Letters to the Editor	Letters Archive

Senator: Homos Responsible for Violence

[Concerning your May 2008 feature "Come Back to Jamaica?"]: I condemn Violence, I condemn Homosexuality, I condemn the perversion or any attempt to package and push this sort of nastiness on the throats of Jamaican people.

From the reports I have seen, by and large, Homosexuals are killed in most instances by their enraged partners. So what needs to be done is for your movement to educate them on conflict resolution. We are sick and tired of these gay people trying to force us to accept them.

S

View our poll archive

enator Warren Newby
Kingston, Jamaica

Editorial Overheated

I was enjoying your the first half of your editorial "Obscene Threat" [July 2008; available at Guidemag.com] when the second half hit me like a ton of horseshit.

Few liberals can ever get freedom of speech so eloquently detailed, especially as it relates to our unique guarantee of such even compared to our U.K. sister nation. So kudos on part one.

While you used specific examples for that task, in the second half you whip a bunch of half-true generalizations to scare the reader into fearing an immediate censorship of gay life itself. There are no examples where wiretapping, library record investigation, or other means have violated the Patriot Act. The government is not going after gays; it's going after those people who would not just want to kill us all, but would love to kill sexual deviants (their classification, not mine) like us first.

Prosecutors seem focused on pornography (the word itself does in fact refer to its original form: writing) that involves minors, indecent obscenities that I personally feel should be considered for prosecution. In the cases where fisting or piss porn has been involved in prosecution, the issues have been the manner of distribution (second-hand porn, for example).

You mentioned the "Anglo world." I'm not sure where you are based, or what diversity guru has given you such a label, but I immediately correct anyone who refers to me as "Anglo." In fact, like most Americans, I do not have a drop of blood from the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, or Frisians who all moved to settle England (Angleland). Being Italian and Jewish, I would remind our readers that we're Americans, not Anglos.

Your editorial's crux was dismantled by poor examples and a lack of evidence in your publication's supporting stories.

Brian Brandt
Boston, Massachusetts

History Lesson

An article from the August 1953 issue of One Magazine ("Reformer's Choice: Marriage License or Just License?" [see page 15]) is a blast from the past that, however quaint in some of its 1950s attitudes, raises more serious arguments against the idea of gay marriage (from a male point of view, at least) than the lemming-like, Pollyanna rush of some same-sexers following the legalization of gay marriage in California.

So far, it has been hard to find any recognition by either the media, gay/lez advocates of marriage, or liberal/left tailenders of marriage of the downsides to marriage (of which divorce and financial commingling are only two, but already child custody squabbles between lesbian couples are producing a bonanza for lawyers). This is shortsighted, to say the least.

The One article, and the letters that follow, raise the issue of how marriage fits, or not, into the long-term goals of a movement fighting for freedom, as well as into the futility of pursuing a hetero institution that is based on monogamy, which plays almost no role in the mammalian heritage. The marriage institution is unnatural. I would quote Charley Shively, contributor to Fag Rag: "I view marriage like going to the toilet: people may need to do it but why do they need to publicize it?" Marriage should be a private, personal matter, in which the state should play no role. Instead of seeking marriage, same-sexers should be fighting to remove the state from approving private cohabitation or conjugal arrangements. All citizens should be treated equally before the state, regardless of who they sleep with or live with. No gravy train or special privileges for couples that are denied to singles (e.g., access to health care, tax breaks...) .

David
Minnesota