Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Department of Justice Emails Description An account of the resource The Department of Justice received more than 11,000 e-mails in response to the agency's public solicitation for comments upon its plans to distribute the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 established by Congress to benefit the victims of September 11 and their families. These e-mails have been organized here by date. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. Wednesday, March 13, 2002 9:33 AM TGay partners of 9/11 Victims Dear Mr. Feinberg, I am writing to ask you to re-consider your policy with regard to surviving partners of gay and lesbian people who died in the WTC tragedy. I gather that the law will not be the determining factor in whether partners of illegal aliens receive compensation from the 9/11 fund, and that they will not be subject to prosecution or deportation if they make claims. I applaud that policy. At the same time, you have said that state law will determine whether or not gay partners receive compensation. Considering what those state laws tend to be, this double standard sends a powerful message. Are gay and lesbian individuals and their children unworthy of compassion or care? Gay and lesbian couples often have children, just like other families. In some instances the biological parent will have died in the WTC, while the non-biological co-parent did not. The co-parent will be left to raise their children. In other cases, the non-biological parent, and primary breadwinner for the family, will have died in the WTC, leaving the biological parent to raise the children without support. This policy harms not only the surviving partners and children of gay WTC victims, but also their extended families and their friends. Your policy tells ALL who lost a gay person they loved that theirs is a lesser loss than that of others because a gay person has less worth. Gay people have mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents and aunts and uncles and godparents. Your policy hurts the entire U. S., every single U. S. citizen or resident, by giving the message that some human beings are of less value than others. Finally, the message inherent in your policy is devastating to gay and lesbian people in the U. S. and throughout the world. Gay and lesbian people are human. They love and grieve just like other humans. They have the same funeral expenses , the same financial problems, the same needs for trauma resolution. They have the same need to feel that they are a part of the human family, and a part of their own country. What does it mean that the U. S. -- the world's leader, the most powerful nation on Earth, the world's shining beacon of equality -- discriminates against an entire group of people? Again, I ask you to re-consider your policy and to award funds to surviving partners and children of gay and lesbian people who were lost in the shared national tragedy of 9/11. If ever there were a time for a higher law to rule the day . . . this is that time. Thank you, Individual Comment Houston, Tx September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-03-13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource dojR000588.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2002-03-13