I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you...And you...And you...Gotta give em hope.

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.

Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.

I like to sit in the window and watch the cute boys walk by.

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.

If you are not personally free to be yourself in that most important of all human activities... the expression of love... then life itself loses its meaning.

We don't want sympathetic liberals, we want gays to represent gays... I represent the gay street people-the 14-year-old runaway from San Antonio. We have to make up for hundreds of years of persecution. We have to give hope to that poor runaway kid from San Antonio. They go to the bars because churches are hostile. They need hope! They need a piece of the pie!