If you give your life to a cause in which you believe, and if it is right and just, and if your life comes to an end as a result of this, then your life could not have been spent in a more redemptive way. I think that is what my husband has done.

I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice.

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens.

I always knew that I was called to do something. I didn't know what, but I finally rationalized after I met Martin [Luther King, Jr.] and it took a lot of praying to discover this, that this was probably what God had called me to do, to marry him.

If Martin [Luther King, Jr.]'s philosophy had been embraced and lived out in Iraq and other places, we wouldn't have bin Ladens.

We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say "common struggle" because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.

If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, then American democracy is in trouble.