letters tothe editor

President proclaims June to be Gay and Lesbian Pride Month

President Clinton's proclamation of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month missed the deadline for our Pride Guide last week, which contained a Pride message from Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper. The following proclamation was sent out by the White House press office on June 11.

A Proclamation

Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, 1999 By the President of the United States of America

Thirty years ago this month, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, a courageous group of citizens resisted harassment and mistreatment, setting in motion a chain of events that would become known as the Stonewall Uprising and the birth of the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement. Gays and lesbians, their families and friends, celebrate the anniversary of Stonewall every June in America as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month; and, earlier this month, the National Park Service added the Stonewall Inn, as well as the nearby park and neighborhood streets surrounding it, to the National Register of Historic Places.

I am proud of the measures my administration has taken to end discrimination against gays and lesbians and ensure that they have the same rights guaranteed to their fellow Americans. Last year, I signed an executive order that amends federal equal employment opportunity policy to prohibit discrimination in the federal civilian work force based on sexual orientation.

We have also banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in the granting of security clearances. As a result of these and other policies, gay and lesbian Americans serve openly and proudly throughout the federal government. My administration is also work-

ing with congressional leaders to pass the

Employ-ment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit most private employers from firing workers solely because of their sexual orientation.

America's diversity is our greatest strength. But, while we have come a long way on our journey toward tolerance, understanding, and mutual respect, we still have a long way to go in our efforts to end discrimination. During the past year, people across our country have been shaken by violent acts that struck at the heart of what it means to be an American and at the values that have always defined us as a nation. In 1997, the most recent year for which we have statistics, there were more than 8,000 reported hate crimes in our country-almost one an hour. Now is the time for us to take strong and decisive action to end all hate crimes, and I reaffirm my pledge to work with the Congress to pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

But we cannot achieve true tolerance merely through legislation; we must change hearts and minds as well. Our greatest hope for a just society is to teach our children to respect one another, to appreciate our differences, and to recognize the fundamental values that we hold in common.

As part of our efforts to achieve this goal, earlier this spring, I announced that the Departments of Justice and Education will work in partnership with educational and other private sector organizations to reach out to students and teach them that our diversity is a gift.

In addition, the Department of Education has issued landmark guidance that explains federal standards against sexual harassment and prohibits sexual harassment of all students regardless of their sexual orientation; and I have ordered the Education Department's civil rights office to step up its enforcement of anti-discrimination and

speakout

harassment rules. That effort has resulted in a groundbreaking guide that provides practical guidance to school administrators and teachers for developing a comprehensive approach to protecting all students, including gays and lesbians, from harassment and violence.

Since our earliest days as a nation, Americans have strived to make real the ideals of equality and freedom so eloquently expressed in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. We now have a rare opportunity to enter a new century and a new millennium as one country, living those principles, recognizing our common values, and building on our shared strengths.

Now, therefore, I, William J. Clinton, president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 1999 as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. I encourage all Americans to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that celebrate our diversity, and to remember throughout the year the gay and lesbian Americans whose many and varied contributions have enriched our national life.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eleventh day of June, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninetynine, and of the independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-third.

William J. Clinton

The top ten reasons to celebrate

To the Editor:

Saturday, June 19 our day to celebrate, Cleveland Pride 1999. You might be thinking, in light of the Matthew Shepard murder and other hate acts, limited legislative

Continued on facing page

An open letter to Falwell from Mel White

In 1997, the Rev. Dr. Mel White received the ACLU's National Civil Liberties Award for applying the "soul force" principles of Gandhi and King to the liberation of sexual minorities.

He is a co-founder of Soulforce, Inc. and the author of Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America. In 1986, while White was taking aversive therapy and electric shock treatments to "overcome" his own homosexuality, he worked for Simon and Schuster as ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell's autobiography, Strength for the Journey.

Rev. Mel White

Mel is currently training more than 4,000 people through an e-mail Journey into Soulforce to assist him in taking a direct action in the spirit of Gandhi and King against the rhetoric of Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and the other primary religious leaders who are waging war against GLBT people.

This is the opening letter in his campaign against the rhetoric of Jerry Falwell.

June 5, 1999

Dear Jerry,

I've been reading your autobiography again. It still moves me. And I'm not just saying that because I wrote it. Strength for the Journey inspires and informs readers because you talk about your failures and not just your success.

I'm especially moved by those twenty short pages in Chapter 11 that describe your transformation from 1964, when you were a staunch segregationist, to 1968, when you baptized the first black member of Thomas Road Baptist Church.

When I asked you what happened in four short years to change your mind about segregation, you told me stories about the AfricanAmericans you had known and loved from childhood.

"It wasn't the Congress, the courts, or the demonstrators," you assured me. “It was Lewis, the shoeshine man, and Lump Jones, the mechanic, and David Brown, the sensitive, loving black man without a wife or family who lived for most of his adult life in the backroom of our large family home in Lynchburg."

It was obvious that you really cared about those black men, especially David Brown. "He was a good man," you told me. “He helped my mother with the cooking and cleaning. He cared for me and my brother Gene when we were children. He bathed and fed us both. He was like a member of our family."

Then, one day, you and Gene found David Brown lying unconscious and unattended in the lobby of Lynchburg's General Hospital. One portion of his head and face had been crushed from a severe blow with a dull pipe or the barrel of a pistol. He suffered cuts and bruises over his entire body; yet because he was black, he lay dying in that waiting room for 48 hours without medical help.

You and your brother intervened, but your friend was permanently damaged by the racist thugs who left him for dead and by the racist hospital policies that denied him treatment in time.

Do you remember how your eyes filled

with tears when you told me, "I am sorry that I did not take a stand on behalf of the civil rights of David Brown and my other black friends and acquaintances during those early years."

I knew from the sound of your voice, Jerry, that you are still sorry that you did not take a stand for equality in those early years of ministry. Nevertheless, after condemning President Johnson's civil rights legislation as an act of “civil wrong" and after preaching fervently against integration, you had the courage to acknowledge your sinfulness and to end your racist ways.

"In all those years,” you told me, “it didn't cross my mind that segregation and its consequences for the human family were evil. I was blind to that reality.”

Well said, friend. But now I have to ask you one more time. Has it ever crossed your mind that you might be just as wrong about homosexuality as you were about segregation? Could it be that you are blind to a tragic new reality, that the consequences of your anti-homosexual rhetoric are as evil for the human family as were your sermons against integration? Have you thought about the possibility that you are ruining lives, destroying families, and causing endless suffering with your false claims that we are "sick and sinful,” that we “abuse and recruit children," that we “undermine family values?"

In the 1950s and 60s, you misused the Bible to support segregation. In the 1990s you are misusing it again, this time to caricature and condemn God's gay and lesbian children. Once you denied black Christians the rights (and the rites) of church membership. Now it's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and Continued on page 10

GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

Volume 14, Issue 51

Publisher: Martha J. Pontoni Business Manager: Patti Harris Managing Editor: Doreen Cudnik Associate Editor: Brian DeWitt

Senior Staff Writer: Dawn E. Leach Reporters & Writers:

Mubarak S. Dahir, Beren deMotier, Bob Findle, John Graves, Mark J. Huisman, Kaizaad Kotwal, M.T. Martone, Jeffrey Newman, Michelle Nichols, Harriet L. Schwartz, Kirk Read, Eric Resnick, Bob Roehr, Rex Wockner, John Zeh

Art Director: Christine Hahn

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