I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.
I have a beautiful little Smith & Wesson, 9 millimeter, and it goes with me virtually everywhere. But I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family - whether it's from an intruder or whether it's from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.
As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.
I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I'm a great believer that you can't have too conservative a President nor too liberal a Supreme Court. So I'm a walking contradiction. I believe that you should try to really protect people's rights in every way, and also, people should be allowed to do what they do.
We would be false to our trust if we allowed the time it takes to give effect to constitutional rights to be used as the very reason for taking away those rights.
If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.
Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.
At the time I attempted to purchase the rights back for the 3 Homestead records, but the owner demanded an outrageous sum in the neighborhood of $10,000, about 10 times more money than I could get my hands on at the time.
When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.
The Constitution has a good share of deliberately open-ended guarantees, like rights to due process of law, equal protection of the law, and freedom from unreasonable searches.
Our economic freedom is founded on individual property rights; government should never be permitted to take those away.
To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense.
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
When you live in the South, you're constantly part of the civil rights movement.
There is such an advantage to self-releasing. If you can do it yourself, it's the best way to go. In Europe and the rest of world outside the U.S., I have licensed my music to labels. But it's amazing because I still own all the masters. I didn't have to give up any of those rights. I have 100 percent creative control.
Terrorism can never be accepted. We must fight it together, with methods that do not compromise our respect for the rule of law and human rights, or are used as an excuse for others to do so.
If the IAAF feel that is the right way to go for TV rights and everything, the rule will stay. As much as I want to be on the podium, tonight is a sad night for athletics.
For most inhabitants of the Arab world, the prevailing cultural attitude toward women - fed and encouraged by Wahhabi doctrine, which is based on Bedouin social norms rather than Islamic jurisprudence - often trumps the rights accorded to women by Islam.
I rise in support of a Canada in which liberties are safeguarded, rights are protected and the people of this land are treated as equals under the law.
Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.
We have a core value here at Twitter that says we want to defend and respect the user's voice. And that's important to us on a global basis. Someone doesn't sign up for a service expecting that their sign up information is going to be handed over without them being asked... We're going to defend our users' rights.
Contrary to all the blather we here about the unique goodness of the American people or our religious heritage or anything else, the one thing that set this country apart from all others was the Bill of Rights.
Judges who take the law into their own hands, who make up constitutional 'rights' in order to strike down laws they oppose, undermine the people's right to have their values shape public policy and define the culture.
The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law.
When a person is humiliated, when his rights are being violated, and he does not have the proper education, naturally he gravitates toward terrorism.
The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others' rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them.
I state in no uncertain terms: An order to uproot an Arab village or a Jewish settlement violates the most basic of human rights... It's a difficult dilemma.
Rarely in my 45 years as a civil rights lawyer have I been so angry about an injustice as I am about what happened to Billy Ray Johnson.
Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.
I think if we go back and check our record, the Negro has proven beyond a doubt that we have been more than patient in seeking our rights as American citizens.
When Hegel later became a man of influence' he insisted that the Jews should be granted equal rights because civic rights belong to man because he is a man and not on account of his ethnic origins or his religion.
Maybe I'm less sensitive to these issues because I see that what people need first is economic security, and only when they have that can they afford to focus on human rights.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But, throughout history, our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation, in reality, to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration.
The idea of equal rights was in the air.
The standing orders of the Parliamentary Party, however, apply to me, apply to every other Member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and they put into a context the way in which those rights to freedom of speech should be exercised.
I'm proud to be among a bipartisan group of state attorneys general who consistently advocate against government infringement of Americans' Second Amendment rights.
