BSERVATIO

PERSECUTION OF MINORITIES

Virginia

By this time I imagine everyone has heard all about the Dade County Florida election and the way Anita Bryant and her reaction- ary backers managed to win an election whose purpose was to revoke a municipal ordinance guaranteeing nondiscrimination against gays in housing and unemployment.

Now right off the top probably there are a lot of you who are very strongly anti-homosexual and are saying "bravo" to Anita Bryant. I hope by this time you will all know that I'm neither personally gay nor am I a promoter of that way of life. However, I think the circum- stances warrant making some comments about the Miami event that some of the less thoughtful among you might take as indication of a pro-gay slant on my part. But that is a chance I will have to take. It is important to all FPs to understand what is going on in this matter.

As you are all aware, we have been living in a more and more open and permissive society. There are those, particularly the funda- mentalist religious sects who would like to push society back to Victorian times if they could. There is a wave of reaction under way in this country today and you ought to be aware of it. Anita and her activities in Florida are only a small aspect of it. There may be a lot of things about a more permissive world that you don't care for or support that goes for me, too. But I want to point out to you all that FPs enjoy a much more tolerant climate today than they did when I started TVia 17 years ago. Neither freedom nor repression are very selective-they tend to be all or none kinds of things. Thus if the anti-gay rights movement is successful, you can expect a lot less freedom for yourself, too. Remember that as far as society is concerned, FPs are the same as gays. Society in its ignorance does