#rights

As the many male victims of rape in the regime's disgusting jails can testify, this state-run pathology of sexual repression and sexual sadism is not content to degrade women only. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#iran #prison-rape #rape #sexual-repression #sodomy

There is no indication that any church official suggested or supported the emperor's action against gay people. On the contrary, the only persons known by name to have been punished for homosexual acts were prominent bishops. ↗

— John Boswell

#christianity #church #gay-rights #roman-empire #homosexuality

[P]eople only make decisions based on what they know. You can have everyone in the country vote freely and democratically and still come up with the wrong answer - if the information they base that decision on is wrong. People don't want the truth [when] it is complicated. They don't want to spend years debating an issue. They want it homogenized, sanitized, and above all, simplified into terms they can understand...Governments are often criticized for moving slowly, but that deliberateness, it turns out, is their strength. They take time to think through complex problems before they act. People, however, are different. People react first from the gut and then from the head...give that knee-jerk reflex real power to make its overwhelming will known as a national mandate instantly and you can cause a political riot. Combine these sins - simplification of information and instant, visceral democratic mandates - and you lose the ability to cool down. There is no longer deliberation time between events that may or may not be true and our reaction to them. Policy becomes instinct rather than thought. ↗

— Tracy Hickman

#gay-rights #politics #science-fiction #science

The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right -- it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society. ↗

— Pope Benedict XVI

#human-rights #life #pro-choice #pro-life #life

Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#animal-rights #animal-welfare #animals #attitude

Taxpayers should not be coerced into giving up their privacy rights just to file their taxes. ↗

— Melissa Bean

#file #giving #giving up #into #just

Clearly you need a new team to go out to bat on your behalf; to fight for your rights and to report back to you personally and to the leadership of the IFP. ↗

— Mangosuthu Buthelezi

#bat #behalf #clearly #fight #go

We would, however, perform an injustice to the bourgeois women's rights movement if we would regard it as solely motivated by economics. No, this movement also contains a more profound spiritual and moral aspect. ↗

— Clara Zetkin

#aspect #bourgeois #contains #economics #however

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#benefit #both #exercise #free #free speech

Rights are not easy to obtain, and once we understand this, we must work attentively and persistently - and never become careless or lazy. ↗

— Malalai Joya

#politics #progress #rights #freedom