6/5/2023 0 Comments Lost Prophet by John D'Emilio![]() ![]() In part, the decision to refrain from gay activism even as he engaged in activism of almost every other variety was made for Rustin. That is what makes the homosexual central to the whole political apparatus as to how far we can go in human rights. There are great numbers of people who will accept all kinds of people: blacks, Hispanics, and Jews, but who won't accept fags. There are very few liberal Christians today who would dare say anything other than blacks are our brothers and they should be treated so, but they will make all kinds of hideous distinctions when it comes to our gay brothers. Rustin testified in words that remain true two decades later: Naegle encouraged him to lobby his friend New York City Mayor Ed Koch and the city's legislators in the mid-1980s to pass a gay and lesbian civil rights law that had been stalled for years, and which was enacted in 1986. ![]() He might never have engaged in any if he had not, at age 65, fallen in love with Walter Naegle, his partner until Rustin died in 1987 at age 75. Rustin also was homosexual, but he engaged in almost no gay activism. Among his accomplishments was the pivotal 1963 March on Washington, which Rustin organized and from which Martin Luther King proclaimed to the world, "I have a dream." He dedicated himself tirelessly for more than six decades to activism around the world to promote peace, secure economic justice and eliminate racial inequality. ![]() ![]() Bayard Rustin was a pacifist, a socialist and a black man. ![]()
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