Equality Under the Law Quotes

The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years.

Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

The ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than the temporary failures of democracy.

Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

We ask to be recognized as men.

Gay Marriage is the Civil Rights Issue of our time.

The existence of laws in the States where the newly emancipated negroes reside, which discriminated with gross injustice and hardship against them as a class, was the evil to be remedied …. The one pervading purpose, was protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.

I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act but I do not believe we should institutionalize a form of discrimination against any minority by amending the Constitution.

Any violation of civil rights will be aggressively pursued and prosecuted by my administration. No one will be above the law.

I am proud to stand with the millions of women and men who recognize that our government should legislate according to the reality of our lives - not for ideology.

We need a president who is willing to uphold the law.

Let the Negro have the shield of impartial laws. Let him be heard in court

Liberty And Union

I am persuaded that the rights of woman, like the rights of slaves, need only be examined to be understood and asserted.

The purpose of the law is to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

I believe marriage equality is a simple change that sends a powerful message. It is a chance for us to say, as a nation, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex Australians: your love is equal under the law.

That means negro citizenship … By God, that is the last speech he will ever make.

I'm not sure gay marriage was an issue that made or didn't make any single election that I can think of.

Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!

I don't think it's a great leap to go from civil unions to gay marriage - I may be in the minority in believing that.

A Miami judge issued Florida's first gay marriage license yesterday, which makes it the 36th state to legally perform gay marriages. Of course, most Florida residents are too old to understand what that means. They'll say, 'Well, I think all marriages should be gay, and merry.'

This Constitutional amendment will forever withdraw the subject from politics, and will strike down that prejudice [racism] to which the Democratic party has appealed for years.

Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage.

There was never a time you could get the majority of people in Alabama or Mississippi, or even southern Delaware, to vote to end segregation. What changed things was the rule of law, the courts. Brown v. Board of Education was ushered in by a movement, but it was a legal decision.