Letters to the Editor
Letters to the
Editor
Out in the Mountains welcomes your letters. Although we will withhold names from printing upon request, the letter must be accompanied by a verifiable name and address in order to be considered for publication. We try to print every letter we receive, bu reserve the right to edit for space and clarity. Letters are also subject to the editorial policy stated in the masthead.
Wrong Attitude for ASOs?
I don’t know when I’ve been so offended as I was on reading your article about “HIV/AIDS Funding Rules.” AIDS services are specialized services, yet here is the director of the AIDS Community Resource Network in White River Junction, Tom Mock, urging that strictly limited funding should be opened up to “any group” who can “write up a proposal.” Susan Bell, director of the Brattleboro Area AIDS Project, concurs: “If we can’t stand that competition, we’re in the wrong business.”
I’ve got news for Ms. Bell: She isn’t in “a business.” She works in the field of human services, or is supposed to, and her agency, like Mr. Mock’s, receives significant funding from the state and federal governments. The Vermont HIV/AIDS Care Consortium, of which Ms. Bell has been a member for many years, is specifically instructed by the Ryan White Care Act under Title II, Section 2613 (c) to “assure that service needs are addressed through the coordination and expansion of existing programs before new programs are created.” I would advise her to look at her by-laws.
Peter Kurth
Colchester, VT
11. To Claim Paternity of Yolanda’s Love Child
Editor:
We’ve all heard The Great Fear: that provision of same-sex civil marriage rights by the State of Vermont will spawn a mass resettling of “all those gay people” in Vermont. We should all be so lucky.
We haven’t been doing census work at the state border, but to date we affirmatively know of exactly ONE PERSON who was motivated by our on-going statewide debate to uproot himself and move to Vermont. One.
Without further ado, we offer up Tom’s Top Ten Reasons Randall Terry Has Moved to Vermont:
10. Needed (really needed) to make a lifestyle change.
9. Wanted to live in a state that doesn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation.
8. Likes the fact that in Vermont gays and lesbians can adopt all the unwanted children he has “rescued.”
7. Likes that Act 60 provides equal educational opportunities to his children and ours.
6. Craves the respect and “live and let live” attitude of Vermonters to their neighbors.
5. Likes the ready access to Montreal, allowing him to “decompress” on St. Catherine Street.
4. His affections spurned by Ralph Reed, hopes to get closer to Howard Dean.
3. Is committed to volunteering for the Flanagan for Senate 2000 campaign.
2. Wants to be the first in the nation to marry a same-sex partner.
And the number one reason Randall Terry has moved to Vermont:
1. Loves Farmboys!
Tom Bivins
Grafton, Vermont
Bennett Law
Bethel, Vermont
Corporation Chided
Editor:
Picked up the January issue of your paper on a recent ski trip and found it quite wonderful.
I wanted you to know I have xeroxed the Exxon Domestic Partners article and forwarded it to Exxon stockholders relations department (I am a stockholder) with a strong letter chastising them for their reduction in benefits for domestic partners.
Jennifer Frank
E. Granby, CT
Legislator’s Logic Lapsed
Editor:
This is a copy of a letter that I recently sent to the Other Paper in S. Burlington.
In your last issue, I read Representative Frank Mazur’s bimonthly column and was taken back by his lack of intelligence when it comes to the same-sex marriage act.
I quote: “My view is that marriage between one man and one woman is a legally recognized union that has the potential for both procreation and protection of offspring. No other partnership union has that capability. This to me is the meaning of the word marriage and it carries with it centuries of understanding in the world.”
Representative Mazur: If this is your belief of what marriage is, then it stands to reason — logically — that people who are sterile or those who do not want to have children should not be allowed to marry either. By your definition of marriage, a couple (man and woman) has to have the potential to procreate. Neither of my examples can or want to. Would you deny these people the right to marry?
Don’t you think there are enough children in the world looking for good homes without bringing more into it? What’s wrong with a gay couple wanting to adopt a child and bring it up in a loving home and still be given the legal rights that everyone else has as a married couple?
You say that “…if we can carefully write such legislation that will meet the intent of the law and won’t create a legal nightmare for the state, I will support it.” Don’t you think that trying to write brand new laws to meet the requirements of marriage without calling it marriage isn’t going to be a legal nightmare in itself? Domestic partnerships are not equal to marriage unless they are called marriage.
Granted, you have your opinion which you are entitled to as do I. But I think that you need to find a different reasoning to not support gay marriage than what you currently have. Discrimination should be deleted from the English language once and for all, but until people like you in society look at each other as people versus religion, skin color, or sexual orientation, it will forever live in and destroy our communities. Is that what you really want, Representative Mazur?
Dean Pratt
S. Burlington, VT
Reviews refreshing
Editor:
Woo-hoo! Finally, a small GLBT press with intelligent book reviewers. I’d had your site bookmarked for a long while, but this morning before work, I was checking out other gay mags online and decided to look a little closer at VTPride. I live in the rural southwest, albeit a city of 100,000. I grew up on a farm, near a town of only 10k and returned there in my 40s to be with my ill parents (between jobs and lovers). It brought back so much from my early life, as well as gave me a sense of renewal. I also discovered (really for the very first time) the wisdom of people living in small town America.
It is refreshing to see such as your online magazine, therefore, doing things better than the Advocate. I see that you have given reviews to small press books. Dann Hazel is a writer with real heart (Witness, Moving On, Two Paths to Now), and I’m glad to see his work reviewed.
Ron Donaghe