Secretary Clinton (again): "Gay Rights are Human Rights"
But think about what’s happening to people as we speak today. Men and women are harassed, beaten, subjected to sexual violence, even killed, because of who they are and whom they love. Some are driven from their homes or countries, and many who become refugees confront new threats in their countries of asylum. In some places, violence against the LGBT community is permitted by law and inflamed by public calls to violence; in others, it persists insidiously behind closed doors.
These dangers are not “gay” issues. This is a human rights issue. (Applause.) Just as I was very proud to say the obvious more than 15 years ago in Beijing that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, well, let me say today that human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights, once and for all. (Applause.)
— Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, excerpt of remarks given at an Event Celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Month, June 22, 2010, Loy Henderson Auditorium, Washington, D.C. [quoted, e.g., here]