Gay Today: Letters to the Editor

Pen Points
Letters to
Gay Today

Nazis, Fascists
and America's Republican Party

Oral Majority has recently circulated two letters it received critical of Bob Kunst, one for his use of the term Nazi or fascist, and the other for his use of vulgar language.

It seems to me however that Bob is right in both instances.

In February I wrote two articles for the online zine GayToday pointing out the fascist tendencies in the Republican Party and the dangers inherent in the way George W. Bush became president. I stand by those articles.

For the last two decades the Republican Party has been on a dark and dangerous path. It has become increasingly authoritarian; it relies upon an army of propagandizing pundits who lie brazenly and unceasingly on its behalf; it has shadowy ties to radical right groups whose members have carried out ideologically-inspired murders of, among others, Blacks, Jews, homosexuals, abortion providers, and federal government employees; it manipulates religious bigotry and sexual hysteria for partisan gain; and it receives enormous amounts of money from huge corporations "given" for the sole purpose of defeating or undoing sound public policy.

On December 12, 2000 the Republican Party pulled off what I maintain was a classic fascist coup d'etat: that is, it succeeded, through a combination of thuggery, electoral fraud, chicanery in the corporate-controlled media, and the collusion of powerful ultra-conservative figures in the government, in putting its candidate into the most powerful post in the world despite his having clearly lost the election.

There's very little difference, despite what we may wish to believe, between what happened here on that day in December and what happened in Berlin on January 30, 1933. And though Mr. Bush may currently be slipping in the polls, the danger posed by his party and the way he gained power remains very real.

Bob Kunst is one of the few people in our national life who's willing to say that, publicly and tirelessly, and for that reason I support him and I urge others to do the same.

Regarding Bob's use of the term "Holocaust":

I had the good fortune, as a Jewish kid growing up not long after the Holocaust, to be mentored by two of its survivors. They taught me to never compromise with bigotry or injustice, and that's just the stance Bob is taking. Furthermore, we need to remember what the word Holocaust stands for: the mass murder of the Jews. There were innumerable acts of mass murder that preceded the Holocaust, and a great many that have succeeded it, with no doubt many more to come. Rather than insisting on the unique character of "The Holocaust," and then finding ourselves attempting to construct a calculus of suffering, in which, for example, African-American slavery was worse than the Holocaust and the Holocaust worse than AIDS, we are far better off I believe in simply acknowledging that suffering is suffering and injustice injustice, and making our stand against both.

Again, I think that's what Bob is doing.

We need too not to ignore the present-day realities of anti-Semitism in the United States and its roots in the far right. For example, I live in a predominantly fundamentalist rural area; recently one of our high school teachers told me that this year the word "Jewish" became the most commonly used term of derogation at school. If lunch was bad, it was "Jewish"; if someone didn't fit in, he or she was "Jewish." There are, by the way, neither Jewish students nor teachers in this school, which is pretty much run, it is said, as a fundamentalist fief. (And, so far as I know, I'm the only Jew in the area.) To his credit, the teacher, himself fundamentalist, took steps to stop this use of language by forcing the kids to study Jewish culture and history.

But who knows how many other schools there are like this one?

And when I suggested to this teacher that a word like "pansy" was equally dangerous, he, though he knows I'm gay, was dubious.

Finally, regarding Bob's use of "vulgar" language:

Activist Bob Kunst protesting at the Republican National Convention last summer

Bob Kunst speaks in his own, unique voice, and I hope that he doesn't succumb to the pressure to sound more like the homogenized majority. Most writers and public figures experience those pressures, and too many give in. I hope that Bob won't, and that he'll continue to use language expressively and appropriately, including those so-called four-letter Anglo-Saxon words that are part of our rich linguistic heritage, and that should never be censored.

These are perilous times, but I don't think they call for politesse. And while there's nothing wrong with strategy, let's not confuse the cowardice and collaborationism pouring out of the Democratic party with effective resistance.

Bob is resisting, and without question he's having an impact. I support him, and I hope others will too.

Bill Weintraub

Protest at St. Patrick's Cathedral-July 10

Oral Majority will be protesting "W" Tuesday, July 10 11 AM, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, 5th Ave. and 51st Street, New York City. This date just happens to be my 59th Mighty Fine Birthday. You are all welcome to celebrate with me by protesting "W's" High TREASON-- the Stealing of Election 2000.

I've got a few extra reasons of my own.

When, in 1989, I was President of Cure AIDS Now, an organization which Peter Jennings called a model AIDS program, I saw to it that we'd eventually feed 2000 AIDS clients and raise over $5millions to keep them alive and out of the hospital. Representing this service organization, I attended the Vatican's AIDS Conference.

I was the only non-Catholic and NGO in attendance at that Conference and for 3 days, all I heard was gay-bashing till it came out of my ears. Nothing was said about the viruses, mutations, or care, or about the global threat. I was the only one speaking out on these levels of the emergency.

One of the leading players there was John Cardinal O'Conner, who fought with me tooth and nail about the' lifestyle' issue. It was my honor to tell him off for all the misery for which he was responsible.

I would be quoted by AP internationally saying that the leading cause of AIDS is the Catholic Church because of its politics and its hypocrisy. TIME Magazine and The New York Times covered my protest too.

I shook hands with the Pope and give him a button in Italian: "Curate La Cide Ahora"(Cure AIDS Now).

So far 22 millions are dead because of the AIDS catastrophe, including 500,000 Americans, while the Catholic Church continues to insist that the debate should be 'condoms' vs. 'abstinence', or how the Church takes the monies for hospice.

In 2000, I would lead a protest in Jerusalem when the Pope came to Israel for the first time. "From Hitler To Hamas, The Holocaust Continues", and that Pius XII was Catholic Hitler's Pope, and John Paul is Arafat's Pope to finish off the Jews now as before.

My protest also focused on $millions in holy books and artifacts stolen during the Holocaust and now sitting under the Vatican today and not returned to the Jewish people. Our focus also was the 300 crosses at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where there are no Jewish Stars for the millions of Jews put to death there, and is the world's largest Jewish cemetery.

Today, the Polish Government has also allowed a disco at Auschwitz called: "The System", where Poles and others literally are dancing where Jews were slaughtered. I helped lead 29 protests against the Polish Government on all of these matters in 10 cities and 4 countries including 11 times in NYC, where Catholic Poles told us to 'get our Jewish ashes out of Poland'. We have photos.

The Catholic Church aided and abetted the Nazi mass murderers to escape crimes against humanity; ignored the 14 million slave laborers who were worked to death or sent to the gas chambers. The survivors have waited until now-2001-- until for any compensation and Germany announced only last week that its giving a paltry $4 billion--less to each survivor because more survivors showed up.

The Church has ignored the revisionism, the trivialization and commercialism of the Death Camps while making the Holocaust a Vatican and Catholic event and not the eradication of the Jewish people at 1600 death camps and 10,000 concentration camps.

So, I will also be at St. Patrick's to remind everyone not only that "Thou Shall Not Steal" and be silent, but that this silence is what caused the Holocaust, while Nuns today are on trial for the Genocide in Rwanda among other issues.

Being Catholic has nothing to do with Vatican politics. I am not anti-Catholic. Repeat, I am NOT anti-Catholic. Real believers helped many Jews to survive, though not enough spoke up then, while revising it all now.

Oral Majority has twice protested at the Archdiocese in Miami and also when the Pope visited here in Miami, we had 100 protesters criticizing him for ignoring the AIDS Genocide. It rained on his Mass but not on our protest.

So, at St. Patricks, I will be speaking for all the losses. I'll also to remind everyone that last night, July 1, 2001, on ABC network news, soccer fans were shown at a match in Italy, with a huge banner saying "that all Jewish supporters (of the other team) should be in Auschwitz", in case anyone understands what is going on here. I was aghast, and in the Pope's backyard no less.

And when Jeb Bush says it's okay for Charlie Ward of the Knicks, to attack Jews ,as his First Amendment right, and for Ward to be a role model for today's kids who are witnessing all of the above, the dangers are great on all accounts. This same Bush strategy avoids my First Amendment right to protest his brother's stolen election.

This is the same Bush gang that allowed our Oral Majority grandmothers and a gay activist to be falsely arrested on June 4, 2001 at Legends Field in Tampa, owned by George Steinbrenner of N.Y. Yankees fame, who himself was given a presidential pardon by Ronald Reagan, after being convicted of donating illegally to Richard Nixon.

This is the same Ronald Reagan who went to Bitburg, Germany, in August of 1985, to honor the "SS" Nazi Mass Murderers buried there. I organized 100 to protest him then in Miami. By the way, the Nazi party in Germany is called the Republican Party.

That "W" wants the Catholic vote in this dog and pony show at St. Patrick's, is because, during the primaries he sent out anti-Catholic vibes at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. He didn't do so well among voters, then, or in Michigan later.

So to everyone who understands that the Church is into saving the fetus while aborting the living, for 2000 years, against everyone they didn't like and still don't, and here in 2001, anti-Semitism is building dangerously again, and the hate crimes against gays and lesbians are building again, and all of it is happening again in the middle of a stolen election. Therefore, on my 59th birthday, I honorably protest the whole stinking mess and all who are responsible for disaster.

Mind you the Catholic Church was behind Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell and is still trying to stop any equal rights for Gays and Lesbians, with rare exceptions, but it dosen't mind all those Gay dollars, while the highest AIDS rates are among all those gay priests about whom nobody wants to talk.

Then we have that Austrian Gay Cardinal they had to dismiss for all of his hanky panky. None of the above has anything to do with people of faith who are appalled by all of it.

And I'd gladly stand alone to do it as well. G-d is with me.

Yours Faithfully,
Bob Kunst

Honoring Barbara Gittings

Barbara Gittings (left) with her partner Kay Tobin Lahusen

How wonderful to see the report on Barbara Gittings being honored at the Eureka Springs library. What I don't like is that Hormel people didn't let other gay libraries etc. know about it. I will see if it is covered in the gay papers I can find on the internet. But I would hope general papers would cover the collecting of funds to send to the Alaska Civil Liberties Union to support the law suit against the library's censorship of gay display material. (Which I gather a judge has now ordered restored -- it was the mayor, I suppose, not the library that took the display down.)

But you also refer I think to a newsletter of the library association, and again I wonder why the gay libraries aren't getting a copy of this, I have certainly written and called the ALA for years and have never had a single reply, nor ever gotten a copy of their bibliography.

It would help us all if there were some way the gay libraries could share news and information such as important books, events, etc. The Sacramento people do an e-mail for their events (LLACES) and we all need to do that. By the way, I hope there is a follow up to the vandalism story of Open Books there.

There can't be too much news, and certainly when it is good news, so thanks.

Bill Glover
Homosexual Information Center

Barbara Gittings:GayToday's Corrections:

1) Barbara did not help edit Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon's award-winning book Lesbian Woman;
2) The photo Del Martin is holding is not of the board of directors of the National Gay Task Force, it's of some of the people in the ALA Task Force on Gay Liberation (as it was then named) at the ALA conference in Chicago in 1972.