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Letters to
Gay Today


Fight, Gore Fight! Don't Concede!

goreelectionday.jpg - 10.45 K When last I wrote--the letter you posted as a "Viewpoint,"--I had not yet experienced the violent hyperbole, outrageous staged PR stunts (like dragging Medal Of Honor recipients on TV and into a political battle), and deliberately orchestrated "spontaneous" demonstrations which the Republicans are using to try and grab this election, no matter what the cost.

So I have changed my mind. I hope Al Gore does NOT concede this election, graciously or otherwise. He won, and every honest person knows he won regardless of party affiliation.

Gore would be ahead by more than 10,000 votes if not for a confusing ballot (and I don't care that a Democrat approved that ballot, that detail is beside the point) and the fact that thousands of elderly people had to wait up to 90 minutes in steamy humid 80-plus temperatures before they could vote.

Let the GOP drag out every medal winner they can coerce into being a shill to steal an election. Let them send all the high-profile governors and Senators and generals they want to preen and posture in front of the TV cameras. The Republicans are proving to the nation that they want to win this SO badly that they don't care whether they win it fairly--on the vote of the people.

So by all means, I say let's forge ahead with every possible legal challenge, with every avenue of contesting any result which ends up with Bush winning. Every day, the GOP pushes the envelope on taste and propriety further and further.

Let's give them enough rope to hang themselves in public. Let's see them froth wildly on the national news channels, making allegations that grow ever wilder and ever more absurd.

Let's see Republican mobs throwing eggs at the Vice-president's home. Let's let America see just how insanely the GOP can act when Gore refuses to let Bush steal this election without a really knock-down fight.

I no longer particularly care that whoever occupies the Oval Office for the next four years is going to be a helpless, essentially powerless figurehead presiding over a Congress and a nation which are bitterly and savagely divided.

Maybe the brutal battle to grasp that dubious prize at any cost will open this country's eyes at last. I doubt it, but after all the outrageous behavior of the GOP over the last week, I say "Let them fight for it if they want it."

Let's see if thieves and mountebanks can keep a straight face in spite of what America is watching, and try to claim a Republican victory. They will be forever tarnished by that theft.

I am just going to sit on the sidelines and laugh, when I'm not weeping.

HUGS!
BuckcuB


A Second Reply to 'JE'
—the Straight Bush Man

The letter from this "JE" person, who desires expanded horizons, must be answered.

It's easy, if you're a straight and therefore privileged person in this society, to tell those who are not privileged they have nothing to worry about. It's easy, but it's arrogant.

No one has ever refused employment to this "JE" for being straight, or has ever evicted this "JE" from an apartment for being straight, but both have happened to people I know. No state has ever passed a referendum seeking to declare "JE" and other straights a persecuted class, as Colorado did to gays and lesbians, until the Supreme Court struck it down. With a few more Republican justices, the Court would have allowed it.

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
10 Days of Bitter Post-Election War

Why are You Afraid of George W. Bush?

Steven Cozza: Boy Scout Extraordinaire

Related Sites:
Al Gore 2000
Scouting for All
GayToday does not endorse related sites.

This "JE" has never been physically attacked for being straight, but I have been attacked for being gay more than once. I was not seriously injured, but a friend of mine was beaten nearly to death with baseball bats by heterosexuals like "JE", so that the bandages covered more of him than they left exposed.

"JE" says we are "scary." We are afraid because we have learned to be. "JE" may not actually wield a baseball bat, but if "JE" did would "JE" freely admit it? Yet we are supposed to trust them not to assault us? I do not believe most straight people wish us harm, but I am not willing to trust anyone I don't have reason to trust.

Perhaps "JE" has the luxury to make ballot choices by whether someone is "wooden as a post" but we do not. Every election is a referendum on our continued survival. The Christian Right--which wants us either brainwashed or in concentration camps--may have been suspiciously quiet this year, but they have not gone away.

I would like to be able to believe this election did not matter, that no election really matters, that things will always be okay whoever wins. That may in fact be so. But I haven't lived this long by taking foolish chances, and I don't plan on taking chances on people I know by their initials, whether they are "W" or "JE".

Bob Van Keuren
Atlanta


Responding to the Boy Scouts' Policy

If you would like to know more about the policy of the BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA in regard to exclusion of gay scouts, look up

www.scoutingforall.org

That page also give suggestions about how to respond to the BSA policy.

Henry Messer



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