dojR000117.xml

dojR000117.xml

born-digital

email

yes

no

2002-03-11

Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 1:26 PM
9/11 Fund Discrimination


My reaction to the recent comments of Kenneth Feinberg on the March 9th Meet the Press is sheer and utter disbelief and outrage. After the tragedy this nation faced in September, after the months of grieving, healing, and rebuilding, for your organization to deny compensation to the loved ones of gay victims of the September 11th attacks is cruel. It is heartless to tell a group of people that, though they lost loved ones that grizzly day, their loss is not equal to the loss of the other families. That because of who or how they loved, they are somehow lesser Americans. Lesser human beings.

Because a state legally practices discrimination against a part of its populace, you will deny the partners of men and women who died that horrible day the same support you readily give traditional couples. Support you readily give to those who are not even legal citizens of this country! But deny our own people, because of their basic sexual orientation. Does that not seem wrong to you?

Did you ask those who donated what their orientation was before you accepted their money? Or are they good enough to give to charity, just not to receive it. Did you remind the people who freely gave their money, their time, their sympathy, that it would only be given to those just like you? Did they know, as they gave with all their hearts, that they were only giving to a few, not the whole?

What does this say about our country? By all appearances, the tragedies of 9/11 united us, but it's a fragile facade. We are a country, espousing freedom and liberty, defending it in another land, claiming to bring it to people left oppressed, but yet historically, we hand it out to our own citizens conditionally. Sure, you're eligible for it, if you're male. If you're white. If you're straight. If your ideology meets mine. Don't fit those? Well gee, I'm awfully sorry. Next! I'd better count myself lucky for fitting two of those criteria. It's hard enough just being a woman and treated near equally in this country. If I were a woman of color, or gay, or both, I might as well turn in my membership card and look for a nice deserted island to inhabit. I'd surely not be welcome here. And God forbid, my beliefs should be different from the majority.

And now, we dispense our sympathy, our charity, at a time when it is most needed, with conditions as well. What does that say about our country? About our people? About us?

Shame on you. And shame on us.

Individual Comment
Topeka, Kansas

2002-03-11