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Issue 1004
March 25, 2008
Winning Bette

Dear Miss M: I absolutely love you to pieces, and we New Yorkers are deeply indebted to you for your tireless efforts with NYRP. However, I must strongly disagree with your position on same-sex marriage. Discrimination under the law is wrong - no ifs, ands, or buts. Slavery was wrong. Denying women the right to vote was wrong. Racial segregation was wrong. ANY violation of civil rights is wrong, plain and simple. Just as with past inequities, activists must speak out for what they feel is right, and that often involves calling folks to task. Would you have advised abolitionists that "Rome wasn't built in a day?" Dr. King and Malcolm X that they needed "to give people a chance to get acclimated to it" vis-a-vis civil rights for African-Americans? Would you have been mollified with a "wait-and-see" attitude if the board of your East Side co-operative had been able to deny you your home simply because they could still practice the restrictive anti-Semitic policies of the recent past? To continue denying millions of Americans -- the vast majority of whom are tax-paying, law-abiding, contributing adult members of society, many with dependent children -- the 1,100-plus legal rights and protections granted by civil marriage is wrong. Period.

Bill Poock
New York, N.Y.
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