Future Is Now for Gays, Lesbians

I am proud to live in a community where my gay and lesbian neighbors can exercise their constitutional rights as American citizens. Despite efforts by far right-wing reactionaries and scared, narrow-minded bigots, our homosexual residents have become a welcome, accepted part of our city--and it’s about time, too. Some people don’t realize this is 1985. The future is now.

It is beyond amazement how Councilman Warren Harwood can continue to keep both feet in his mouth and still utter banality after banality. Anyone who disagrees with him risks, “setting back their relations with the council significantly.” What kind of empty threat is that? His claim that it is a “handful of people making all the decisions,” not only reminds me of the way the City Council operates, it is also the same thing he said about the Coalition for a Nuclear Free Harbor and the same thing he says every time he is on the wrong side of an issue.

People like Harwood and the Bible-thumping fundamentalists would like to believe that 30,000 to 50,000 homosexuals do not exist and they can force them back into their closets. Hopefully Harwood’s prehistoric, uninformed attitudes will force gays and those of us who respect and support them into the voting booths to hasten the political extinction of his brand of dinosaur.

--JOE GALLIANI

Long Beach