Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of fully embracing one's identity as a means to combat oppression.
Jane Rule's quote suggests that openly acknowledging and expressing one's true self, especially in the context of marginalized identities, serves as a powerful political act against oppression. The act of coming out is not just a personal journey but a collective struggle, advocating for rights and recognition in a society that may seek to silence or oppress those who differ from the norm.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for LGBTQ+ rights.
It's not the length but the quality of life that matters to me. It has always been important to me to write one sentence at a time, to live every day as if it were my last and judge it in those terms, often badly, not because it lacked grand gesture or grand passion but because it failed in the daily virtues of self-discipline, kindness, and laughter. It is love, very ordinary, human love, and not fear, which is the good teacher and the wisest judge.
I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.
I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.
This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.
Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.
Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag.
Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics. This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped.
Even if I don't finish, we need others to continue. It's got to keep going.
We are not born with courage, but neither are we born with fear.
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