CAMP Talk

Letters from CAMP Rehoboth really ought to stop taking a publication break over the holidays. During the hiatus, we miss way too much earthshaking news, allowing Fox TV to claim all the credit for "fair and balanced" reporting.

For example, in the two months between issues, we were unable to cover the marriage of singing star Britney Spears. Of course, Letters would have had to publish twice daily to stay on top of that story from start to finish. We also missed the President’s State of the Union message in which he urged that marriage be restricted to people like Brit and her beau of the moment, rather than homosexuals who commit to each other for decades and decades. The Pres said that he’d even support an amendment to the hallowed U.S. Constitution (if it helps him win the votes of fundamentalists) to exclude gay folks forever from matrimony—regardless of what any states may say to the contrary.

As I was saying in this column in December, the year 2004 is going to be a rough one. It’s not just that gay men and women are (again) a major target of the far right, but—for those of us who write for Letters—we have to be especially careful about what we say about political candidates. While Letters tries to promote a free-flowing exchange of ideas on important issues, as a tax-exempt organization CAMP Rehoboth and its publication are not allowed to take the side of any political party or candidate. That may be a small price to pay for the right to raise money for great causes without having it taxed, and I’m all for a community organization like CAMP staying nonpartisan with "room for all" kinds of viewpoints. But the restriction on political endorsements also means, in effect, that contributors to Letters are not supposed to verbally trash candidates or their parties because, to do so, could be considered an un-endorsement.

In a Presidential election year, that’s not easy for those of us who usually write about politics with a satirical bent. And politics, by nature, is about as "bent" as Richard Gere was in that memorable Broadway play and movie.

The good news is that CAMP Rehoboth may by law—and its very mission statement—analyze issues of importance to its readers within these pages.

We just have to be nice about it. So, this year I suggest that we try a new modus operandi, which I hereby share with my fellow and sister Letters contributors. Let’s kill ‘em with kindness.

If I write about how the current occupant of the White House has run up an awesome federal deficit (after the previous resident left a surplus), I won’t join the chorus of commentators who charge that he is "mortgaging our children’s future." Instead, I’ll express gratitude that the President, who opposes gay marriages, and his governor brother, who continues to fight adoptions by homosexuals in Florida, don’t want us to bring up children. By denying us the opportunity to raise kids, they can’t mortgage our children’s futures. Aren’t we a fortunate lot?

Then there’s the Administration’s domestic spying policies. Over the holidays, we learned that—under the guise of the Patriot Act—"the government will compel airlines to hand over all passenger records for scrutiny by U.S. officials," as The Washington Post reported. "Under the system, all travelers passing through a U.S. airport will be scored with a number and a color that ranks their perceived threat to the aircraft."

While it would be easy to criticize the President and his attorney general for another Big Brother-like attack on Americans’ privacy, my new Pollyanna approach to reporting on the issue might be to suggest an appropriate color code for ranking gay travelers: lavender, perhaps, or possibly pink—in the shape of a triangle, please.

While I don’t want to be negative (at least not in this political season), I do have to be careful that my positive new attitude isn’t misconstrued as an endorsement of those I write more gently about. Heaven forbid that anyone thinks I might actually consider endorsing a theoretical candidate for public office who is OK with a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, who runs up a massive deficit while claiming to be a fiscal conservative, who wastes lives and money on a faraway war to weed out weapons of mass destruction that aren’t even there, and who leads a spy campaign on Americans that would have made J. Edgar Hoover blush through his red-white-and-blue party gown.

Then again, in these pages, you won’t find me un-endorsing such a candidate either. Sigh.