THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 28, 1995 TAG: 9508260035
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 37 lines
Two items that appeared recently in the papers will have attracted the attention of your gay and lesbian readers and their friends and families: a local news article and an opinion column.
When I first read of the brutal murder of William A. Jones Jr., I noted the telltale marks of an anti-gay assault: horrific bloodletting attacks by several individuals against one. As staff writer June Arney's article of Aug. 12 confirms, the accused murderers thought or fantasized that Jones was gay, thus prompting the attack with cinder blocks and a broken bottle. As a gay activist, I am unfortunately familiar with this typical pattern of violence against us. Whether or not Mr. Jones was gay is immaterial; in the American hate-culture, difference of any kind is a threat that must be eradicated.
The second item was an opinion column by the typically venomous Cal Thomas cautioning against the American Psychiatric Association's adoption of a gay-positive resolution, citing a ``scientific'' approach. A former flack for Jerry Falwell's defunct Moral Majority, Thomas will take any opportunity to verbally bash activism on behalf of gay equality. Like his cronies in the right-wing pulpits, Thomas preaches that gays and lesbians are harbingers of the end-times and the proximate cause of American decline, a view that hardly seems ``scientific.''
Is it any wonder that right-wing leaders' anti-gay rhetoric gets translated into anti-gay street violence?
THOMAS L. LONG
Norfolk, Aug. 16, 1995 by CNB