Gay Today: Letters to the Editor

Pen Points
Letters to
Gay Today

Kerry Lobel's Leaving NGLTF

Since Kerry Lobel became executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1996, we have all benefited from her vision of a stronger grass-roots movement for equal rights for all Americans. Kerry Lobel has grown NGLTF in a way that nurtures state and local organizations and activists in our community.

Kerry Lobel

She has reached out to Americans of all faiths, races, genders and sexual orientations, working for the day when personal characteristics like these are no longer a source of division and discrimination among our people.

By leading NGLTF to build a stronger state and local movement, Kerry Lobel has made America's soil all-the-more fertile for openly gay and lesbian candidates and made it easier for us at the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund to help elect these great leaders throughout the country.

As head of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the only national organization whose central mission is to increase the number of outstanding openly gay and lesbian public servants, I am very grateful for her efforts that have done so much for our community and our nation.

Brian K. Bond
Executive Director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund

The DeMoss Foundation & Jerry Falwell

The Rev. Jerry Falwell

I think that with Mel White, Bob Kunst, and BuckcuB lathering away about the fun in Virginia and Nebraska, we may be missing something. While I no longer read Time regularly, I picked up the August 9 edition for its coverage of global warming and found a most interesting item on pages 52 and 53, discussing the DeMoss Foundation.

I had begun to consider them problematical when I found them difficult to contact when I wanted to suggest that Reggie White's line of racist and homophobic blather made him a problematical spokesmodel for the Gospel. It appeared that they wanted their privacy rather badly even as they were assaulting mine with their advertising campaigns. I do think this a moral problem, Nancy DeMoss does not seem to see it that way. The foundation she runs pumps out $25 million a year to promote its version of the Gospel.

It does not take much reading between Time's carefully written lines to conclude that the DeMosses decided to save Mr. Falwell's all too ample butt from being sucked down the considerable sinkhole of debt he had created at his university. The guy who put up the $70 million that made Liberty U. solvent is Mark DeMoss's father-in-law. "Young" Mr. DeMoss was "mentored" by Mr. Falwell, and now does p.r. for a select group of evangelists.

It would appear that Miss Nancy Jr. spilled the beans in a book, The Rebirth of America, that the foundation published for her in 1986. Gay people, abortion, and those awful, secular(ist), public schools are all on her "Bad News" list.

Even Time chooses to be so discreet that it does not disclose which Florida city the DeMoss Foundation's offices are located in, but perhaps a bit of careful investigation would turn up a juicy tid bit or two, especially given that Gay Today has so many friends in Florida.

Of course, fighting against freedom is an expensive and ultimately losing game, and our "Christian" right wing is devoted to the most hilariously expensive collection of losers, but the details can save us a lot of bother.

Quiet money, that doubtless thinks itself big enough to stick it to us, has placed a hefty bet on Jerry Falwell, despite his gruesome track record. Mel White correctly identified that as an opportunity to confront homophobia, and won some points for us, especially when Falwell failed to do that Jesus thing of eating with "sinners" and having a good time doing it.

The Rev. Mel White

Perhaps Bob Kunst discussed the DeMoss Foundation's role in all this in material I did not see, but I think his role would have been more productive if he had focused more on the foundation/family's efforts to preserve Mr. Falwell's status as a public figure. His criticisms of Mr. White are not without foundation, but there is a large element of the pot claiming that the kettle is discolored in that discourse.

Jonathan Justice

What will the Seattle Battle Accomplish?

Without the WTO and its predecessor the GATT, the likelihood of international regulation of wages and working conditions, child labor and the environment, is virtually nil. The demonstrations in Seattle are really very good, because they show the commitment of the American labor and environmental movements, and they bring their issues to the center of the world stage.

But ultimately, it is the WTO that is the most likely legal framework under which American style environmental and labor law can flourish internationally. It is long past time to build consensus on free trade.

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
The Future of the Movement is Today

The Stranger Has A Date

World Trade Meets Ecological Decline

Related Sites:
National Gay & Lesbian Task Force

Rev. Mel White's Soulforce
GayToday does not endorse related sites.

Clinton's stand as both pro-WTO and pro-demonstration is the correct one. The synthesis of these two opposing positions is the future of international trading law.

Navato