<% IssueDate = "4/14/03" IssueCategory = "Pen Points" %> GayToday.com - Pen Points
Pen Points
Pen Points
Letters to GayToday


Dear Cal Thomas, Liberty Starts at Home!

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas: What goes on After Dark? My gaydar also went off when I read Jack Nichols' campy reply (Gay Today, Quotes, 3/31/03, http://www.gaytoday.com/quote/033103qu.asp ) to Cal Thomas' opinion piece, "The Law, Liberty, and License." (The Washington Times, 3/30/03, http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20030330-10805439.htm It is also suspicious that his eclectic Fox News cable TV show is called After Dark. Cal is old enough to fondly remember the homoerotic pictures of male ballet dancers, which were regularly featured, in a pre-Stonewall magazine that was also named After Dark.

As we fight Saddam's Republican Guard to get Iraqis liberty, Bush's Supreme Court Republican guards are defending an unjust Texas sodomy law that bars oral and anal sex between two men, while permitting these same acts between a man and women or animals. Texas lawyers say, despite our Constitution's guarantee of equal protection, that heterosexual sodomy and fornication are legal "because they can lead to marriage and procreation." (See Dahlia Lithwick's "The Supreme Court Tries Sodomy," 3/26/03, http://slate.msn.com/id/2080746 for more of this absurd logic)

It is unfair to single out sodomy for prosecution when heterosexual fornication is equally immoral and unsafe. Neither should be allowed to endanger the public health.

Cal Thomas' opinion piece is dangerously more elegant than the typical anti-gay diatribe. However, his "what's next?" comparison of sodomy to pedophilia was much cruder than the comparisons to bigamy and adultery that was made by one Supreme Court Justice.

Harmless and noncommercial sodomy between consenting adults in private is not comparable to pedophilia, bigamy, or adultery. Pedophiles may harm children, who are unable to consent. Prohibitions of bigamy and adultery protect the institution of marriage, which the state sanctions for important procreative purposes.

Cal Thomas is ridiculous to assert that if sodomy is legalized, then "marriage will be redefined and the demise of the human family will be complete." I doubt that this could happen. Why would any heterosexual become a sodomite just to shirk their family and procreative duties? Two-thirds of all heterosexuals support laws against gay marriages. Family values are not an endangered species.

Cal Thomas attempts to draw a line between "liberty" and "license" by quoting a Webster definition of liberty as "permission to go freely within specified limits," but he fails to note that Webster also defines liberty as the "freedom from arbitrary and despotic control." Likewise, his partial definition of license, a "disregard for rules of personal conduct," ignores that license is also defined as "an abuse of liberties granted." His argument is circular and it is therefore faulty.

Bush wants to impose a secular government on Iraq to protect Christians from theocratic laws being enforced by the Islamic majority. Bush is hypocritical to defend the theocratic sodomy laws enforced by our Judeo-Christian majority. Pat Robertson has also mouthed this hypocrisy. (Gay Today, "TV Preacher Pat Robertson Endorses Church-State Separation," 3/24/03, http://www.gaytoday.com/events/032403ev.asp )

Bush is conceivably trying to undermine the authority of the United Nations not only because of enforcement disagreements, but also human privacy rights. A United Nations treaty that was ratified by 149 nations, including America, requires privacy protections, which essentially bars criminalizing sodomy. The legal concepts of liberty, equality, and privacy have global meanings. (See Kenji Yoshino, "Law of the Bedroom," Boston Globe, 3/23/03, p. H4, http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/082/focus/Law_of_the_bedroomP.shtml

Liberty should start at home. Bush's regime must be changed to free all Americans.

Thomas Kraemer


George W. Bush: The Biggest Threat To World Peace

These are very frightening times for our children, our country, the world, our future as a people. President Bush is a leader who is driven by a world view of black and white, evil Vs good. He has no appreciation of the diversity of culture. In fact he sees, as a threat, any culture or belief that opposes his own self righteous ideology. He dehumanizes those who oppose him. Americans who protest against the war are anti-American according to the Bush doctrine.

I despair over the fact that we as a nation had such a great opportunity to lead the world in the direction of peace. The United Nations and most countries throughout the world wanted to give peace a chance. We had UN inspectors who agreed that progress was being made with the Saddam government. Bush's presence at the UN through Secretary of State, Powell, wasn't about placing humankind first while mediating with other countries towards a peaceful resolution. Bush had his mind already made up. He didn't want the inspectors to be successful. If they were he wouldn't have any reason to invade Iraq. Where are the weapons of destruction that the Bush administration was adamant that Saddam had? They even showed the American public and the world where the weapons were on TV. Bush was driven by corporate greed. He's an oil man from Texas. It has even been documented that his father once did oil business with Bid Laden's family. Bush lacked the courage and strength of character to denounce those behind his current agenda of capturing one of the largest oil reserves in the world, at the expense of human life. Many Iraqi women, men, and children have been killed as will as our own and British soldiers.

Bush has placed America in world view as the aggressor. And now our own homeland and people are at even greater risk. President Bush insults humanity with his self-righteous narrow minded view of the world. We can no longer afford to resort to war as a solution to improve the human condition. I'm afraid Bush wasn't driven by the thought of improving the human condition but buy the creed of improving the corporate pocketbook.

Bush uses fear to terrorize the American people. He uses fear to push his fanatical agenda of taking away our civil liberties, attempting to destroy of natural habitats by pushing drilling for oil, violating the United Nations, breaking ties with global environmental protection coalitions, not attending the world conference on racism. In the eyes of the people of the world, Saddam Hussein is seen as a terrorist but now so is President George W. Bush. Why? Because he is behaving like one. He is a terrorist to both the environment and to humankind. As an American, ask yourself the following: If a leader from another country sent his/her military into our country to take over our government, would you think that leader was a terrorist?

Let's work to impeach Bush before he does any further damage to the world. George W. Bush, disgraces the highest office of this country and the American people. He wasn't even voted into office by the popular vote. George W. Bush is a fraud.

Scott Cozza
April 5, 2003


I Want Names of Soldiers

From: Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon
Senior Pastor, Metropolitan Community Church/San Francisco

I want the names of all the gay, lesbian , bisexual and transgendered soldiers on the battlefield. Please send them to me. But only their first names. We do not want to put them in harm's way any more than they already are. Send me their names.

We will light a candle for each with their name inscribed on it in solidarity. Just so they will know that they are not alone and not forgotten. They cannot phone their loved ones openly or send emails replete with the romance enhanced by separation. In the late night hours of waiting, they cannot engage in "family" talk with their comrades. But we will say their names aloud and be visible as their "family." That is what being a community is all about. Standing in solidarity with each other. In the good times and in the difficult times.

It must be so difficult to put your life on the line when you cannot bring your whole life to the line.

In times of war, the propensity to put people into categories is greater than ever. The "we/they" rhetoric fuels war machinations. We in the gay community are so used to being categorized as the "they," that we are nearly immune to the damage this language continues to do. But, what if the LGBT community refused the construct of categories "we" and "they"? Some monumental shift might occur.

For instance, it would not be a contradiction to honor a soldier who puts their life on the line in war, and also to honor one who protests the war, also putting their life on the line. For those of us who pray, it would be natural to pray for all lives affected so dramatically by this war those who fight for us and those who protest the fighting as well.

What else might happen if we truly became "we"? Just one "we"? We would not let one person represent a whole group of people. We would take small actions that may seem insignificant to others, and yet believe that somehow in the universe these actions make a difference.

Some from the MCC spiritual community took a small action on Sunday by becoming honorary members of the local mosque. A step forward in solidarity, in refusing the we/they dichotomy.

The images of war are devastating, When we see a picture of POWS or of children, we snap out of the virtual war mindset and its video-game soundtrack. We snap into our oneness with humanity and realize that when one human suffers, we all suffer.

Recently released results of a survey conducted by the Pew Institute indicated that only 17% said their religion or their faith had any effect at all on their view of the war. I wonder if being queer affects our view of the war. I hope so. We have been given, like Harper in Angels in America, an astonishing ability to see. I want us to see it all. I want us as queer people to see everything.

Adrienne Rich expresses my despair and my hope: My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

I have cast my lot in with the queers, those who believe there is another way and those who seek to honor all of life in the midst of it.

So send me their names.

Note: Please sent the first names of soldiers to: soldiersnames@mccsf.org For more information about MCC/San Francisco: www.mccsf.org.

Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon
Senior Pastor, Metropolitan Community Church/San Francisco

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