R002416
Wednesday, March 20, 2002 6:53 PM
Kenneth L. Swick
Hello Sir,
I am writing you in formal protest over your blatant prejudice against gays and lesbians, regarding the September 11th fund. Your mishandling of the situation in which thousands of people, not numbers or statistics died is horrendous. How dare they reclaim the right to money to which they were entitled! How dare they expect that in the land of the free, where all men were created equal unless they prefer sex with their own gender! Whether or not you know of the day to day prejudices which so many of them face, certainly you can empathize with those that lost the loves of their lives. Sir, please read the following paragraph, then close your eyes and imagine.
You are coming home from work, when you can't breathe. You cannot see the buildings, but you can hear the screaming all the same. You pull the car over where you think the road ends, adn step out only to be thrown to the floor by the crowd rushing like a rage past you. Someone helps you up as they run, adn you stumble to your feet only to trip over the debris of dreams and metal buildings made to withstnad everything except an attack on Democracy in the form of an air raid on home ground. You try to ask what happened, but can't intake enough oxygen to breathe, let alone scream. After what seems like hours, you are able to inhale enough and ask what the panic is about, why the feeling in the air is as stale as the air is. They tell you no one knows what is happpening, that the Trade Centers are down. You realize that your loved ones are dead, being on the 71st floor as they were, and you realize things will never be the same. You realize the woman you spent the last five years of intimate moments with is with them in heaven, or in the debris, or wherever it is people go who are murdered like that. Now imagine that you are a lesbian, and that was you.
America came together after that tragedy. Don't tear it apart again. Things will go back to normal too soon anyway, and then the crash landing in consciousness truly will have been for naught.
Thanks for your time,
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