Dear Editor:

While I share Jay Murley’s disgust at the Poway High School student who wore a t-shirt declaring “Homosexuality is shameful,” I do not share his anger at The LGBT Center for its position on the matter (Letters, 6/10). Instead, I applaud The Center for taking a principled stand.

The Center is known for its quick and persistent response to incidents of discrimination in our schools. In this case, however, The Center appears to have concluded that the language used, however appalling, did not technically constitute hate speech under the law, and instead was constitutionally-protected speech.

Our community depends heavily upon our constitutionally-protected freedom of expression. But we cannot claim for ourselves a freedom that we would deny to others. In recognizing this student’s freedom, The Center reinforces our own.

Stephen Whitburn

Dear Editor:

Lee Schoenbart’s assertions about Ronald Reagan (GLT #859, June 10, 2004) berate him for being no “champion of the average American.” Mental cases, he says , “were put on the streets” by his “closing the state’s mental health facilities.” Both the ACLU

and the California legislature, if I remember correctly, had as much to do with this as Reagan, declaring such facilities to be cruel and unusual punishment. For the record, his three predecessors could only manage a balanced budget once, in 1969. The entire decade of the 1970s was a deficit-spending decade. Not until 1996 when Bill Clinton declared “the era of big spending is over,” did attitudes start to change in Washington.

It’s true that Reagan’s military budget was one of the biggest boosts to happen in times of relative peace. Yet it was necessary to counter Soviet expansion into Afghanistan and Central America. Our old enemies as well as the rest of the world needed to know that the post-Vietnam “malaise” was not a sign that we no longer ought to engage those who threatened smaller countries. He reminded us the Cold War still was a reality and that to do nothing would be appeasement. His determination eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet empire after 70 years of expansionism. That Schoenbart compares this record to Hitler means he remembers little of world history, or is a die-hard liberal resentful whenever a conservative proves his ilk wrong.

He then goes on to say what “a screw-up his vice president would be.” So was Kennedy’s, come to think of it; or does he think of LBJ as a hero for giving us that pretty monument in Washington with the names of 58,000 dead Americans on it?

Finally, Schoenbart laments that Reagan was too ill to see “how AIDS now ravages the entire planet.” I can remember back in the early days of the crisis when gay activists referred to it as a “health emergency” and told us a cure was possible if a million or two were spent on research; were another lab monkey be injected with the deadly virus so that antibodies can be found. Reagan appointed a national commission to launch an investigation of AIDS. Not only was he not thanked for this but many “responsible” leaders in the gay community thought this move would lead to govt. repression! When bathhouses were closed by health authorities in San Francisco, gays wanted to recall that city’s mayor! In truth, the cultural demands created by gays actually helped spread the crisis. Fear of repression created as much paranoia among gays as the disease itself! A united front was needed; but fear in many circles both gay AND straight made even discussing it a taboo. Sex was not a topic politicians were comfortable discussing in public. Reagan was no exception. Besides, he owed few favors to a community that opposed his candidacy. Reagan did appoint a Health Secretary who helped to create a diagnosis of HIV to use in testing. But blaming him for the many deaths from something totally unknown to science is like blaming Marconi for rap music! Had he made AIDS a priority, today he’d likely be blamed for the deaths of breast cancer victims for not making a cancer cure his priority. But we in the gay community were not allowed – like the rest of the world – to use the words “AIDS victims” … that was a politically incorrect no, no. Instead, “AIDS patients” had to suffice. That denial could be deadly was brought home when actor Rock Hudson was known to be a victim. Then and only then was the full scope of AIDS made known to everybody. Five years later.

Today, activists still seek to cover their tracks by making Reagan the scapegoat. He let us down, they say, and those gays too young to remember will parrot this line. I never voted for Reagan; but for the gays who did the truth of those early years should not be drowned in a sea of vindictiveness.

John Primavera