A001013
Wednesday, December 05, 2001 7:16 PM
Compensation for Gay Survivors
I am writing out of my concern that gay and lesbian surviving partners of victims of the World Trade Center and other terrorist attacks be granted full compensation as other lifetime partners are receiving. This is only moral and fair. What I am seeing is that a "wife" of a married victim under the current definition, even if married only six months, is receiving lifetime support and funding, while gay partners, even if they were together 50 years or more, are receiving nothing in their grief. This incredible and intolerable injustice must end. Gay men and women were among the victims and the heroes of our recent tragedies. One gay man confronted the terrorists directly, by the existing evidence of the Pennsylvania plane downing, and is a true American hero is every sense of the word. To treat such heroes and victims so shabbily is not worthy of our great nation. We must grant full financial support to gay partners of the terrorists victims that if fully equal to that provided married life partners. To do anything else is evil and Un-American. Even now, Germany is paying compensation to gay men and women for the injustice visited to them in the Nazi era. America should be choosing higher ground. Let's do the moral and right thing--not the narrow-minded, bigoted and perversely evil thing. God knows the difference between right and wrong, just as he knows the difference between truly devout people and the detestable Jerry Falwells of the world. It is so easy and simple-minded to hate. And so wrong. God bless America.
Individual Comment
Miami, FL