TRANSVESTIA

not make the distinction. Thus if the gays are suppressed and dis- criminated against, it will be discrimination against you and other FPs, too, and don't forget it. When reaction gets under way, it doesn't stop with the suppression or elimination of just one minority. When what is considered the worst is out of the way the previously next- worst becomes THE worst and it in turn becomes the victim.

The Jews learned that the hard way in Germany. When the Nazis had finished off various political minorities-communists, homo- sexuals, and free thinkers of other types-they came to the Jews and they became the least desireable group and you all know what hap- pened after that.

So what am I leading up to? Just this... you don't have to be black to realize and to speak out for the human rights of black people. You don't have to be a female to recognize the rightness of the Women's Movement. You don't have to be Irish, or Japanese, Catholic, Amish or Jewish, or a member of any other minority group to recog- nize that in a pleuralistic society like America, ALL people have a right to live out their lives in their own way providing they don't injure somebody else's rights in the process. Thus you don't have to be gay to take the position that they, too, have a right to live, to have a job, to be able to rent an apartment, and the other things that the Miami ordinance attempted to guarantee them. Therefore I urge each of you in your own way to speak out about the absurdity of what happened in Miami because if you don't, it's liable to happen in your town or city, and if it does, remember you either go under- ground like the old days, or you live in fear of being classified as gay and treated accordingly. The time to stop a leak in the dam of tolerance and understanding that holds back the waters of bigotry and repression is when the leak is small-like the little Dutch boy. who stuck his finger in the hole in the dike. We'd all better get in there and put in some good words against bigotry and intolerance NOW when there is only a trickle of it. When it gets to be a tide or a flood, it will be much too late-for you as well as for them. Think about it.! You don't have to give people the impression that you are gay or that you are promoting gayness, but you can say to most any one of most every opportunity that Anita Bryant's crusade should be stopped in its tracks or bigotry, intolerance and repression will be right around the corner.