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Pen Points
Letters to Gay Today |
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Gay Military Computer Skills Proven
Nevertheless, the Allies did not honor him-because he was gay. Instead he was harassed until he committed suicide. If Alan Turing had not done what he did, the war might have turned out very differently. Where would the military be without computers now? Why does the military discriminate against so many gay people who are good at using them?
Very truly yours,
Having been in fairly small meetings with both Bradley and Gore, I've experienced Bradley as a real human being who has sat down, thought about it and, as he says, made a decision to make equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, two-spirit and queer people (my list, not his) a centerpiece of his campaign. And I think he's proved his commitment to that by everything he's done publicly. Gore, on the other hand, seemed to me to be a shockingly empty suit (and I'm someone who has defended him over the years). I could go into a longer list of issues, but the bottom line is that I think Bradley is smarter and more of a leader and has a deeper (but still imperfect) understanding of us. And if nothing else, he's certainly pushing Gore to our side. So I'm supporting Bradley. To that end, I'm involved with both the glbt committee and the women's committee here. And I have a few questions and requests. I am trying to gather new Bradley supporters. I would like you to circulate this note as widely as possible and encourage your lists to pass it on as far as they wish. Here's what I want: Please contact me directly by email or phone if:
You will put your name on an invite for and/or attend a gay early evening reception in late February. There will also be a big outdoor gay rally with Bradley near the March 7th primary. Tell me if you want to be on a list to know more about that. Call me at 212-727-8674 or e-mail me at annnorth@earthlink.net as soon as possible. We want every name we can get, so please send this out to the world. Thanks, Ann Northrop Pessimist Supreme 2000
This century will very likely confound us with its cruelty and avarice. While these are both basics of human nature, I really feel that never before have we been positioned to experience them as fully as we are about to do.
Now that we have seen what we are capable of, there is little left to shock us. Our societal needs are vastly complex, and the wherewithal to meet and satisfy those needs is diminished and faulty. Human rights are no longer truly a viable issue in any but the most cerebral sense. Are we vapid, or just terribly idealistic, to imagine that homosexuals as a group, either politically, socially, or socio-economically--are apt to receive consideration or fair treatment or even rudimentary fair play, in a world system so overloaded, so out of kilter, and so lop-sided ? This is an ecosystem that has run amok, in which 40% of the populace is engaged in some sort of warlike behavior, a society that rewards greed, viciousness, duplicity, deceit, and incivility. There is a double standard in the laws we are supposed to be living by, the rich have a system of justice entirely unlike that of the poor. There is a different standard of crime and punishment for black and white, male and female, rich and poor. We live in an age of assassins. Children murder. Drugs are rampant, our cities are becoming unlivable, and our countryside is disappearing. Millions of people who lived their lives in the proscribed law-abiding, tax-paying manner will find themselves ending their days in abject poverty. This is the "richest" country in the world, and we have such homelessness, such poverty, so many hungry people, so much race-hatred, so much apathy. So much illiteracy, ignorance, fear, suspicion. I look around me in my 55th year in this world, and I am sometimes so incredibly saddened by what I see. And it keeps getting worse, the billion-times-a-billionaire companies keep cutting back jobs, trashing people like they were so much bubble wrap. Jobs go, benefits go, security goes, and we live in a climate of fear, babies left in bus stations or thrown in dumpsters, old men and women shuffling through the supermarket line before you "casually" buying cans of cat and dog food when they have no pets.....I think that now, here and now, it's not going to make too much difference whether it's a Democrat or a Republican who gets elected. It's pretty much the same thing, in another guise. The Haves, who will decide amongst themselves which of them is to assume a leadership role over the Havenots. And the people who really run the greatest show on earth, honey they don't care about you. whether you are gay, Mexican, female, unborn, HIV-positive, drug addicted, gang-affilitated, battered,raped,abused parentlesss, black, disabled, illegitimate,alien, dispossessed insane, Puerto Rican, blind, handicapped, poor, dyslexic ... you could be any old thing "other" in the world and these people don't really care if you live or die. Actually, would prefer it if you DID die. In this particular card game, the hand to be holding is white, male, rich, straight, and ruthless. All the rest of us, get back on the bus, and go 'way back while you're at it. Gay rights in the new millenium? Right, honey. And an end to world hunger, too. Chances R. |
Gay Brit Alan Turning helped save the allied cause in World War II by cracking the Nazi's "Enigma" code 
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley 
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