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Fight, Gore Fight! Don't Concede!
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
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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.
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Steven Cozza:
Boy Scout Extraordinaire
Related Sites:
Al Gore 2000
Scouting for All
GayToday does not endorse related sites.
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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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Pen Points
