriot Samuel Adams convinced sailors and dockworkers to protest the presence of British troops, and Attucks was the leader of the 50 men in the protest, shouting “Don't be afraid,” as they advanced on the British.

The soldiers fired on the protestors, killing Attucks and four others in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The bodies of the dead lay in state at Faneuil Hall for three days before receiving a public funeral attended by 10,000 people. Although the soldiers were acquitted of the shootings on the grounds that the sailors were inciting a riot, Attucks and the others became heroes. 

African American civil rights activist Ella Baker was a driving force in the creation of the country's premier civil rights organizations.

After graduating as valedictorian from North Carolina's Shaw University in 1927, Baker moved to New York City, where she lived in utter poverty, the result of the Great Depression. She and a group of others founded the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose members pooled funds to buy products and services at reduced cost.

In 1935, Ella Baker joined the NAACP as a field secretary and later served as its national director. She scaled back her national responsibilities with the group eleven years later but still worked at the local level to improve and integrate New York City's schools. Baker and several Southern Black ministers and activists established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--SCLC--in 1957; the SCLC was a major force in organizing the civil rights movement.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the group's first president and Baker was the director, though she mainly worked behind the scenes, while King was its spokesman. In 1960 Baker left the SCLC when she helped students organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--at her alma mater, Shaw University. The SNCC's purpose was to give young Black people a more organized voice in the civil rights movement. 

African American writer and performer, Maya Angelou toured Europe and Africa in the 1950s in the musical Porgy and Bess. She sang in New York City nightclubs, joined the Harlem Writers Guild, and took part in several off-Broadway productions, including Genet's The Blacks and her own Cabaret for Freedom.

During the 1960s she was active in the African-American political movement; she subsequently spent several years in Ghana as editor of the African Review.

Her six autobiographical volumes, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, have generally been well-received. She has also published several volumes of poetry, including And I Still Rise. Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.

Still I Rise

Since Maya Angelou passed away, I have been rereading some of her poetry, and came across this one again.

Parts of it remind me of the LGBT rights movement; how we, as a community are denigrated, called less than, treated as though we don't belong and don’t deserve equality, but, still, we rise….

Still I Rise

by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

I Didn't Say It ...

Orrin Hatch, the Republican Senator from Utah, waving the white flag on marriage equality:

"Let’s face it, anybody who does not believe that gay marriage is going to be the law of the land just hasn’t been observing what’s going on. There is a question whether [the courts] should be able to tell the states what they can or cannot do with something as important as marriage, but the trend right now in the courts is to permit gay marriage and anybody who doesn’t admit that just isn’t living in the real world. We have an excellent federal bench [in Utah]. Other federal judges down there might not have arrived at the same conclusion that these two have. But I think it’s a portent of the future that sooner or later gay marriage is probably going to be approved by the Supreme Court of the United States, certainly as the people in this country move towards it, especially young people. I don’t think that’s the right way to go; on the other hand, I do accept whatever the courts say."

Of course, he wants y’all, and his constituents to know, that he doesn’t like it, he just knows it going to happen.

Nasir Fleming, on being crowned homecoming queen at Danbury High School:

"My main reason for wanting to win prom queen is to show the school, and hopefully the world, that if a spunky, odd gay kid can win prom queen, then anyone can! This message is mainly for transgendered people, because they seem to face so much backlash for simply being themselves. If I can win a title that is out of my gender, anyone else should be able to, including transgendered people.”

I called him a hero earlier this week and that still stands.

Frank Bruni, on The Gay Kiss:

"A kiss is nothing. On the sidewalks, in the park, I see one every few minutes, a real kiss, lip to lip. It barely registers. It’s as unremarkable as a car horn in traffic, as an umbrella in rain. And yet a kiss is everything. A kiss can stop the world. The football player Michael Sam recently demonstrated as much.  … I still sometimes feel panic when my partner, meeting me in a restaurant, gives me a perfunctory kiss on the lips. And yet I feel robbed — wronged — if I sense that an awareness of other people’s gazes and a fear of their judgment are preventing him from doing that. We shouldn’t be bound that way, and on the day of the pro football draft, in front of the cameras, Sam rightly declared that he wasn’t. He did so with a gesture at once humdrum and heroic, a gesture that connects everyone who has been in love and affirms what every love shares: physical tenderness, eye-to-eye togetherness. It was something to behold. It was something to hold on to."

It’s just a kiss, y’all.

RuPaul, on using the word ‘Tranny':

"Does the word ‘tranny’ bother me? No. I love the word ‘tranny.’ … It’s not the transexual community who’s saying that. These are fringe people who are looking for storylines to strengthen their identity as victims. That is what we are dealing with. It’s not the trans community. ‘Cause most people who are trans have been through hell and high water… But some people haven’t and they’ve used their victimhood to create a situation where, ‘No! You look at me! I want you to see me the way you’re supposed to see me!’ You know, if your idea of happiness has to do with someone else changing what they say, what they do, you are in for a fucking hard-ass road… I dance to the beat of a different drummer. I believe everybody — you can be whatever the hell you wanna be, I ain’t stopping you. But don’t you dare tell me what I can do or what I can’t — say or can’t do. It’s just words, like, ‘Yeah, you hurt me!’ Bitch, you need to get stronger. If you’re upset by something I said you have bigger problems than you think.”

Much as I love Ru, she needs to stop and think.

If using that word offends the transgender community then you stop using that word. Stop.

Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty, giving an Easter Sunday sermon juts filled with hate:

"They were mad at me…You say, why’d they get mad at you? Cuz instead of acknowledging their sin, like you had better do, they railed against me for giving them the truth about their sins. Don’t deceive yourselves. You want the verse? The news media didn’t even know it was a verse! They thought I was just mouthing off. Is homosexual behavior a sin? The guy asked me. I said, ‘do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?’ Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor the idolators nor adulterers nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

STFU.

Mark Ruffalo, on his hesitancy to accept a role in HBO’s The Normal Heart because he’s a straight actor:

“I'd heard about [director Ryan Murphy] and I was a little nervous about saying no without at least speaking to him, giving him the respect that he deserves. We met, and my thinking at the time was, ‘Aren't we at the place in our culture, in our development, where a gay man should be playing this part?’ That was kind of a concern for me. Politically speaking, it felt like that was the right thing for this play and for this movie at this time. And Ryan said, very clearly, ‘That's the antithesis of what this movie is about. It doesn't matter what your sexual preference is. It matters what actor I think should play this part.’”

If that’s the case, then all straight roles should go to straight actors? No, it’s about whom can best fulfill the vision the director has in mind, and I think Ruffalo was a fabulous choice.

“Dr.” Robi Ludwig, a reality TV psychotherapist, on how Santa Barbara mass murderer Elliot Rodger may have gone on the rampage because he couldn’t cope with his “homosexual impulses”:

 “When I was first listening to him, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s angry with women for rejecting him. And then I started to have a different idea: Is this somebody who is trying to fight against his homosexual impulses? Was he angry with women because they were taking away men from him? But this is a kid who couldn’t connect, and felt enraged, and wanted to obliterate anyone that made him feel like a nothing.”

Go back to playing a doctor on TV because you have no basis in reality. Charlatan.

“Dr.” Robi Ludwig, reality TV psychotherapist, backtracking on her crazy:

“I was misunderstood on @FoxNews this weekend, when I was asked to hypothesize several factors which could have triggered ‪#‎ElliotRoger's spree killing. I in NO way meant to indicate being a homosexual or having homosexual impulses is a cause for spree killing.”

Funny, cuz it’s kinda what you said.

Charlie Dent, Republican Pennsylvania Representative, coming out for marriage equality:

"Life is too short to have the force of government stand in the way of two adults whose pursuit of happiness includes marriage. [In] conversations with my family, I have come to realize that they already see the world through that lens. As a Republican, I value equality, personal freedom and a more limited role for government in our lives. I believe this philosophy should apply to the issue of marriage as well."

Funny he didn’t feel that way when it seemed like marriage equality would never happen in his state.

Color my cynical, but I feel he’s climbed aboard the bandwagon after-the-fact to make himself look better. He doesn’t.

Jim Carrey, giving the commencement speech at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa:

“The decisions we make in this moment are based in either love or fear. So many of us chose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never ask the universe for it. I’m saying I’m the proof that you can ask the universe for it. And if it doesn’t happen for you right away, it’s only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order.”

It never hurts to ask.

Maya Angelou, in 2009, asking New York state senators to support marriage equality.

 “I would ask every man and every woman who’s had the blessing of having children, ‘Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?’ To love someone takes a lot of courage. So how much more is one challenged when the love is of the same sex and the laws say, ‘I forbid you from loving this person’?”

RIP

Great lady.

RIP Maya Angelou

Quiet please, Maya Angelou has passed.

The award-winning author, renowned poet and civil rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou died last night at the age of 86, but what a life she lived, what a voice she had, and oh the things she said and did.

Poet. Novelist. Educator. Producer. Actress. Filmmaker, Civil rights activist. Singer. Dancer. And even, at just 14, San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor.

Affectionately referred to as Dr. Angelou, she never went to college, though she received over 50 honorary degrees and was Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.

 “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Angelou got into writing after a childhood tragedy that kept her from speaking for years: at age 7, her mother’s boyfriend raped her, and he was later beaten to death by a mob after she testified against him.

“My 7-and-a-half-year-old logic deduced that my voice had killed him, so I stopped speaking for almost six years.”

From the silence, a louder voice was born. A voice that spoke to all people regardless of color or age or gender or orientation.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,

When he beats his bars and would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings –

I know why the caged bird sings.

Maya should have the last word, via her last Tweet:

RIP

I Didn't Say It ...

George Takei, on the anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death:

"Matthew [Shepard's] death brought about calls for stricter hate crime legislation. Under Wyoming and Federal law at the time, LGBT persons were not included within existing hate crime definitions. The battle to bring about this change was not easy. It took nearly 20 years of lobbying, votes, threats of vetoes, and partisan bickering before a Federal law included LGBT persons within the definition. On October 28, 2009, President Obama finally signed the Matthew Shepard Act into law.... I came out publicly in 2005, though I had been out privately for many decades with friends and family. My decision stemmed from a desire to stand up and be counted, so that I could help people see the human side of how bigotry, hatred and intolerance affects others. Coming out is never easy, and often never ending. If you have gay, lesbian or bisexual friends who have come out to you, take the time to thank them today for their courage, and for helping to make a difference in the lives of others, especially of young people like Matthew Shepard who bear so much of the burden of homophobia, bullying and violence against LGBT people. Thank you. And Matthew, I promise you, we will remember." 

I’ll always remember, too, because, there but for the grace of god, that could have been me that night; that could have been any of us.

Janis Lane, president of the Mississippi Tea Party, on women and voting:

"Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how than can skewer a person. I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I'd much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them. Because women have the right to vote, I am active, because I want to make sure there is some sanity for women in the political world. It is up to the Christian rednecks and patriots to stand up for our country. God bless America."

So, this is typical Teabagger rubbish.

This woman doesn’t think women should vote because they’re all bitches and stuff, but this woman says she is active in politics because women vote.

Janis, Janis, Janis, how you make it so clear that the Tea Party speaks out of both their mouths and asses at the same time, astounds me!

Sally, Field, accepting the HRC Ally Award, calling it unacceptable for parents to toss LGBT kids out of their home, and thanking the audience for being there for her son Sam:

"You all have fought for him as surely as you were one of his parents. You've changed and are changing the lives of little boys and girls who realized somewhere along the way they're just different from their other brothers and sisters. And so the fuck what."

You always hear about the unconditional love a parent has for a child, and then you hear about the gay kid kicked out of his or her home for coming out.

I guess, for some parents, their love does have conditions. Thanks goddess more and more parents are like Sally Field.

Or, my mom and dad.

Ken Mehlman, former self-loathing, closeted homosexual goosestepper in the George W Bush anti-gay wars, on the so-called on the conservative case for same-sex marriage: 

"As Republicans, we respect the individual and work to empower people to live as they see fit, with as little intrusion by the government as practical. This idea is grounded in an important Judeo-Christian value that we should all treat others as we would like to be treated. Put yourself in your neighbor's shoes. How would you feel if, even though you paid the same taxes, potentially served in the same military and followed the same rules as your neighbor, your government denied you the freedom to marry the person you loved in ceremony?"

As little intrusion by the government as possible?

Then why is the government, and mostly the GOP, all up in the business of who marries and who doesn’t?

Nice of you to join the party, Ken. Better late than never.

Elton John, on the difference between civil unions and marriage:

'I know a lot of people, and perhaps especially religious people, will say that David and I should count ourselves lucky for living in a country that allows civil partnerships, and call it quits there. Well, I don’t accept this. I don’t accept it because there is a world of difference between calling someone your ‘partner’ and calling them your ‘husband’. ‘Partner’ is a word that should be preserved for people you play tennis with, or work alongside in business. It doesn’t come close to describing the love that I have for David, and he for me. In contrast, ‘husband’ does. A ‘husband’ is somebody that you cherish forever, that you would give up everything for, that you love in sickness and in health. Until the law recognises David Furnish is my husband, and not merely my partner, the law won’t describe the man I know and adore."

My sentiments exactly.

I’ll give the story again on the semantics:

Two kids on the playground at school, and one says, “Today is my Mom and Dad’s anniversary.”

The other kid says, “My two Dads’ have their anniversary next month.”

First kid replies, “But they’re two men so they aren’t married, they just have a ‘partnership.’”

It’s different. It’s less than. It’s unacceptable.

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, on marriage equality:

"The key thing about faith—at least in this country—is that you can choose whether to believe or not, and you can pretty much choose how to observe your faith. But you can’t (really) choose where you are born, or the laws under which you grow up whether you are gay or straight. And marriage is an ancient human institution that is far older than any of the religions that are practised today. It may well be beloved by God, but no religion has ever had a monopoly on marriage …. Marriage is an institution that can bring great happiness. It is a formal acknowledgment, by society, of the love and bond that can exist between human beings. It provides stability and comfort. Far from dying out, marriage is on the increase – especially in London. Why on earth would we deny it to anyone?"

Why on earth, indeed?

Lee Thompson, openly gay 'Uncle Poodle' to TLC reality show 'star' Alana, of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, on being gay and redneck in the South:

"We were at practice one day, getting ready for a pageant. Her coach was talking about her gay friends, and she said, ‘I love all my poodles.’ Alana thought she was really talking about dogs. She wanted to know how many poodles she had, and what were their names, [and] I said, ‘No, Alana, she’s talking about gay people.’ Well, that did it. All gay people are poodles to her now, and I’m her number one poodle....I'm gay, but I’m as redneck as I can get. If you want people to accept you, you have to show you don’t have a problem with yourself and just be up front about who you are. If you do, you earn people’s respect. If everybody would just go on and do that, ignorant people couldn’t cause so many problems. I know this is how I was born and I don’t need to explain it to anybody. I live my life for who I am."

We’re here. We’re queer. And we come in all sorts of packages, even redneck!

Who knew?

And, as Uncle Poodle says, if you hide your sexual orientation, it’s almost like saying you feel shame about it, and if you feel ashamed of being gay, how the hell can you expect anyone else not to agree.

Come.Out.

Angelina Pivarnick, of the Jersey Shore, on marriage equality.

“I love gay people. I have a lot of friends that are gay. No offense to any gays out there if I'm offending any of you I'm sorry. But, my opinion is that I don't think gays should be married. If you want to date each other, fine. We’ll see how it works. But in the end, they should really go and marry the other type. If you're a male, marry female. If you're a female, marry male. Women are supposed to be pregnant by the men that they're with, and they should be able to have beautiful children...”

I dunno who this bitch is because, unlike a lot of, to coin an Ann Romney-ism, “you people”, I have never seen the Jersey Shore because it looked like a bunch of stupid, drunks and, well, do we really want to invite that into our homes?

And then you have this, um, person, who just loves The Gays but says we all oughta just marry someone straight because that’s how it should be.

I, for one, say we oughta pass a law, that people like Angelina Pivarnick, never be allowed to marry or procreate. How does that sound, Ang?

Maya Angelou, on the importance of voting:

"We are here in direct relation to the heroes and she-roes who paid with their lives for this right. Many of us are old enough to remember what it felt like to be told we could not register to vote without taking a test or paying a poll tax. Some were asked how many angels danced on a head of a pin, how many bubbles were in a bar of soap. We are here because four courageous college freshmen sat down at a lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960, four years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, to make a stand for equality. It’s a terrible thing to obstruct access to the ballot. But we follow all those who had the courage to dare to live so we can dare to live. Because of them, we are here. So vote to keep moving us forward. And carry with you your friends, family and neighbors. Carry them from your congregations, your beauty salons and barbershops, your sororities and fraternities. Carry with you those five people whose vote could make the difference. You may be pretty or plain, heavy or thin, gay or straight, poor or rich. But nobody has more votes than you. All human beings are more equal to each other than they are unequal. And voting is the great equalizer. It is important. It is imperative. There is no time for complacency."

If we forget history we are doomed to repeat it.

Rosie Perez, on Mitt Romney's assertion that he'd have a better chance of winning if he were Hispanic:

"Oh my goodness! What if you were just a little bit gay, Mitt? Think of all the advantages that would provide. No! Wait for it! What if you had a vagina? If you were a gay Latina this election would be in the bag for you. Unfortunately for you Mitt, you were cursed with the hard knock life of growing up as the son of a wealthy governor and auto executive..."

Suh-nap!