“In the lives of Black people — everyone overlooks this and it’s a very simple fact — love has been so terribly menaced. It’s dangerous to be in love, I suppose, anytime. anywhere. But it’s absolutely dangerous to be in love if you’re a slave because nothing belongs to you, not your woman, not your child, not your man. The fact that we have held on to each other in the teeth of such a monstrous obscenity, if we could do that, well I’m not worried about the future.
“…All I can tell you is that, as regards for example gay liberation. I’m very glad that it seems to be easier for a boy to admit that he’s in love with a boy, or for a girl to admit that she’s in love with a girl, instead of, as happened in my generation, you had kids going on the needle because they were afraid that they might want to go to bed with someone of the same sex. That’s part at the sexual paranoia of the United States and really of the western world… Everybody’s journey is individual. You don’t know with whom you’re going to fall in love. No one has a right to make your choice for you, or to penalize you for being in love.” James Baldwin, circa 1979