I don't think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

Since the dawn of time, traditional marriage - the union between one man and one woman - has been the building block of civilization, and at no point in our nation's history has that foundation been under more severe attack than now.

Particularly black Americans, many of them, from that I have seen and conversations I've had, are sort of insulted that the civil rights movement is being hijacked - the rhetoric of the civil rights movement is being hijacked for something like same sex marriage. Black Americans tend to have a higher degree of religiosity.

Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.

Spanglish is the encounter: perhaps the word is marriage or divorce of English and Spanish, but also of Anglo and Hispanic civilizations - not only in the United States but in the entire continent and, perhaps, also in Spain.

My sister is a lesbian and I want her to have that same feeling. A civil partnership is not the same as marriage. She's in a serious relationship with a girl I am obsessed with. I would love her to marry her girlfriend because I love her so much.

Access to our civil courts has been severely restricted by the combination of: the removal of legal aid from some cases based on their type, not their merit; a high financial threshold for the receipt of legal aid in other cases; and a failure to deliver a safety net for vulnerable individuals by the exceptional funding arrangements.

Felons are typically stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits. They're relegated to a permanent undercaste.

No country could claim to be civilized if its legal system weren't available to everyone in it.

Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union.

Torture, including practices like waterboarding, violates the legal and moral standards of all civilized nations.

I like to think I'm a pretty good-natured guy and pretty civil and probably not ever truly guilty in any serious way of any legal infractions.

However saying that I totally support the concept of civil partnerships in the eyes of the law, and think it a disgrace that same sex couples have had to wait so long for legal rights, protection and recognition.

King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience.

Mrs. Parks' act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country.

With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.

State-sanctioned marriage is a civil contract, period. A contract is not a judgment of moral value. It is a legal agreement between two parties that testifies to a meeting of minds between those consenting entities. It is not a religious act or rite and so has nothing to do with Adam and Eve or Steve or even Harvey.

When I was at 'Newsweek' magazine - which, you know, this really sounds like I walked four miles in the snow to school - but I started at 'Newsweek' magazine in 1963, which was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So it was actually legal to discriminate against women, and 'Newsweek' did.

I come from a profession which has suffered greatly because of the lack of civility. Lawyers treat each other poorly and it has come home to haunt them. The public will not tolerate a lack of civility.

I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.

Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

Too often, advances in civil rights or women's rights are undermined by wrong-headed legislation or weak-kneed political leadership.

Where there is an absence of international political leadership, civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction.