Letter to Boxer - Write your Senator!

Dear Senator Boxer,

I am writing to ask you to oppose Bill H.R. 609 which has now passed the house and is heading for the Senate.

This bill is proposing that Federally funded private universities associated with a particular religious denomination may discriminate lawfully against the GLBT community by refusing to admit them as students and/or hire them as staff.

While I support the right of all Americans to express their religious beliefs I cannot support allowing educational institutions which expect to be subsidized by our taxes being allowed to pick and choose who may work or study at their facility. Either the law is for all companies and institutions or it is for none. Who next will assert that they may still recieve tax benefits and public monies while being able to reject any person they find unacceptable?

Further, the GOP is sending a clear message that the religion of choice in Washington DC is fundamentalist Christianity. Has the principle of separation of Church and State lost any credibility? We are a multicultural and ethnically diverse Nation and we cannot allow favoritism of any particular religious sect, however broad their base may be, to overshadow our pluralism.

It is currently against the law to allow discrimination of any sort in publicly supported institutions. This seems particualrily important to me in our colleges and universities which hold the illumination of learning and understanding as the light by which we see our way forward in the advancement of our society.

Please oppose this narrow minded and unlawful legislation. The GLBT is particularily vulnerable to exclusionary practices, as you well know - we have still to win eqaulity for so many civil rights in America.

I remember my mother, who sacrificed and saved to send us to Catholic school, being exceedingly alarmed back in the late sixties and early seventies as public funding was first diverted to assist schools with religious and private affiliations. She said at the time that nothing good can come of the government being involved with religious schools. She was right - though her concern at the time was for the school's teachings not the public's funding. Now we can see these private institutions want to 'have their cake and to eat it, too', as the cliche goes.

Please hold Washington and the Christian right responsible to the same laws which bind all of us - or ask them to stand-up for their religious beliefs with their own money: without tax exemptions or Federal funding for their discrimination.

Sincerely,

Don Larson