From: dorsieh@agora.rain.com (Dorsie Hathaway)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Personal Action
Keywords: ban Clinton action rights
Date: 28 Jan 93 08:08:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: agora.C1K1AD.8pv
Distribution: usa
Organization: Open Communications Forum

Clinton has decided to delay for six months
his proposal to lift the ban on gays in the military.  This is
after meeting tremendous opposition from Congress, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and the far right.  

The ban may be written into law as a rider attached to the Family
Leave Bill, which was twice turned down by the Bush administration.
Clinton had expressed strong support for the Family Leave Bill,
however he might be forced into turning it down if this scenario
is played out.

There were few letters of support, faxes, and phone calls in support
of lifting the ban, compared with the tide in opposition.  Now where
do you suppose this tide came from?  The far right organized their
phone trees a long time ago.  

What are you going to do to stick up for gay rights?  What have
you done?  Are we, are you, doing enough?  Is it enough to write
one letter a day, to write checks to queer activist organizations,
to wear your pink triangle everywhere?  We still have a long way
to go..

Nobody is going to GIVE us our civil rights, and many people, spurred
by fear-and-hate-mongers like the OCA, are actively working to 
deprive us of the same protections afforded to all US citizens by
birth under the Constitution.  What are you doing about it?

I know we are all tired from last year's battle, but we cannot
just crawl into our holes and take a nap.  You can sleep when you're
dead.  For now we have a battle to fight, we have letters to write,
we have phone calls to make, money to donate, actions to show
up for, signs to write, and thousands more people to come out to.

The OCA is on the move again in Oregon.  We have, for the first time
in 12 years, a president who believes in and actively works to
support civil rights for ALL US citizens.  It is not time to relax;
it's time to get together, stand tall, keep talking, keep moving
forward..

If you can spare ten minutes a day to write ONE letter on your word
processor, or scribble out a fax, or compose an e-communication; if
you will out yourself to at least one new person a day; if you will
make one phone call to an elected representative, a relative, an
old friend; if you can skip one fast food meal a week and put the money
in a kitty for gay rights actions; if you can put one or another 
bumper sticker on your car as public testimony to your beliefs;
if you can show up for community actions to battle homophobia,
racism, sexism in our community, you will be part of the tide 
supporting CHANGE.  

Do you suppose that Clinton
would be pulling back to a six-month waiting period if calls to
the White House and the Pentagon and the Congress had been running
8-1 FOR lifting the ban?  Get off your hands and start making
things happen.

Dorsie Hathaway

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-- 
--Dorsie Hathaway, Technical Writer	INTERNET:	Dorsieh@agora.rain.com
					     		Dorsieh@xzact.com
				             AOL:	DorsieH		
--Visualize Whirled Peas


--

-- 
--Dorsie Hathaway, Technical Writer	INTERNET:	Dorsieh@agora.rain.com
					     		Dorsieh@xzact.com
				             AOL:	DorsieH		
--Visualize Whirled Peas
Newsgroups: soc.motss