"Along with that we've got to continue through legislation and legalism. I know there are those who say that this can't be done through the courts, it can't be done through laws, you can't legislate morals. They would say that integration must come by education not legislation. Well I choose to be dialectical at that point. It's not either legislation or education. It's both legislation and education. We've got to use both. Now it's true that you can't legislate morals in a sense, and that isn't what we try to do through the law. You see, through the law we don't seek to change one's internal feelings, we seek to control the external effects of those internal feelings. That's all we try to do through the law. Now it's true that the law can't make a man love me; that's, religion and education will have to do that. But the law can control his desire to lynch me. See that's what we call on the law for, and we must continue to struggle through legislation and legalism." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (b. 1929-01-15, d. 1968-04-04), 1957-01-01 [emphasis added by the friend who pointed this out in hir own journal (locked entry)]
[Also: good luck to anyone observing National Coming-Out Day in the fashion suggested by its name -- and more power to you! (I'm not sure I still know any closeted people ... but if I'm wrong, I suppose this would be a suitable day to correct me.)]
| ← Previous day | (Calendar) | Next day → |