From: kcochran@nyx.cs.du.edu (Keith "Justified And Ancient" Cochran)
Subject: Re: Colorado Amendment 2: The First Fatality
Followup-To: /dev/null 
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Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 00:54:03 GMT

In article <1992Nov11.201716.16445@news.eng.convex.com> tchrist@convex.com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>
>    From the front page of Colorado Springs' _Gazette_Telegraph_ 
>		    Wednesday, 11 November 1992
>		    REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION
>
>	    Amendment's OK `last straw' for trouble gay man
>		    Suicide note places blame
>		by Angela Dire/Gazette Telegraph
>
>A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it.
>
>Dying from AIDS, distraught over the death of a close friend, Marty
>Wayne Booker put a lot of meaning into Amendment 2.
>
>For him, it was more than a constitutional ban on laws protecting gays
>from discrimination.  A powerful symbol, perhaps.  An excuse, maybe.
>Whatever it was or whatever it meant to the deeply troubled 26-year-old
>Colorado Springs man, it obsessed him in the final minutes before he
>took his life.
>
>``I refuse to live in a state where a few people can, at will, make my
>life a living hell,'' he wrote in his suicide note the day after the
>election.  ``Thanks to CFV, hell was delivered to my very front door!''
>
>It was a reference to Colorado for Family Values, the Colorado Springs
>group that drafted Amendment 2.  Leaders of the organization did not
>return phone calls Tuesday.
>
>``I suppose I'm weak,'' Booker scrawled as a postscript, ``but it took
>a lot of courage before I would have to live through the `Auschwitz'
>CFV has in mind for people like me!  I love you all.  I'm sorry my
>crime in life was LOVE -- albeit to the same gender.''
>
>And with the security chain fastened on his apartment door, and with a
>box of Kleenex nearby, Booker loaded his stomach with a drug his
>doctors had proscribed to calm anxiety.  That soon mixed with the
>alcohol he'd already drunk.  A police officer and Booker's best friend,
>Matthew Miller, found him the next day, lying next to a trash can full
>of tear-strained tissues.
>
>To some, Booker's suicide is an extreme example of the psychological
>toll Amendment 2 has taken on gays and lesbians in Colorado.  ``This
>kind of a law touches gay men and lesbians in the part of their lives
>they struggle with the most -- the acceptance of their environment and
>the people around them,'' said Alan Cook, a Colorado Springs
>psychotherapist who counsels gays.
>
>The day after the election, many of his clients called him in anguish
>over the law.  But since then, he says, their despair has turned to
>determination, and they've begun to take positive steps.  ``A number of
>my clients that have been closeted have since come out and expressed to
>family and friends and exposers that they're gay and they're concerned
>about this law,'' he said.
>
>But for Booker, friends and family say, the passage of Amendment 2
>drove a desperate man deeper into despair.  ``It was the law stray,''
>said the 28-year-old Miller, who had known Booker since high school.
>
>Far from the tearful man who took his own life, Booker was known around
>town as a partygoer with a smile.
>
>``Everyone loved him,'' said his aunt Edna Minnick, who raised him from
>age 12.
>
>As a student at Wasson High School, Booker participated in theater,
>sang in the church choir, and excelled in all his classes.  Minnick
>recalls helping her nephew research a report on AIDS and how to prevent
>its spread.  But years later Minnick would lament that his knowledge of
>the subject didn't keep him from contracting AIDS.  He learned he had
>the disease around 1990.
>
>Booker tried to keep up his spirits.  ``He would say, `Honey, I'm going
>to die with a cigar in one hand and a rum and coke in the other,' ''
>Miller recalled.
>
>Booker volunteered at the Lambda House for AIDS patients and was a
>faithful participant in an annual marathon to raise money for those
>with the disease.
>
>But the disease began to take its toll.  He gave up his dreams of
>finishing college and becoming a computer accountant.  ``What's the
>point?'' he once told Miller, ``in getting a degree to die.''
>
>One by one, he watches friends die from AIDS.  It got so when he opened
>the newspaper, said Miller, he would turn to the obituaries to see if
>he knew anyone.''
>
>About four months ago, Booker had tired to kill himself.  Joe Brady,
>owner of a local gay bar, the Hide and Seek, had a long talk with him.
>Brady offered him a part-time job to try to lift his spirits and get
>his mind off dying.  ``I told him, `Marty, there's some power higher
>than you who wants to save your life.'  It seemed to make a lot of
>sense to him at the time.''
>
>Then came another blow.   One of Booker's lesbian friends, Wendy
>McDowell, committed suicide by a drug overdose September 1.  They had
>been the kind of friends who wore matching clothes, who scheduled their
>classes together at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
>With Wendy gone, said Brady, everyone worried that Booker would lose
>his will to live once and for all.
>
>``I love and miss my Wendy too much!'' he was to write in his suicide
>note.
>
>the last time Miller saw his friend was the day after the election.  As
>usual, they met for cocktails at the lounge in the Satellite Hotel.
>The two commiserated over the passage of Amendment 2.  Booker hinted at
>suicide.  But by the time they left, Miller thought he'd cheered up his
>friend.
>
>``A person get from a symbol the meaning he puts into it.''
>
>It was a former U.S. Supreme Court justice who once wrote those words.
>And in the end, it was Booker how lived them.  Not even his best friend
>or the aunt who raised him knew just how powerful a symbol Amendment 2
>was for Booker.
>
>``He cared a lot what others thought, and I think he got a lot of his
>self-validation from other people,'' Miller said.  ``He embraced
>everybody.  That's why it was so disappointing to him that he wasn't
>equally embraced.''
>
>As Booker sat in his small apartment, alone and outcast and
>deteriorating from AIDS, the victory of Amendment 2 must have the the
>ultimate rejection.  ``Prejudice and discrimination take many forms,''
>said Miller.  ``There is a subtle form when they look down their nose
>at you.  But this was very tangible, very real.''
>
><<END OF STORY>>
>
>Typed in by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.com>
>All typos are mine.
>
>Please pass this along to whoever you think can handle it.  The paper's
>phone number is 719-632-5511.  You can at least call them and give them
>your support for their having published this.  They get a lot of hatecalls
>against this type of reporting, and are really pleased to get your calls.
>I know -- I already did so.
>
>You can also phone or fax in a letter to the editor.  If you want to
>send a hardcopy letter, direct it to:
>
>    Gazette Telegraph
>    Box 1779 
>    Colorado Springs 80901
>
>    GENERAL: 		719-632-5511 (this is what i called)
>    PHONE LETTERS: 	719-473-1919 (for letters to the editor)
>    FAX: 		719-636-0202 (ditto)
>    MODEM: 		719-636-0127 (dunno what this is for)
>
>
>Most of the letters to the editor are from CFV and people of their ilk.
>Today for example, was a CFV backer once again misstating that 
>`Gays don't need special rights', which really isn't the case at all.
>Amendment 2 denies gays rights the same recourse that anyone else has.
>It singles them out to have fewer rights than other groups.  You
>can read about this in some of the various newsgroups this was posted to.
>
>If you want to go further than calling the paper, here's the 
>Governor's office:
>
>          Governor Roy Romer
>          136 State Capitol Building
>          Denver, CO 80203
>          (303) 866-2471
>
>And other agencies:
>
>          Colorado Office of Tourism
>          1625 Broadway Suite 1700
>          Denver, CO  80202
>          (303) 592-5510
>
>          Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry
>          1776 Lincoln Street Suite 1200
>          Denver, CO 80203
>
>
>-- 
>Wherever, therefore, it has been established that it is shameful to
>be involved in homosexual relationships, this is due to evil on the
>part of the legislators, to despotism on the part of the rulers, and to
>cowardice on the part of the governed. -- Plato, "Symposium"


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