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PRIDE
FESTIVAL
Saturday, June 10th
The PRIDE FESTIVAL will be at Municiple Auditorium on Saturday, June 10. PFLAG will have a booth (#302) where we will distribute literature, talk with folks about PFLAG, and sell our merchandise. Come help out at the booth any time between 9:00AM and 3:00PM.
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Excerpt from a letter written by Charles Jorgenson to Minnie, Judy, and
Helen, our attendees to the Millennium March:
Dear Winnie, Judy, and Helen:
Greetings to my all-time favorite PFLAG people ever! This letter comes from
your newly adopted son in Arizona. I hope my note finds you all happy and
healthy, and still beaming from the incredible experience we had just 5 days
ago! I am still inspired and overwhelmed by that weekend...wow, what an
event it was! I think we made history - a crowd the size of 700, 000 is not
your everyday occurrence. I have no doubt at all that it was a life-changing
event, that hearts and lives were forever changed because of that day.
Thank
you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there - for
having convictions, and standing up for what is right, and for deciding to
spread love in a community that has been the recipient of so much hatred (and
other junk). When I meet people like you, it reminds me that there is always
hope. You are my heroes and I honor you for what you did. To think that you
just made up your mind and made it a priority to travel from Kansas City to
Washington, DC to be a part of this thing - for the benefit of people that
you don’t even yet know - seems like nothing short of a miracle. God must be
so happy with you...as all of your new friends (and a few new sons) certainly
are. You deserve to be the next faces printed on the box of Wheaties cereal.
I am so proud to have been able to be in the march with you, and I shall
never forget it. I hope you will realize someday how profoundly grateful we
are for you and your acceptance and your love. Here’s to you Winnie, and
to you Judy, and to you Helen.
.....Let’s make this the year that we change the world. What better time
than now, as we stand at the edge of a new millennium. I remind myself
everyday that actions speak louder than words, so my wish is that our
actions---the way we conduct ourselves and live our lives...will be more
effective in reaching peoples’ hearts than our most eloquent words.
My best regards and heartfelt thanks to you,
Chuck
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PFLAG Committed to Safe Schools
For the last two years, Safe Schools have been PFLAG's top priority, locally and nationally.
We recognize that schools are "ground zero" in our efforts to curb homophobia.
G/l/b/t youth face unspeakable harassment and abuse in schools. What's more, young people are learning in schools that it's acceptable to hate g/l/b/t people.
The average high school student hears 25 anti-gay slurs daily; 97 percent of high school students regularly hear homophobic remarks.
This harassment takes its toll: Gay students are far more likely to skip classes, drop out of school and/or commit suicide.
PFLAG makes schools safer in ways nobody else can. As families, our voices carry tremendous weight in schools.
And because PFLAG is in 425 communities in the nation, our work is localized, reaching even some of the smallest schools in rural America.
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Excerpted from a letter to the editor by Sharon Underwood
For the Valley News (White River Junction, Vermont/ Hanover, New
Hampshire). It’s long but good.
As the mother of a gay son, I’ve seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.
Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont.
I am the mother of a gay son and I’ve taken enough from you good people.
I’m tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children.
You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.
My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade.
He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.
He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like other other boys.
He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair.
I don’t know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn’t put him, and millions like him, on this earth to give you someone to abuse.
God gave you brains so that you could think, and it’s about time you started doing that.
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join.
The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won’t get to choose.
Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don’t know.
I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own morality, you’d best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality.
You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part.
It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it.
For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I’m puzzled.
Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will?
If that’s not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
You religious folk just can’t bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness.
It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.
You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings.
There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant.
God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.
The "deep-thinking" author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving...to be better human beings than we are?"
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?
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