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.

Gay brothers and sisters... You must come out. Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared.

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.

All men are created equal. Now matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.

Never take an elevator in city hall.

Some people call me the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.

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