Sandy & Cagney-Anne
It's The Court, Stupid - Sandy Rapp
Pride Entertainment -10/1/2008
Because it is likely that at least three justices will retire in the next four years, our next president will determine the makeup of the Supreme Court for half a century to follow.
The historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision affirmed early abortion as a privacy right with which the individual states may not interfere. Immediately before it, in 1972, Baird v. Eisenstadt affirmed birth control rights for singles, also on a privacy rights foundation.
On these two decisions the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling was based. Lawrence overturned the god awful Hardwick decision which had upheld the "anti-sodomy" laws (almost always selectively-enforced against gay people) in half these United States. Without Lawerence v. Texas, and its decriminalization of gay relations, we would not be in the enviable position of holding some successes on same-gender marriage. And even today, most of the States do not provide even minimal civil rights positions for LGBT people.
Well, Lawrence v. Texas is BASED ON Roe v. Wade and Baird v. Eisenstadt, citing both decisions many times. This makes it totally insane for the Log Cabin Republicans to have endorsed McCain/Palin, a ticket which has vowed to pack the Court to the sole end of overturning Roe v. Wade, a ruling that protects gay civil rights and that now hangs by a single vote.
This cannot be put any clearer. It is not OK to vote for Sarah Palin just becauseshe is a woman. Her current position as Governor of Alaska and Republican Vice Presidential candidacy stands on the shoulders of those of us who have devoted the past forty years to equal opportunities and personal autonomy for women. Much like US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, she opposes all the very policies that put her in office.
So for those of us women who are pissed about Hillary, and for those of us LGBTs who are fiscally conservative, like the Log Cabin Republicans, please let us remember two things:
1) The Republicans are no longer fiscally conservative. They have, in eight short years, turned the largest ever US financial surplus into the hugest ever US financial deficit.
2) John McCain is adamantly anti-choice and has pledged to overturn Roe. Sarah Palin is even worse on these issues, wants "creationism" taught as science in the public schools, and thinks the Iraq war is God's will. They will destroy all the civil liberties and civil rights advances of the past forty years, and this destruction will stay in place for most of the next century.
So this column is not a preaching to the choir. Most of us will vote Obama/Biden. This column is a plea to the holders-on from both fronts of our collective feminist/gay movement. SAVE THE COURT. This is the last best chance to do so. And tell the country that McCain is anti-Roe. His disingenuous "maverick" reputation is completely obscuring the fact that he is radically anti-choice and has voted with the Bush administration over ninety percent of the time. So elect Obama/Biden; and it to save the US Supreme Court from the enemies of rights and freedom. © Sandy Rapp 2008
Sandy Rapp is an author and songwriter who has performed at hundreds of feminist conferences and rallies around the country, including the million-plus 2004 March For Women's Lives in Washington, DC. She is responsible for much of the GLBT civil rights legislation on Long Island, NY, and recounted her experiences therewith in a 1991 book God's Country: A Case Against Theocracy. She can be reached at SandyRapp.com and [email protected].
Sanitizing the Internet? No Way! - Sandy Rapp
New York Times - Long Island Opinion 7/6/97
On June 26, 1997, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down a key provision of the wildly censorious Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. If upheld, this measure would have sanitized from the entire Internet any information any yahoo in any backwater of the country deemed unfit for minors. Apparently this short-sighted Congressional prudery was deemed by some elected officials to be more politically expedient than actually upholding the United States Constitution. Because of pressure from religious conservatives and some over-protective liberals, politicians felt safer in criminalizing “smut” than in safe-guarding Americans’ First Amendment free-speech guarantees. History has surely taught that censorship, like the Comstock Act of 1873 to repress all sex education, birth control and abortion information as “indecent,” is the primary means for oppressing women and gay men. Such groups clearly represent more than half the electorate. But perhaps the sound-bite format of current discussion precludes education on this issue and votes are courted by attempts to censor the largest library in the world in the name of “protecting children.” One of the things from which these children would be “protected” is gay-positive role models. As it happens, the lesbian and gay-male community itself is considered “indecent” by many conservatives, a phenomenon responsible for a history of gay invisibility, barely penetrated now even with all of today’s “outings.” This particular silence keeps lesbian and gay-male youth isolated and unaware of current psychological and medical information that would assure them their orientation is neither a disorder nor an illness. And this silence, wrought by repressions official and otherwise, does indeed kill. Silence-induced ignorance about sexual orientation manifests in a gay youth suicide rate that is three times higher than the non-gay incidence. This national statistic is borne out completely on Long Island where David Kilmnick, Executive Director of Long Island Gay And Lesbian Youth (LIGALY) reports half the caseload has attempted suicide at least once. Kilmnick also decries the toll of official repression in AIDS education on Long Island where schools lack mandates for lesbian/gay-related information. Nationally, of course, there are many thousands of Americans dead from lack of effective, explicit, and gay-specific HIV education. Existing software screening makes it possible for parents to control viewing absent draconian censorship laws. What the software screens out well illustrates the danger of placing similar tools in government hands. A column in the National Organization For Women’s March 1997 National NOW Times reports that “NOW’s Website has been blocked for the past year to users of one product, Cybersitter, made by Solid Oak Software.” NOW Times goes on: “According to the Solid Oak President, NOW’s site is blocked because of content supporting lesbian and gay rights. Solid Oak states on its Website that it blocks ‘homosexuality/transgender sites.’” In the words of East Hampton Long Island’s resident feminist Marilyn Fitterman (Past President of NOW-New York State) “Censorship always harms the disadvantaged most. God only knows how many women have died of back-street abortions induced by the repression of reproductive information.” Conservatives’ focus on the tiny percent of explicit Internet material loosely classified as “smut” is endangering the primary means, i.e. free expression, through which any civil liberties have ever been attained. Mercifully the Court has, in Reno v. ACLU [96-511], sided with The American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the AIDS Education Global Information System to hold out against such incursions.
Sandy Rapp is a feminist singer from Sag Harbor and author of a book on lesbian/gay civil rights GOD'S COUNTRY: A Case Against Theocracy ~[email protected].
Gay Horses - Sandy Rapp
Celebrate Key West 7/10/98
I spent Freedom To Marry Day with WABC Radio’s Curtis Sliwa. Yep, the Guardian Angels founder rang me for some on-air conversation around air-play of my lesbian/gay politics song “Everyone Was At Stonewall”. The format was call-in and the atmosphere good-natured confrontation. Curtis acknowledged that discrimination was a bad thing, then prodded: “But what about the argument that no other species has same-sex relations?” “Curtis, where have you been,” I inquired. “Zoologists from Alfred Kinsey on down have noticed same-gender relations in all species. There are gay horses,” I expanded, “gay ducks, gay newts and gay Gingriches. You should get around more!” A phone call interrupted my diatribe. From past experience I expected HOSTILE. But no, it was a woman somewhere in rural America who was all for Freedom To Marry Day, and whose stallion, it seemed, repeatedly mounted her gelding (an altered male). “Even when there was a filly around?” pressed Sliwa. “Mare,” we chorused. “Fillies are underage, Curtis,” I explained, “which raises another question altogether. You really should get around more.” Conscious of our getting lost in this expanding exploration of gay livestock, I turned the conversation to the nature/nurture stuff underlying the whole issue. “UCLA professor and author Richard Green MD, JD,” I ventured, “provides an excellent theory of what makes for sexual orientation. He once said ‘the answer to the question: is homosexuality learned or inborn? is YES.’” The point is that orientation, whether gay or non-gay, is a deeply-felt, self-defining attribute with origins as complex as the soul itself. I wanted to add that arguing orientation as purely “natural” serves gay politics no better than arguing the reverse. I have always been afraid the political advancement of a simplistic “gay gene” theory would return us to past practice of electro-shock “therapy” and hormone “cures” for lesbian and gay people. But the radio station ran a commercial and a news spot so we sat in silence. “Furthermore,” I thought, “civil rights in the United States are often premised on acquired characteristics. For example religious groups, whose protection is based precisely on whatever religion they’ve acquired, are perfectly free to discriminate against gays in no less than forty of these United States. So we needn’t beat these gay horses to death.” The next caller was what you’d expect. She too was from farm country, but argued that if animals did it, it couldn’t be good. She documented herself to Sodom and Gomorrah. Her trashing of gays via Scripture proceeded in spite of contemporary research like John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality showing the events at Sodom concerned inhospitality and possible gang rape but certainly not consentual same-gender relations. I shouted her down with this, sort of. Then Miami, Florida rang in. He liked the tune about Stonewall but wondered what recognition of gay marriages might do to existing marriage laws. “Nothing,” is the answer. Recognizing more marriages does not invalidate traditional ones. The arguments against gay marriage are precisely those used thirty years ago against legalization of interracial marriage. And the federal Defense of Marriage Act, permitting states to not recognize gay marriages performed in other states, is probably unconstitutional. It violates the United States Constitution’s Article IV, Section 1, which facilitates national unity through the “full faith and credit” by which individual states honor each other’s contracts. Similar anti-gay DOMA measures are on the books in roughly half the states. I fit a good bit of this in through the next few calls, one hostile and two friendly. The radio segment ended with a caller praising Sliwa’s Guardian Angels for having saved her life all the way over in London. I found myself recalling a bit of local history. When, in 1988 we argued for the expansion of Suffolk County’s Human Rights Commission’s domain to include lesbian and gay-related investigations, the topic of animals also arose. Repeated testimony, to the effect that the overwhelming preponderance of child abusers are heterosexual men, did nothing to dissuade Suffolk’s fundamentalists from distributing flyers declaring the human rights bill legalized “child-molestation” and “bestiality.” One local paper ran a column about the immorality of sex between humans and ducks. Before the radio show I’d talked to Lambda’s marriage project director, Evan Wolfson, who emphasized that we should “use on-air forums to elicit non-gay support for gay issues.” He stressed the need for allies and said to remind listeners that “winning one battle is never enough.” Indeed, dialogue with conservative hosts does expand our movement in significant ways. Curtis now knows, (and I believe likes) one more gay. And my female terrier mix, Cagney, is definitely Bi. (c) SandyRapp 1998 Sandy Rapp is a feminist singer whose CD/Tape We The People and book God’s Country: A Case Against Theocracy are available at [email protected] and Amazon.com.
The War Against Privacy - Sandy Rapp
New York Blade News - February 6, 1998
Rainbow Community News - February 1998
East Hampton Star - March 19, 1998
NOW-NYS Reporter - Summer 1998
“Sexist, racist, anti-gay, born-again bigots go away!” Were these chants at a gay/lesbian/bisexual/trangendered parade? No, they were at the pro-choice counterdemonstration to the March For Life. It happened on a day the anti-abortionists have been trying to claim for the past twenty-five years. Yes, January 22, 1998 was the anniversary of the Supreme Court's historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. And this year a New York City-based organization, Refuse and Resist, decided: “They can't have our lives and they can't have our day.” I'm not used to being outnumbered at marches, but there I was, leading a few hundred other pro-choicers In “Remember Rose: A Song For Choice” on a tiny corner of the Washington Mall. We were surrounded by thousands of anti-rights crusaders waving placards of their infernal emblem, the red rose. This anti-choice symbol eerily called to mind George Orwell's futuristic novel 1984, where the Anti-Sex League's red sash was an “aggressive symbol of chastity.” When I returned home, a reporter asked me about the connection between lesbian/gay civil rights and reproductive freedom. The answer was simple. Privacy rights are all joined at the hip, socially and Constitutionally. Whether the privacy is to make decisions about one's own sexuality or to determine one's own family size, both choices require freedom from government sanction. The current fundamentalist agenda against sexual autonomy for women and gays is simply a reaction to the mid-twentieth century's tentative liberation of “consensual adult privacy” from the jaws of anti-abortion and “anti-pornography” legislation. Major landmarks in this progression were the Supreme Court's 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut and 1972 Baird v. Eisenstadt decisions permitting birth-control for married and unmarried Americans. The latter was cited six times in that most famous of privacy rulings, Roe v. Wade. These decisions recognized the right of individuals to make their own decisions about their sexual lives. But in 1986 the Reagan Supreme Court's notorious Bowers v. Hardwick decision, by a margin of one, refused to afford same-gender relationships the privacy protections recognized for non-gays. Hardwick upheld Georgia's “anti-sodomy” law, an example of similar measures still on the books in twenty states. Some are specifically tailored against gays, but all of them are enforced selectively against men and women of the gay community. When the Hardwick ruling came down, Tom Stoddard, then the Executive Director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, called it the “Dred Scott case of the gay rights movement,” a reference to the Court's 1857 refusal to recognize African Americans as citizens. That's how important this privacy issue is to our community. Although gay and lesbian civil rights are also sought through the Constitution's equal protection clauses and free-speech guarantees, nothing so undermines our quest for equal protection as the fact that our private lives are, in some states, criminal. Of course, in 1996 the Supreme Court arrived at the admirable Romer v. Evans decision, striking down the Colorado electorate's bilious attempt to cut lesbian and gay citizens out of that State's Constitutional herd. Activists hope for other rulings of that ilk and for an eventual reversal of the narrow and wrongly-decided Hardwick decision. Before the last presidential election, I wrote a column entitled “Why Whitewater is a Gay Issue.” The point was that, regardless of Clinton's various retreats from lesbian and gay issues, on the larger Constitutional front, his Supreme Court appointments are a significant improvement over the Reagan-era Court, which denied even rudimentary privacy rights to lesbian and gay Americans. The utterly transparent agenda of conservative activist Kenneth Starr's interminable Whitewater Inquisition is to oust Clinton and to return us to the Reagan/Bush-era of Court packing that gave us Hardwick and threatened to reverse Roe v. Wade. Now the Whitewater Inquisition has openly joined the Anti-Sex League in the domain of consensual sex. Onward marches Starr into territory that is clearly nobody's business but William and Hillary Clinton's. Perhaps Starr will topple the leader of the Western world for obscuring information about this ridiculous sex-with-the-intern thing. And all this proceeds from an investigation that's supposed to be about a small, failed real-estate deal that took place in Arkansas decades ago. But if the guy screwed around, this has been going on since the origin of the species. If he lied about it, that's been going on since the species learned to move its lips. Doesn't every shred of common decency demand that Clinton shouldn't embarrass his wife and his daughter on national television? Packing the Court against women and gays is worse than unethical, it's a threat to the very foundations of our country. And the legalistic coup d'état envisioned by the utterly unfettered Whitewater Independent Counsel would constitute nothing short of an overthrow of our duly elected government. The case today is exactly as it was before the election. Should this malicious prosecution damage the Clinton Administration enough to put the Christian Coalition back into the White House, democracy itself, and not just privacy for women and gays, is at stake.
Sandy Rapp is a feminist singer and author of God's Country: A Case Against Theocracy, available at 1-800-3-HAWORTH. Rapp's CD We The People is available at 631-329-5193. All products also available at Amazon.com.
Someone Yell ‘Fire,’ Rights Are Burning -Sandy Rapp
CFI Inquirer - June 2006
New York Blade News - April 24, 2006
Washington Blade - April 19,2006
NOW-NYS Reporter - Summer, 2006
In 1979 the Religious Right Wing Republicans first introduced a piece of legislation known as the Family Protection Act. Its aim was to restrict divorce, rescind sex education, criminalize birth control and abortion, and remove evolution from all textbooks, amid other ambitious endeavors. Their mission is nearing completion. They control the Executive and Legislative branches of national government and have packed the courts to an almost secure hold on the Judiciary. If we are to regain any semblance of influence in the latter of these three branches, we must turn around the Senate and the House, and we must do so this year. If Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court's landmark 1973 recognition of privacy in abortion, falls to the theocratic George W. Bush - packed Court, it will take with it all privacy rights, including that of birth control and consensual adult same-gender relationships. Indeed, the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision which struck down various states' "anti-sodomy laws" (all of which were either selectively written or selectively enforced against lesbian, gay, bi and trans people) was explicitly grounded both in Roe v. Wade, and in the Court’s 1972 recognition of birth control rights for single Americans, Baird v. Eisensteadt. So should the Senate approve one more right wing ideologue to the US Supreme Court, the US will return to the good old days when the issue was not whether gays could marry, but whether prison was appropriate for Americans in same gender relationships. Also at issue will be whether birth control is legal for anyone at all, in that many anti-choicers consider almost all methods "abortifacient" because of their capacity to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. W. is holding true to his pledge to appoint judges in the mold of sitting US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And on March 8, 2006 at the University of Freiberg in Switzerland, US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia opined as follows: "Question comes up: is there a constitutional right to homosexual conduct? Not a hard question for me. It's absolutely clear that nobody ever thought when the Bill of Rights was adopted that it gave a right to homosexual conduct. Homosexual conduct was criminal for two hundred years in every state. Easy question." All this occurs against the backdrop of such conscientious jurists as former Republican-appointed US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's sound reprimand of the Republicans' judicial appointments. In the 3/13/06 Guardian Unlimited (UK) (Justice Raps the Right), O'Connor is quoted: "Statutes and constitutions do not protect judicial independence, people do." And the 3/17/06 Washington Post (Ginsburg Faults GOP Critics, Cites a Threat From 'Fringe') reported that sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had "assailed the Court's congressional critics in a recent speech overseas, saying their efforts 'fuel' an 'irrational fringe' that threatened her life and that of a colleague, former justice Sandra Day O'Connor. It is both easy and appropriate to blame the Republicans for having sold out to the largess of tax-exempt religious coffers, all of which are, in theory, legally restricted from political participation. But theocratically oriented Democrats are also to blame. For example, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida merrily jumped to join the Republicans in their enthusiastic support of the most recent anti-choice Supreme Court appointment, Samuel Alito. And our esteemed Democratic Senators from New York, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, have enthusiastically courted and funded an anti-choice Democrat, Bob Casey, in Pennsylvania, pointedly choosing him over a perfectly capable and electable pro-choice Democratic woman. Of course the Party line is that if the Democrats are in the majority, “wrong headed” issues won't come to the Congressional floor. Nothing could be further from the case. The anti-choice Democrats do not vote their Party's line on these issues and are every bit as dangerous as their Republican counterparts. There is a fire, OK, but it's not just in one party. And if it's not put out, the US Bill of Rights will burn, from the First Amendment right on up. Here are some thoughts about what to do, one for almost every day of the week: 1) Write a letter to the editor of a local paper explaining that the scientifically sound study of evolution is supported by all scientists, most of whom do not find it mutually exclusive of theology. 2) Opine in another letter that, while many Americans have mixed feelings about whether they or theirs should have abortions, big majorities agree that these decisions should be made by women and their doctors, not by politicians. 3) Let your Democratic leaders know that we will favor a privacy rights minded Republican or Independent over an anti-choice Democrat any day. 5) Let your Republican leaders know that theocracy is not "conservative." The Father of the Conservative Party, Barry Goldwater, was pro-gay rights and pro-choice. His wife founded Planned Parenthood of Arizona. Ayn Rand, a cornerstone of conservative thought, declared herself "profoundly opposed" to then Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan: "Since he denies the right to abortion he cannot be a defender of any rights." New York Times - 3/7/82 Obituary. 6) Call out your pro-choice clergy! Most mainstream denominations are strongly opposed to governmental legislation of secular beliefs. Locate your pro-choice clergy and organize a speak-out or panel discussion. 7) Rest on the seventh day. In fact W's philosophy is the opposite of conservatism. Conservatism is fiscal restraint with minimalist governmental intrusion. The idea that the current Republicans are conservative is Orwellian Newspeak. And despite cryings wolf to the contrary, Christianity is not under attack. The attempt of some Christian sects to legislate their beliefs on other Americans is what's under attack. For God's sake, somebody yell "FIRE!" And let's get out the hoses. © Sandy Rapp 2006
Sandy Rapp is a feminist singer/songwriter and author of God's Country: A Case Against Theocracy; The Haworth Press: 1991 ~ [email protected] & SandyRapp.com
Come OUT Of The Church
by Sandy Rapp
Gay Today - November 24, 2003
Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly - Vol 4#3,2003
New York Blade News - May 17, 2002
Washington Blade - May 3, 2002
Outlook Long Island - June 7, 2002
The Roman Catholic Church's jihad against women and gays is now and always has been a threat to US democracy. Religions in our country are guaranteed every right to practice and believe. But Catholic Cardinals have sat on presidential AIDS commissions where they lobby and set policy against both HIV and sex education. And the Church worldwide effects theocratic policies against reproductive autonomy which result in hundreds of thousands of annual deaths from illegal abortion. Concurrently the Catholic hierarchy opposes civil rights for lesbian and gay people, decrying as "Catholic bashing" any objections to their illegal lobbying. And it should be noted that members of religious groups are already protected by federal, state, and local legislation. Yet they lobby against similar protections for groups they vilify with astonishing regularity. Now, as the various bishops, and other largely white men in black dresses, scapegoays for their current pedophile scandal, rights-minded American Catholics should Come Out and get out. This scapegoating is appalling in its dishonesty. The overwhelming majority of child molesters are heterosexual men; and of course the priests' abuse victims are not all males. It is the Church's antigay dogma that is the problem, not anyone's sexual orientation. Official Catholic teaching, which in papal encyclicals describes gay orientation as "nsically evil," thereby creates an area of "sin" which imposes on civilians a celibacy to which the Church is clearly incapable of holding even its own priests. And yes, it is not just from priests but from all gays and lesbians that the Catholic Church demands lifelong celibacy, under pain of whatever is the current description of divine retribution. Then, through absolutions and various other machinations, the Church becomes a protection racket for all the sins it has created. None of this will end until Catholics stop buying it. Change from within won't happen. Rights-minded Catholics must get out, and rights-minded gay Catholics must Come Out Of The Church. They must either leave en masse with a BIG press release, or become visible and loud enough to earn excommunication. They must stand up to the foreign lobbying sovereignty that is the Vatican, which would deprive women and gay men, a group totaling some sixty percent of the population, of civil rights and reproductive autonomy. These silly old Newspeaking men in dazzling gowns should not be planning our families, setting our AIDS policies, and/or restricting our civil rights. In truth, the Bible is silent on the subject of same gender orientation. Most supposed references to things gay are simply mistranslations. As John Boswell concluded in his 1981 American Book Award-winning Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, "In spite of misleading English translations which may imply the contrary, the word 'homosexual' does not occur in the Bible: no extant text or manuscript, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, or Aramaic, contains such a word." The business at Sodom (Genesis 19) was about the mistreatment of travelers seeking shelter. This mistreatment was probably in the form of gang rape, and was definitely not about consensual same-gender relationships. As for Pauline musings, Paul was phobic on all things sexual: "he who marries...does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better" (1 Corinthians 7:38). In Romans 1, Paul conceives of same-sex activity as a punishment effected on naturally heterosexual people because they "served the creature rather than the Creator." He does not address gay orientation and at any rate Paul explicitly exempted his ideas about sex as "not of the Lord." Jesus of Nazareth was completely silent on the subject of homosexuality. Finally, the Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 passages prescribing death for men who lie with men is about "abominations," or ritual uncleanness. It should be noted that Leviticus also advises from which groups to take one's slaves. These writings were about ritual actions, like bull slayings, in the Temple. They prescribe death for any number of transgressions and furthermore, any women who are parroting scripture against gays are explicitly prohibited by that same scripture from speaking in public at all. Although such texts as Leviticus are clearly sacred as religious history, they are certainly not morally relevant today. And as a matter of fact they were not even relevant when they were set down in print, which was after the destruction of the Temple to which they refer. The Church's antigay teaching does without doubt direct gays into the priesthood. Indeed, what better place could there be for a prospective lifelong celibate? That same antigay dogma prevents some gays from developing the capacity for loving adult relationships. But most of the many gay priests are not child molesters; and many priests are molesting females. So the outrageous attempt to blame "homosexuals" for the criminal investigations under which the Church finds itself, is profoundly deceptive. The Church well knows that without gay men there would be very few priests indeed. Meanwhile youngsters are taught and some believe the Church's pseudoscientific psychobabble about changing orientation through therapy. Such cases contribute greatly to the accelerated suicide rate for lesbian and gay youth. Lesbian and gay Catholics, please Come Out Of The Church. Nothing will happen except you will have perhaps saved the next generation of G & Ls from this absurd, unworkable rubric. There are several denominations that are much closer to the spirit, and indeed the letter of scripture. Just perhaps the young rabbi from Nazareth would ask in this situation: "Why don't you judge for yourselves what is true?" (Luke 11:57) © Sandy Rapp 2002
Sandy Rapp is a musician and author of God's Country: A Case Against Theocracy. Her CD We The People features a song about the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and "White Men In Black Dresses." Rapp's books and CDs are available through Amazon.com, SandyRapp.com and [email protected]
E=LINKS TO MORE SANDY RAPP COLUMNS
Another Stupid Censorship Law
The Politics Of Victimism
Ex-Gay, Schmex-Gay
Hats Off To Bella
The Truth About Sex Lies
