R002360
Wednesday, March 20, 2002 1:18 PM
9/11 Fund Nondiscrimination Request
We are good enough for airlines to take our money, and then fly us under
attack into fields, buildings, towers. But we are not deemed good enough
to share in the family Victim and Compensation Fund resulting from 9/11.
We are worthy enough to work with firemen and provide last rites, but we
are ignored as a community member except in our own community as a
deserving hero of that gruesome day.
We are co-pilot of one of those planes that was forced by terrorists into
a building, killing us and our passengers. And yet we still are ignored.
We are heroic enough, and called so by United States Senators and
Representatives, when we help thwart terrorist activities on one of the
planes, and yet our loved ones and families are ignored when benefits are
discussed.
We are compassionate enough to raise AIDS and crack babies, and yet not
considered able to adopt them when they already are a part of our family.
We are human enough to want to live our lives the same as everyone else,
wanting to express our love for each other in the right to marry. If we
were married, you say, we would receive benefit from the Fund. But then
you tell us we can't marry!
Indeed, we are loving enough to establish our own families, despite the
threats we receive and failure to get the same benefits as everyone else
outside of our community.
We're your gay and lesbian sons and daughters, brothers and sisters,
mothers or fathers, neighbor, priest or minister or rabbi or other
religious leader, store attendant, performers, instructors, government
workers -- everywhere, in every walk and class of life.
Treat us with the equality you, yourselves, expect to receive from other
people. Show us the same concern you are so willing to show other victims
of the 9/11 who also died that day. Why are deaths in our community any
different from theirs? Include us as part of the humanity we are all a
part of, and with the respect you would wish to have your own family
accorded. For we are of your own families!
Individual Comment