R001213
Saturday, March 16, 2002 7:59 PM
A decidedly Un-American policy
To:
Kenneth L. Zwick, Director
Office of Management Programs
Civil Division
U.S. Department of Justice
Dear Mr. Zwick,
I am writing to express my disgust and outrage at the
policy the Dept. of Justice has chosen to pursue in regards
to homosexual victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
You, your department, and the Bush administration have
chosen not to give the same-sex partners of these victims
the same automatic access to the victims' compensation
fund that heterosexual partners, illegal aliens and even
unborn fetuses are being given. This is quite simply unfair,
unjust, un-Christian and decidedly un-American.
We are supposed to be living in a land where all citizens
are "created equal," but you are selectively denying
access to the fund to a specific set of full American citizens
while providing such access to illegal aliens (non-citizens)
and to fetuses (not technically or legally "created" yet).
You claim that you cannot extend such rights, since
homosexual partnerships are not legally recognized in
most states, and only for state employees in the few states
that do recognize them. This argument is specious. There
is no federal law granting any rights or recognition
of legal status to unborn fetuses, and very few states have
any such laws in the area of inheritance or survivor benefits.
And there are numerous federal and state laws specifically
denying access to all manner of public benefits to illegal
aliens, as well as laws that mandate their expulsion from
the country upon detection and punishment for companies
that employ them. In both of these areas you are choosing
to either go beyond state and federal law or ignore and
countermand it. In fact, the FBI's investigations post-9/11
have made it abundantly clear that non-citizens, be they
legal or illegally immigrated, do not have the same rights
as the rest of the us.
And tell me, Mohammed Attah was just recently confirmed
as having a valid student visa and thus was a *legal*
temporary immigrant to this country...will you allow his
family to apply for compensation, but still deny the
applications of full citizens who just happen to have a different definition of love and family?
Your reasons for providing access to the compensation
fund for unborn children and the relatives of illegal aliens
arise simply from an emotional appeal to fairness and a
sense of justice. You rightly conclude that many people
would be outraged if the federal government were to
use the events of September 11th as a means to increase
an illegal immigrant family's woes by deporting them, or to
deny a newborn orphan the benefits a child born just a few
months earlier was entitled to. I wholeheartedly agree with
these policies. They appeal to my inborn, Christian sense
of fairness and justice.
But I am telling you that, as an American, I am outraged at
the exclusion of the surviving partners in homosexual
relationships from the victims' compensation fund. You are
bending or breaking state and federal laws in the other two
cases, why not these?
The obvious answer is that you fear a backlash from the
cultural conservatives and religious fundamentalists which
form a small but powerful element within the Republican
party. And you assume that the rest of the American
public will simply not care enough to notice or act on any
outrage that they have. You fear that if you give surviving
same-sex partners access to the fund that these
fundamentalist elements will accuse the administration of
providing "official endorsement" of the homosexual
lifestyle.
Again, this is specious. No court of law would allow an
illegal alien family to fight their deportation on the grounds
that the victims' fund provided evidence of the
governments "sponsorship" of their illegal immigrant
lifestyle. Nor will any abortion law court cases hinge on
this fund's recognition of the unborn.
And what is most offensive is that by writing policy to avoid
their negative reaction, you are giving these fundamentalist
groups the defacto power to legislate their exclusionary,
often hate-filled beliefs. Their inability to tolerate and
co-exist with different views of the world and their strident
attempts to legislate their beliefs make them dangerously
close cousins to the religious fundamentalists that form the
Taliban and Al-Quaeda.
I most strongly urge you to reconsider your policy. It would
be quite easy to include same-sex surviving partners in the
victims' compensation fund, and to model the requirements
of their inclusion after the policies of those states that have
already drawn up requirements for domestic partnerships.
The fact that so few states provide any legal recognition
for this type of committed relationship places a whole
level of new and unique hardships on these families that
heterosexual families never even have to consider. Issues
of inheritance, mortgages, property rights, custody of your
deceased partner's children...these are things that a
legally-recognized widow or widower can take for granted.
By denying a same-sex surviving partner access to the
victims' compensation fund you are only heaping further
unfair tragedy and hardship into their lives, much as you
would if you were to deport the survivors of an illegal
immigrant victim. And these people are full American citizens. Contrary to what extreme conservatives might
believe, their sexual orientation doesn't make them any
less so.
The best thing that we as Americans can do in memory of
those lost in the tragic events of Sept. 11th is to set an
example to the rest of the world that America is a land of
acceptance and tolerance, not hatred and exclusion.
Be fair. Be just. Open the fund to ALL Americans.
Sincerely,
Individual Comment