Bad News from San Francisco! - anti-gay ad
Ezekiel Krahlin
B.A.R., The San Francisco Sunday Examiner/Chronicle has printed a
full-page "gays can be cured" advertisement. I have scanned it and
made it available on one of my web pages:
http://thor.prohosting.com/~ezekielk/sf-ad.htm
And here is the letter to the editor I sent them:
(The following letter was sent to numerous media outlets in the United
States, Canada, and other parts.)
---begin letter
August 16, 1998
San Francisco, CA
Dear Editor:
I am typing this letter here in San Francisco, after having read the
FULL PAGE anti-gay ad in this Sunday's Examiner/ Chronicle (August 16,
1998; page A-22). The official excuse by the Examiner's publisher is:
it's their right to free speech, as much as we may abhor it (according
to a news spot on channel 5 10 o'clock news Friday night, August 14).
Well, then, where are the ads from the KKK that Jewish people killed
Jesus, but they can be converted? Or ads from the Aryan White
Resistance, that black people are subhuman, and should be relegated to
zoos? Or from the Idaho Chamber of Commerce proposing that all Chinese
Americans be shipped back to the land of their ancestors? After all,
that's their right to free speech too, isn't it?
The San Francisco Examiner--one of the major newspapers of northern
California--has gladly paid its Judas price of $35,000 to betray its
gay citizens. So much for the marvelous "gay mecca". San Francisco
shall go down in history for the greatest betrayal to its own people.
We have also recently suffered gay bashers and murderers getting off
with no worse than probation...including where one judge blamed the
murderous consequences of a drunk homophobe on "bad alcohol". Not to
mention various gay bashings on MUNI, our local transit, assisted by
its drivers and supported by its union...for which reason I have
renamed this service "The Homophobe Express".
I have never felt that San Francisco at large, has ever cared much for
its gay population. Now, I see my suspicions confirmed: just more
phony hetero liberals stabbing us in the back, while they smile in our
faces. Meanwhile, I suggest massive demonstrations and civil dissent
at the doors of their newspaper building on 5th and Market
Streets...as well as a complete boycott of their business...that all
present subscribers should cease, immediately, buying their brownshirt
newspaper. We should demand that the entire $35,000 should go towards
our own homeless, poor, and disabled lesbian and gay people in the San
Francisco Bay Area. Likewise, all gay reporters and other employees of
the S.F. Chronicle/Examiner should consider a walk-out strike...or
even quit their present jobs.
It is obvious to me that homophobia in America is overwhelming us.
That if it were just a problem with the religious right, it would
never have gone this far. In fact, I conclude that we have far less
hetero friends in political office (or in our homes, neighborhoods,
workplaces and clubs), than most of us care to admit.
San Francisco is a melange of minorities...and we all have our
differences and arguments. Yet all minorities but one, can safely
visit and enjoy neighborhoods of any other minority. It is only us
gays who are so terrorized by the other minorities. And the city does
little about it.
Now's a good time to test whether or not your hetero associates are
really gay-friendly. Don't be assuaged by their claims, "What a
shame!" Let's see 'em put their money where their mouth is. If I were
hetero, and cared about my gay friends, I'd be walking with my head
lowered in shame now...and would put away my public displays of het
affection, for the sake of their freedom and respect
that America still denies us gays. Like Christianity, heterosexuality
has blackened its own reputation so badly, that I think any gay-caring
hetero should avoid that term like a plague, and come up with some new
word to replace "heterosexual".
I think we should have our own interviewers, walking up to straight
couples in gay neighborhoods, and ask them why they feel it's okay to
display their affections in public gay areas, when gays can't do the
same in their straight neighborhoods and hangouts. We should ask them
why they smooch in our bars and clubs, yet don't let us do the same in
theirs. I'd ask them: would they invite their gay friends to hetero
clubs, and encourage them to feel free to smooch...that they'll
protect them if any homophobic outbreak occurs?
I believe that free speech in this country is being abused, and used
as a weapon of hatred against gays. Most other western democracies
have outlawed homophobic attacks--both verbal and physical. Yet they
defend free speech, don't they?
I think that American free speech is a distortion of what it's
supposed to be...in that it wrongly defends even the most violent of
hate speech. All liberties must have their restrictions, else they
soon lose relevance. The restriction on free speech should include the
three following rules:
1) No promoting the injury, death, or torture of another person. (As
in: "Stone those faggots to death.")
2) No invocation of one's religious beliefs to promote the injury,
death, or torture of another person. (As in: "God says these faggots
should be stoned to death.")
3) No promoting prejudice against a people or person, that is known
to provoke violence or other persecution against them or her/him. (As
in: "Would you really let a faggot teach your children?")
Meanwhile (until we earn our freedom as equal-class citizens) I think
we should declare a "Hetero Shame Week", immediately following "Gay
Pride Week"; here in San Francisco and in all other U.S. cities with a
significant lesbian/gay presence. That is...if we don't all get
rounded up first, and tortured in laboratory experiments, or made into
wallets and lamps.
HETERO SHAME WEEK: whereby all public display of hetero affection be
outlawed for that week. Anyone breaking that law would go to jail for
10 days, and be fined $500 (which shall be donated to one or another
les/gay rights organizations). Any hetero who can't afford the steep
fine, or time away from work...ought to heed well the advice to keep
his or her public affections under strict control, for the duration.
See how YOU (heteros) like it!
Sincerely,
Ezekiel J. Krahlin
http://members.xoom.com/ezekielk/
---end letter
---
Let's secede from those who breed,
Make it sin to *not waste seed!
GodHates...@HetBeGone.com
---
My website kicks (but never licks) butt!
http://members.xoom.com/ezekielk/
Ezekiel Krahlin
printing the ugly anti-gay ad! Now, they portray themselves as the
noble defenders of free speech...acting as if this is an invitation
for debate. Nothing needs debating here...plain wrong is plain wrong.
If debate is necessary, it can be done just as easily without printing
this nasty ad. Read on:
EDITORIAL REGARDING THEIR PUBLICATION OF AN ANTI-GAY
AD, FROM THE S.F. EXAMINER/CHRONICLE OF AUGUST 16,
1998, PAGE D-8:
---begin editorial
'HEALING' & HALLUCINATIONS
An advertisement telling gays they can change stirs up debate, But
the message could hoomerang against the 'Christian' sponsors.
SOME PEOPLE want to squelch viewpoints with which they strongly
disagree. As a newspaper, The Examiner defends a very different
value. The position we fight for daily is:
Let a thousand voices be heard. That's the guiding philosophy
behind publication elsewhere in this edition of an advertisement that
promotes the idea of homosexual "healing." It is headlined, "We're
standing for the truth that homosexuals can change."
As individuals, many of us at the newspaper find the views
expressed in this ad abhorrent. The Examiner's editorial position is
that the ad - sponsored by a coalition of Christian groups -
represents a perversion of Christian ideals.
Where, for example, is the notion of Christian charity in the ad's
brutish recitation of the "sins" of gay people? Where is the principle
of Christian brotherhood in the ad's maligning of the feelings and
values of gay people?
The ad suggests the most barbaric of stereotypes about gays. That
God is wreaking punishment on them, through gonorrhea, hepatitis
and other sexually transmitted diseases, for their moral choices.
That being gay is a "sexual sin" which can easily be wiped away by
inducing gays to find and accept their latent heterosexuality. That
gays are made gay by "rejection from early childhood and lack of
bonding to same-sex parents, sexual violence and rape, or mental
and emotional abuse."
The saving grace is that, in San Francisco, such Neanderthalisms
will evoke a collective hoot. But there are perceived dangers, too:
That ads such as this will encourage ostracism of and violence
against gays. That such ads actually destroy Christian values. That
such ads c:reate an added psychological burden for gays and
lesbians who have already suffered too much abuse in a hostile, or
indifferent, mainstream society.
But the answer to bigotry is never to slam the door on free speech.
The remedy is more free speech. The views expressed in this ad -
which has also run in other major newspapers - are no doubt
genuinely held by its sponsors. That's the scary part, not that they
are able to bring those views out of the closet and into print.
Truth is reached by exposing wrong-headed opinions, arguing with
the perpetrators and exposing the fallacies of their positions.
Sunlight truly is the best disinfectant - even for homophobia. Look at
Reggie White, the towering defensive lineman for the Green Bay
Packers, who is featured in another of the religious coalition's
anti-gay ads. His potential career as a TV commentator was ruined
by his public utterances against gays, and his team reprimanded him
for wearing his uniform while proselytizing.
The ad in today's Examiner shows a smilng flock of 850 "former
homosexuals" who gathered at a Seattle meeting of Exodus,
identified as a nationwide ex-gay niinistry, Two of them, John and
Anne Paulk, now a married couple, also appear on the cover of this
week's Newsweek magazine. You can read their story there.
The other 848 individuals surely have their own stories to tell. No
doubt each one is different. That individuality reminds us of another
Christian teaching: That each individual contains a divine spirit
within. No one, certainly no Christian, would want to violate that by
lumping individuals together in a class of "sinners."
As much as the views expressed in today's ad disturb us, it would
bother us more to see them suppressed. Giving exposure to
quackery doesn't mean anyone buys it. Readers with open minds
will weigh what is said, measure it against other evidence and make
up their own minds. We invite you tojoin the debate.
---end editorial