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 Anti-Discrimination Laws to go on Ballot Miami Herald: New Struggle is Christian/ Gay Ideological Battle Bob Kunst: 'The Republicans are Resurrecting Falwell & Anita' |
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Compiled by GayToday
People For the American Way Foundation Florida Director Jorge Mursuli said the Supervisor of Election's action was "far from the final word" on the ballot initiative. "Today's certification, based on a random sampling of signatures, did not consider a range of problems and irregularities with the collection of signatures," said Mursuli, who as director of SAVE Dade had helped mobilize support for passage of the anti-discrimination law. "This is exactly why the County Commissioners voted this year to give the Supervisor of Elections the power to deal with a wider range of violations - to protect the ballot box from manipulation and fraud and protect the county and its taxpayers from costly litigation," Mursuli said. "It is outrageous that in Miami-Dade we are still battling over basic equality and basic human rights," said People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas. "It took the county more than two decades to recover from the Anita Bryant fiasco and extend anti-discrimination protections to all its citizens. We must not and will not allow misinformation and manipulation to turn back the clock on equality in Miami-Dade." Enter: Bob Kunst for Governor
Kunst has already dispatched a letter to Governor Jeb Bush admonishing him to "take a stand against Miami-Dade bigots meeting right in your local Republican backyards." Kunst also chastised the Miami Herald for what he sees as its current hypocrisy. "The Herald supported Anita and Falwell in the old days," he recalls, "and now it pretends to so blithely pit Christians against gays and lesbians and to act as if its above the battle. Its not. The Herald supported the stealing of the presidential election a year ago, here in Florida. It helped steal our freedoms 25 years ago. Its not neutral about anything." Take Back Miami-Dade's appeal for repeal will appear on the September 10 ballot, following its approval by the county commission and, according to a gloom-welcoming prediction in the Miami Herald: "setting the stage for what in the past has proven to be bitter campaigning by both sides." Bob Kunst, in a statement he first provided for GayToday, placed his gubernatorial candidacy squarely into the Miami-Dade fray: "Just when you thought it couldn't get more bizarre," he told GayToday, "repeal of Gay Rights will go to the voters next September 10, 2002, which is of course Primary Day for the Governor's race. "The only thing to stop it will be a court challenge. "The very same bigoted and hateful Republicans who collected over 52,000 signatures, on November 7, 2000, when the election was stolen, are also the same gangsters who participated with the rent-a-mob gang to stop the vote recount in Miami-Dade. "So here we are not 'united' against the terrorists according to the Bush Brothers, but instead Gays and Lesbian Americans are now to be terrorized by the GOPerverts themselves. The Bush Gang is now behaving like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who blamed '9/11' on the Gays, Lesbians and the ACLU.
"Mind you, this gang did what Anita did, which was to collect the signatures and get a 'for' vote, which we were stuck with in 1977. Not only did we have to deal with everybody's sexual and emotional hangups, but we had to educate everyone to vote "AGAINST" IN ORDER TO KEEP THE ORDINANCE. "In the 1978 campaign, Round II, this time we collected 18,000 signatures and this time we got the 'for' vote, and got 50,000 new votes or 142,000 (42%) from the previous 1977 vote. We pleaded with the closet gays not to tell everyone about being 'for' human rights, but they wouldn't listen and only confused the issue which we finally corrected, and are faced with once again. "Amazingly, now with my running for Governor, going after the fanatical terrorists in the GOP, will be a pleasure in turning this effort towards the state and nation and Jeb and "W" will be in a very bad situation, of having their backers behind this bigoted attack upon fellow Americans. "And by the same folks who helped to Steal the Election. "This will be their waterloo, with the nation at war, to come and attack fellow Americans, like the Gay Priest who died on 9/11, while giving last rights, and this priest was the religious head of NYC Fire Dept. "Then there was the co-pilot of the plane on 9/11 that went into the Pentagon, who was also gay. "Then we have the leader of the passengers on the flight that went down in Pennsylvania area, that went after the highjackers, also a gay man, and national hero, like so many, and all of them betrayed by this disgusting attempt to discriminate against Gays. "This is not just a gay rights struggle but one against injustice and tyranny and outrage for these religious and bigoted Taliban fanatics and terrorists of Bush's, now playing the dirtiest of games, and everyone of you with any sense of conscience must realize that if we don't nip this in the bud here, it will spread like a plague across the nation to everyone.
"This is the worst thing for the Bushes and the best thing for our campaign to expose the whole stinking mess, once and for all," says Kunst. Lois Frankel, Democratic Leader of the Florida State House of Representatives, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate and also the choice of Florida's NOW reacted to Kunst's candidacy in The Express, a South Florida publication: "Bob brings an interesting energy to the race. He says a lot of things that many people think ring true. My focus, though, is on Jeb Bush as a threat, not Kunst. He has a lot of interesting things to say, and a lot of them I have actually thought." |
