A Quote by Barney Frank

I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed, gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority. — © Barney Frank
I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed, gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.
I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.
My own belief is that being gay is a regularly occurring nonpathological minority variant in the human condition, and that an appropriate analogy is left-handedness, which also, as it happens, used to be regarded as some sort of defect in a normatively right-handed humanity.
We [on the left] have to be used to being a minority -- a small minority -- for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right, even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror-image delusions.
You know, the same percentage of people are gay and lesbian as are left-handed. Let's try to figure that out. How can it be that a left-handed person can get married to another left-handed person. Left-handed people can do anything they want. . . . I say, give homosexuals the same rights we give left-handed people.
My Daddy was left-handed, and I was left-handed when I was little. In fact, I was left-handed all the way to high school. Then I switched over to right-handed cause I wanted to play shortstop.
I never felt I had anything to hide. I never felt being gay was anything to be ashamed of, so I never felt apologetic. I didn't have issues with it, didn't grow up with any religion, so I didn't have any religious, you know, issues to deal with as far as homosexuality is concerned. So, I accepted it very easily. For me, it wasn't that big a deal.
You think you're in a place where you're all 'I'm thrilled to be gay, I have no issues about being gay anymore, I don't feel shame about being gay,' but you actually do. You're just not fully aware of it. I think I still felt scared about people knowing. I felt awkward around gay people; I felt guilty for not being myself.
Rules of Order state that ... No minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal business of the organisation .... but No majority has a right to prevent a minority from peacefully attempting to become the majority.
Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.
A Jew remains a Jew. Assimilalation is impossible, because a Jew cannot change his national character. Whatever he does, he is a Jew and remains a Jew. The majority has discovered this fact, but too late. Jews and Gentiles discover that there is no issue. Both believed there was an issue. There is none.
When you're in the minority, it doesn't matter what you're agenda is, you're not going to have the degree of freedom that you have as a member of the majority.
The only gay people who remain in the closet are those who choose to, who don't want to publicly declare their sexuality, which is true of heterosexual people as well. I don't walk around with a button or a T-shirt that says "I am a heterosexual." I don't think sexuality defines a person. It's one small part of who you are, in my view. You are many things, and I never felt that people were defined by their sexuality solely. Although God knows, as a minority, gay people have taken serious lumps for their sexual preferences. As has every minority.
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion - and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
Do you see any majority, anywhere, in this imperfect and irreligious world, admitting that the minority is precious? That any minority is precious?
I've always been impelled to say the truth. When I was 14, in 1954, I already wrote a gay novel, though I'd never read one. I felt that life handed me a great subject, gay life, that had scarcely been examined, and I was impelled to record it in all its strange detail.
If there is a nuclear tactic being used here, I submit it is the use of that obstruction where a willful minority blocks a bipartisan majority from voting on the President's judicial nominees.
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