What’s wrong with being a lesbian?
Enough. The Bush-Cheney campaign has succeeded — yet again — in using a gay matter to distract voters from the real issues facing our nation.
Simply put, there is nothing wrong with being a lesbian, let alone saying that an out lesbian is a lesbian. It wasn’t a story in the first place, and continued focus on it is insulting to any thinking person.
Can we talk about something real, not the patently bogus hurt and anger of Dick and Lynne Cheney? After all, for the last 18 months, these folks have supported using gay people and our families as a wedge to divide the electorate. They have not said one word while their allies have aggressively pushed the “Federal Marriage Amendment” on the grounds that allowing couples like their daughter and her partner to marry would undermine Western civilization. Not a peep when it was revealed that the GOP is paying for egregiously anti-gay campaign mailings in at least two states. Not a whisper while their buddies in the religious and political right have engaged in an unprecedented, national campaign of fear-mongering and demonizing of gay people.
Now, they’re offended? Come on. Let’s move on.
Matt Foreman?Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Bush against affirmative action?
President Bush’s Oct. 13 debate answer on affirmative action opposed it, adding, “We ought to have an aggressive effort to make sure people are educated … so that every child learns to read, write.” This blames the victims rather than compensates for the patterns of prejudice.
The U.S. Census Current Population Report, March 2002, shows that the median incomes in California in 2001 for whites exceeded that of Latinos at every level: $800 more for non-high-school graduates, $3,400 more for high school graduates, $2,700 for some college or associates degree, $8,600 for bachelors degree, and $17,300 for masters degree or higher. As a rule, the more the education, the more the racism. The situation for African Americans was almost as bad. We do have a chance for progress with John Kerry who supported affirmative action in the debate, saying, “Too many people still in this country feel the stark resistance of racism.”
Rosalio Munoz?Los Angeles CA
Election platform omission?
I read the Communist Party USA election platform in the PWW and believe you did a great job except for the obvious question of how to pay for all this.
Mention was not made and should be made of the billions that are always found to make war and kill. The argument of “lack of funds” always applies only to those programs that benefit the people.
Karl Dennis?Tucson AZ
Vote suppression in Florida?
An attitude of voter discouragement is rampant at polling places across Florida, my home state. The Republican Party plans to have their “poll watchers or poll challengers” to disqualify as many Democratic votes and voters as possible.
J. Corlett?Via e-mail
Say ‘no’ to defeatism?
My brother is a strong Democrat, always voting “right,” but his latest letter to me shows defeatism. He said “Kerry is behind, and Bush will win.”
I say: “No!” Kerry can win if he keeps up the good work and keeps the swing Democrats in his column.
There’s more Democrats in America and they have the best ideas. The GOP has little to offer America.
Let’s keep up the Kerry momentum. Bush is so bad. Let’s keep faith — the American people will throw him out.
George T. Gaylord?Tustin CA
A war to avoid a depression? ?
I want you to know how much I appreciated Wadi’h Halabi’s recent article (“Bush’s dis-ownership society,” PWW, 9/18-24).
You may be interested to know that we went to war against Afghanistan and Iraq in order to prevent our stock market from collapsing and setting off what I call “The Great Depression II.” The stimulus from those wars and increased military spending are starting to wear off now, so I suppose the administration will try to kick up another war.
Harold Dorland?W. St. Paul MN
A telling coincidence?
The irony was exquisitely revealing! Recently, I saw a film segment of a massive demonstration in Havana, Cuba. Tens of thousands of Cuban citizens were marching down a wide boulevard protesting U.S. militarism and the Bush regime’s treatment of prisoners under U.S. occupation.
Later that same day while watching a commentary segment on a major news station, I heard one commentator ask another, in reference to the mounting charges of abuse being leveled at occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (paraphrased), “Can U.S. soldiers use the same argument that German soldiers made at the Nuremburg trials — that they were only following orders?”
When the “stockpiled” Weapons of Mass Destruction charade began to be exposed for the lie that it is, Bush and his cronies shifted and said that the main reason for the war and occupation has really always been about “regime change” and bringing “freedom” and “democracy” to the (remaining) Iraqi people. That the world’s second largest natural oil reserves lie buried under Iraq’s soil has nothing to do with the matter, of course.
The words of Bush & Co. would be much more on target were they to admit that the necessary precondition for establishing a real democracy in the United States is regime change — here.
Eric Ray?Tampa FL
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