Dear Editor:

I agree with Steve Sallis wholeheartedly, The novelty of pomp and pageantry is so passé The Sisters pushing their own brand of laughable exorcism regarding the shame and guilt mindset that usually accompanies organized religion, really puts a immature, selfish, rude discrediting and unflattering light of themselves.

Really now, are we supposed to take them seriously?

The “Teen Bill of Rights” made at BattleCry.com questioning the whoring of the fabricated mass media and calling for the Truth of the American idiom and belief systems (Christian or not) AND working toward their own political clout, is a welcome and sorely needed breath of fresh air that this new generation is paying attention and asking all the right questions. I applaud them loudly!!!

To get back to the Sisters, the whole “Perpetual Indulgence” part doesn’t sit well with me being as that it means to “never be satiated.” Uhhh…..

I am a Recovering Addict and Alcoholic and my own life of “perpetual indulgence” with drugs and alcohol was a marriage made in HELL…..So, once again, I’m back in a place of having “Been There, Done That”

Today, I only desire and work tirelessly for a life, free from the bondage of self and want nothing of yesterday because it’s passed already and tomorrow’s not here yet.

So my $64.00 question for the Sisters is: What is it that you actually do contribute and are working towards to get into the Solution from the many, many problems that we face as a society besides blasphemizing and turning the yucky parts of organized religion into a mockery? Inquiring minds want to know…

Robert W. Fuller

Dear Editor:

I didn’t read the editorial, “Should we side with the Sisters?,” in your April 26 issue until I had already returned from the pitiful excuse for a protest outside the Cox Arena at San Diego State University April 27, at which up to 1,000 young people being mobilized to “Aquire [sic] the Fire” for Jesus Christ, or at least a strongly anti-Queer and anti-women’s rights version thereof, were met by … six people: three members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in full faux-nun drag, one man in leather with his face painted like one of the Sisters, Queer Nation San Diego founder Keith Ramsey in a black shirt and blue jeans, and me as a representative of the Queer media (not your Queer media, alas, but mine, Zenger’s Newsmagazine).

Aquire the Fire (that’s what it said on the Cox Arena marquee advertising the event), also known as BattleCry, isn’t just your average born-again Christian rally. The people I saw who had come for the event were being warmed up outside and were already giving raised-arm salutes for Jesus the way the extras in the film Triumph of the Will did for Hitler. These rallies are being held on college campuses all over the nation because the radical Right’s leaders can read the polls: they see the evidence of a younger generation more accepting of Queers in general and same-sex marriage in particular and they’re out to mobilize the faithful to reverse that trend and create a cadre amongst young people who will carry on their battle to make the U.S. a “Christian nation,” erode the separation of church and state, once again (with the help of Bush’s Supreme Court) enslave women to their wombs and recriminalize homosexual acts.

And on our side, what do we see? These unnamed “local GLBT-friendly religious organizations” who were mulling over a protest against BattleCry a.k.a. Aquire the Fire until they wimped out for fear of being associated with a bunch of Queer men dressed as nuns and taking on “racy” pseudonyms. The same wimps who didn’t want the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at the AIDS Walk — even though one thing they’re damned good at is raising money — because, in the prissy words of your editorial, the Walk is “now labeled a family event with thousands of participating families and children.”

Earlier I made the parallel between the BattleCry/Aquire the Fire types and the Nazis. I don’t mean that to slam every young person who attends such a conference — the ones we actually had a chance to talk to seemed like genuinely warm human beings seeking to grow and develop their spiritual sides — but it’s clear what the agenda of the organizers is. And, tragically, in responding to them we’re duplicating the mistakes the Nazis’ opponents in Germany made in the early 1930’s: minimizing the threat they posed, continuing to argue amongst themselves, refusing to unite on the pettiest grounds imaginable, even declaring each other the “worst” enemies.

When the Nazis took power, they didn’t care whether you’d been a Communist, a Socialist, a Social Democrat, a Centrist, a Gypsy, a Jew, a homosexual, or just an ordinary decent human being appalled by a movement that made racism, militarism and genocide its official organizing principles. You went to the same concentration camps. And if the radical Right gets its way and turns American into a Christian Fascist nation, it won’t matter whether we donned nun’s habits and outrageous makeups or worked our way into good-paying white-collar jobs and begged the government for the right to marry our partners. It’s time to turn our community’s shame — for that’s exactly what our failure to mobilize and turn out en masse on April 27 was: shameful — into unity and power. In the face of a common enemy, we have to come together or we will have time between the concentration camps and the gas chambers to ponder why we failed to stop them when we had the chance.

Mark Gabrish Conlan

Dear Editor:

In response to a Mr. John Primavera if he really exists. I wanted to just point out how low some adults in today’s society are willing to stoop. I found the article which I felt was directed towards mostly myself for merely supporting someone. It’s truly child’s play on the adults part. Instead of setting an example or just letting his view and opinion be known he states that in the view of my “foggy” mind, I am trying to lead people to believe some sort of “sinister” plot. Not the case at all, I simply was expressing my views and shedding light on fact not opinion. I feel his article is quite comical if anything else can come out of it. What I am trying to accomplish within our community is unity and the ability to work together. Yet in this day and age some individuals see that as a threat, which sure has me asking why. Generation Y is slowly making its way into society, socially and politically which will force some negative mentalities of the Generation X out for good. I have only one purpose and that is to unite and take back control of our community from corruption and cronyism. Back to the way it was according to archives, mixed and together. Not so segregated as it is now. According to archives Gay and Lesbians had mixed bars, not bars and functions catering mostly to either male or female.

A lot of youth including myself merely sit back and observe. Then laugh at how some just tear each other down and apart to “get to the top” in our lovely community of San Diego. I have a feeling that Generation Y is what is going to help lead the progression of uniting our community further as well as taking the lead which will ultimately lead to unheard of levels of progress. So Mr. Primavera attack away words merely give many others including myself of our Generation Y motivation and fuel. Thanks for the laugh!

Raymond Portillos - Leon