LETTERS
LETTERS to the Editor Response to Bosnia I found your editorial on U.S. I participation in the Bosnia peacekeeping operation ("Comment," January issue) to be disappointing and shallow. Yes,...
...The cause of gay and lesbian liberation has made progress that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, but we still have a long way to go before we are secure...
...Is it "slavery" for the state to incarcerate murderers or habitual thieves or for it to expropriate land or food to save the disadvantaged from starvation or misery...
...Rose Evans Sun Franeiseo, California Assuming your letter-writer John VI...
...When do-gooders claim to "cure" us ("Saved," December issue...
...Holding on to those older programs in the face of the conservative onslaught is a more Utopian task than is the work of moving forward with a radical agenda...
...Increasing competition with such exploited low-wage workers drives wages down worldwide...
...This is the same final-solution-to-the-Bosnian-problem Clinton, and Bush before him, have been conniving at since the outbreak of the war...
...to the death penally, and to economic injustice are also opposed to abortion...
...Jim Forest...
...They take this publication to task for transmitting the anti-abortion views of Colman McCarthy...
...However, I have known several gay men who tried the heterosexual marriage path with harmony and success, but could never rid themselves of their real sexual orientation despite years of honest effort...
...Your publication, I believe, bears a rare authority to speak on the subject...
...Please print an apology from Will Durst and consider publishing an article about the discriminations and heartaches that people who are fat live with every day...
...tool for dominating Europe," and the use of its troops in Bosnia today is explicitly to give it "a new lease on life...
...Marrow really "did not need to encounter Colman McCarthy...
...I spent my first two-and-a-half decades in sexual limbo...
...Federal spending thus fails to boost worker incomes and consumer purchasing power as much as it once did...
...Devaluing anyone's life devalues everybody's life...
...These arguments were persuasive for the Gulf War because of the nature of the conflict, which was a deceitful, headlong charge into war by an Administration driven by greed and the need to exorcise the ghost of Vietnam...
...from our homosexuality several years ago...
...Cutting federal spending is no answer to these problems...
...or at least exactly as I accept you as almost as I am...
...My thanks to The Progressive for its help...
...Raju Dean Young Pasadena, California Clap, Don't Kid Imust protest the characterization of David Roediger's work in the item entitled "Identity Politics" ("No Comment," January issue...
...In our sluggish economy, corporate investment is increasingly targeted to unproductive mergers rather than new technologies...
...Is it not evident to vuu that here is the vessel through which to transform the voung...
...I haven't read the current issue yet...
...Ultimately, I resigned my position because I was fed up with the incessant preaching and the intrusions into my privacy...
...I agree that we need to find other ways to solve conflicts...
...Anthony Ravson Monee...
...Sure, the military bribes young people with education benefits, but free will still plays a role...
...Many extend their life-protecting ethic to the non-human animals also...
...This struck my ears as Hip-pant, defensive, and disingenuous...
...I guess things are going to have to get really bad out there before people start broadening their horizons...
...Wives are beaten into submission, and the poor are forced into prostitution thanks to a generation of men who are acting out what they see and read in pornographic literature...
...This is no mere arcane academic quarrel...
...and not try to censor each other's views...
...wish to complain about the intolerable lack of vigilance by the editor...
...The triumph of conservatism today is due more to the failures and inadequacies of conventional pump-priming liberalism than to the money and media access enjoyed by the business community...
...they never rested on their laurels...
...I am not a professional writer like Durst is, but I am able to think of adjectives from A to Z, starting with asinine, belligerent, Caucasian, decadent, egotistical, fallible, greedy, homophobic, immature, jerky, kindless, licentious, mean-spirited, narrow-minded, oblivious, pesky, quarrelsome, reckless, shifty, toxic, unconscionable, vile, wanton, xenophobic, yammering, and ending with zealous, that describe the horrendous person that Rush Limbaugh is, and not one of those words has anything at all to do with his size...
...Julie Johnson-McGraih Belmont, Massachusetts Fat Is Not Funny I was shocked to discover the fat-hating slam against Rush Limbaugh in Will Durst's article ("Drunken Tree Torture," January issue...
...But once a war like the one in Bosnia has begun, we sometimes have to choose the lesser evil, then concentrate harder on peacemaking next time...
...the physician who employed us all...
...and LaForge tells The Progressive that it "should have waited for someone else's review...
...I wanted to be persuaded by your article in the January "Comment" section called "The Empire Rides Again," but I had heard all of your arguments before, and I found them lacking...
...My real orientation was always in the back of my mind somewhere...
...Lisa Jones Edison, New Jersey Thanks to The Progressive for its (overdue) attention to gay and lesbian issues...
...And until The Progressive lightens up a little it will fail to attract flipper readers...
...Sexuality in a "free market" can become quite evil...
...I learned a long time ago not to let the pain, and the anger born of that pain...
...A woman's "right to choose" comes to serve a man's ""right to use...
...Is McCarthy obliged to note the obvious wrongness of the handful of anti-abortionist activists who succumb to the same violence they deplore in order to discuss the morality of abortions of convenience...
...Every show was an exploration of their musical ideas...
...The notion that gays and lesbians are somehow exempt from creating similar "sexually exploitive" material is untrue...
...failure to support Bosnia's democratic right to survive is blindness...
...Man\ are sincere, but many are rationalizing...
...Homosexuality, regardless of what the ex-gays assert, is not a choice...
...First, I was blown out to see this belated coverage of the remarkable death of Jerry Garcia, about which The Progressive said nothing for four months...
...It is not OK to make jokes about fatness, color, ethnicity, class, disability, sexual preference, etc...
...Tipper Gore...
...Maine Thanks to I he Pm^rewo e lor including consistent-ethic journalist Oilman \k-Carth\ among its w liters...
...His apolitieal-ness is also his right...
...we should be far beyond this...
...But Bosnia is not Vietnam or the Dominican Republic, and impugning the U.S...
...Michael A. \ \ince Indianapolis, Indiana The editt>r\ welcome correspondence from readers on all topic*, but prefer to publish letters that comment tlireetlv on material previously published in The Progressive All tellers n,av be edned lor clarity and cenciness...
...bricks, machine tools, and farm equipment for its people to get busy rebuilding their shattered lives, not more guns and gunpowder to again start killing and maiming one another at the first opportunity...
...How many more Ethiopias, Somalias, Afghanistans, Lebanons, and Bosnias are needed to make it sufficiently clear that those who are helped to build a better future for themselves and for their children have an immeasurably greater stake in peace and a much better chance to achieve it than those who are plied with arms and taught how to wage war...
...The Progressive takes itself and the left too seriously, perhaps...
...Southncsi Harhar, Maine Overdue Attention Thank you for your acknowledgment of my humanity as a lesbian (and the humanity of all lesbians and gay men) in your "Editor's Note" (December issue...
...Tin/\cn beck Jem/in, \ 'erinonl Soft Underbelly The soft underbelly of liberalism ("Letters...
...It has been extremely painful to read previous editorial comments in The Progressive opposed to lifting the arms embargo, and suggesting we should accept that "ihe Muslims" had "lost the civil war," and that "all sides should be brought to the negotiating table" to ratify this "fact...
...I feel compelled to inform Elaync Rapping that Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy's Deadhead credentials are impeccable...
...Can't it be reverence for human life...
...Rush Limbaugh is hateful and dangerous because of the way he thinks and talks and acts, not because he is fat...
...I don't need it...
...In the article, Wong claims to be "on the psychology faculty of the University of San Francisco (a Jesuit college...
...Brought to the table bv whom'7 Isn't that just what Clinton & Co...
...That's a different story entirely...
...It's welcome to see that you are conscious of an undying mystique to all references countcrcul-tural among the brighter students at campuses nationwide...
...Yet we must, in the name of peace and justice, seek to understand Bosnia and search for meaningful responses...
...Moth Shuitghncssx Bloomington, Indiana Iwould like to respond to Elavne Rapping's ignorant sideswipe of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead...
...Unfortunately, it unnecessarily weakens its own case by relying too heavily on discredited Keynesian arguments...
...Laurence G. Wolf Cincinnati, Ohio I strongly relate to Justin I Chin's article...
...Pick me up and I'll be there...
...Jim Wallis...
...I did not choose to become disabled, nor did I choose to become homosexual...
...Many citizens have a gut sense that government spending doesn't work that well anymore...
...there is a certain self-righteousness attached to the left...
...Hatred of fat people is just as insidious as hatred of any other group of people...
...Bosnia is unlikely to start a world war, but 250,000 people have died...
...The left press, however, does liberals and progressives a disservice by failing to explain exactly why deficits are no longer as effective as they once were...
...Christians, too—to build a true coalition for peace and justice...
...The editors could have drawn far more significant lessons from Robert Pollin, whom they cite in their recent editorial ("Comment," January issue...
...Rachel \lac\air Kansas Cnx, Missouri Thank you for sharing the letters of Joanne Marrow and John M. LaForge...
...I remember my decades of repressed homosexuality...
...Impatience with continuing patriarchy may partly explain that thinking...
...Whenever fellow musicians called to ask him to contribute his talents to a benefit for a good cause, his invariable response was...
...Sluggish consumer spending slows long-term domestic investment...
...Finally, in my old age (sixty...
...Nat Hentoff...
...Michael Klare Northampton, Massachusetts Your latest "Comment" makes many necessary and cogent arguments against any support for Clinton's military mission to Bosnia...
...This is why, since 1991, the United States and the European states have imposed the arms embargo that has prevented Bosnia from defending itself...
...is an illustration...
...Gary Quain Portland, Oregon The whole idea of bringing more arms to Bosnia for the sake of military parity is an arms supplier's dream and a nightmare for all the Bosnians, be they Serbs, Croats, or Muslims...
...In the name of Jerrv Garcia, loosen up...
...William H. Slavick Ptirtland...
...In addition, the power of unions is undermined as U.S...
...role there with warmed-over anti-imperialist rhetoric is not a principled and responsible response...
...But until we find one, let's not automatically dismiss the only hope of peace that the Bosnians now enjoy...
...While there are diverse opinions at this Catholic institution regarding the nature of homosexuality, we are united in the belief that discrimination is a sin...
...Thank \ou and others like you for standing with us publicly and accepting us as being just as human as you are...
...We want our children to grow up in an environment where people do not objectify one another, but rather where sexuality is treasured and protected resolutely because of its high value...
...I respect the sincerity of progressive, peace-loving people who are pro-choice...
...As much as 1 admire Jerry (iareia, 1 can J sa\ he w as a modcrn-dav Kai 1 Marx...
...Bosnia poses a complex and painful challenge for those concerned with world peace...
...As a consequence, I have canceled my subscription...
...but I'm sure that somewhere, someone has the unmitigated gall to express an opinion that I would rather not hear...
...They were musicians who became a cultural phenomenon and therelore threatened the mainstream into demoni/ing them...
...If the gay and lesbian world wants to have more integrity in its progressive commitment, it should strive to keep its literature from being oppressive: it hinders the cause...
...I hold that when a man eets himself worked up over the fate of tiny babies, it improves his character...
...When Richie, another coworker, died from AIDS, Jim remarked that his illness was God's punishment for his sinful lifestyle...
...Martin Sheen, and Nobel Peace Laureates Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Adolfo Perez Esquival...
...LaForge is male, I find it amusing that one man should lecture another about whether he can oppose abortion ("Letters...
...and "it does not demand...
...Human is all we really are...
...And though few would support total censorship of pornographic material, the restrictions that do exist are many times too small...
...They include people of all races and faiths, religious or atheistic, people active in peace and justice, disarmament, gay and lesbian rights, indigenous people's rights, and other human-rights causes...
...Jim and Bill (not their real names), tried to save me and Ed...
...Evidently, Jim had a serious cocaine habit and stole several thousand dollars from Ed and the hospital he worked for...
...I deeply believe that if we are going to move to a just society, we have to respect the life of every human being...
...I'm not sure that the Clinton plan is the best possible response to the slaughter in Bosnia, but it is the only one in sight at this time that appears to offer any hope of stemming the bloodshed...
...Debra White Freevillc, New York In his article "Saved," Justin Chin described in some detail the work of a Dr...
...The signers of the Seamless Garment Mission Statement, which expresses that position, include Father Dan Berrigan, Phil Berrigan...
...How does LaForge know that all who engage in anti-abortion protests are woman-haters...
...Dorothy Cotton...
...and I'd like to see gay people working with every other oppressed group out there—yes...
...expressing horror at "the rapes, the summary executions, the ethnic cleansings" while denying the victims the right of self-defense is moral bankruptcy...
...I agree with all of your assertions, but I cannot get past the fact that both sides asked for our troops, and (more importantly) that more people will die without them than with them...
...Too man\ abortions have occurred because of male irresponsibility...
...Men who take an abortion-choice position should take care that their rhetoric isn't really just a cover for the normal cry of the sexual exploiter: she really wants it...
...Debt as a percentage of GNP grows, and it becomes easy for conservatives and the business press to attack the deficit...
...we all turn away and run...
...You have contributed to the type of know-nothing journalism that eschews nuance in favor of intolerant caricature—something I would expect from the neo-con spawn of the Harvard Lampoon, but hardly from The Progressive...
...Is a poet only as excellent as his politics are agreeable...
...You know the list, so get with the program...
...I don't think that turning away and running is an ethical thing to do...
...It is curious that a magazine so radical and so critical of the conventional welfare state in foreign affairs remains so wedded to it in its domestic agenda...
...at Soldier Field...
...It is a shame that you both had to say what you did...
...True, there have been terrible (and largely unheeded) massacres elsewhere in recent years...
...December issue...
...David Finkel Detroit, Michigan I am an ex-Army man turned I progressive...
...Much as there was no way to thank my friend fully for her words, love, and support, there is no way to thank you fully for yours...
...Gays need to realize that "cures" can appear to be successful for years on end, depending on how excellently the victim represses his natural urges...
...If we turn our backs to this, we corrupt our own morality and lend confidence to those in our own society who would employ similar methods against other targeted communities—Jews and blacks, for instance...
...Unfortunately, not everyone has your vision...
...Is it necessarily "woman-haling" to value a fetus...
...It is painful to say that I have learned, from experience, that your view of me as human is less than universal...
...However, you fail to note the way in which sending U.S./NATO troops to the Balkans today continues, and completes, the carve-up of the Republic of Bosnia...
...Pollin's many essays have been pathbreaking in demonstrating that federal deficits no longer have the stimulative effect thev had during the 1950s and'1960s...
...in effect...
...Every day we had to endure Jim and Bill's preaching from the Bible about the evils of homosexuality...
...I hope that the time will come when, with better contraceptives and better social support systems, we will be able to care for all the children who are conceived, and will not have to resort to abortion...
...I implore the editors of The Progressive, and peace-minded people everywhere, to search for a better solution...
...Many years later, I learned that Jim was no longer employed by Ed because he was serving time in jail for embezzlement...
...It's refreshing to see the statement, "the issue of gay and lesbian rights is an integral part of progressive politics...
...But I'd rather see U.S...
...Democratizing international trade, financial institutions, and domestic workplaces should be at the center of such a program...
...I happen to be gay...
...My answer was that the do not see us as human: fur some, the definition of human is to be exactly as I am...
...At times...
...Stephen Zunes University of San Francisco More Censorship Relating to the article "Censors Away" ("Comment...
...Igor D. Radovic New York, New York Keynes Is Dead The Progressive is one of the few voices standing up against the current obsession with balancing the federal budget...
...The task of left journalism is to help citizens develop an analysis and a program that will allow us to move beyond a paternalistic liberalism...
...January issue), the reason millions of women support the censorship of pornography is quite clear: it is oppressive Pornography does not promote mutual respect, but rather it leads to the strong dominating the weak, and the rich exploiting the poor...
...Some of us can do that quite well...
...I hope those misguided subscribers keep reading The Progressive—it is one of very few magazines worthy of its reputation...
...But only Bosnia has witnessed the mobilization of a (relatively) modern state's resources for the purpose of systematic human annihilation, as was practiced in Nazi Germany...
...it does not excuse its nonsense...
...Some of the most selfless and sincere advocates for peace and justice, for an end to war...
...Then and Now," January issue...
...I'm fortv-two years old and I panhandled my way into my first Dead show when I was fifteen...
...And thank you for finally treating the myths and the obscured history of "the sixties...
...Those who would "cure" us never stop to consider how unfair this is to our spouses, nor do they consider the unconscious and conscious psychic cost to their "cured" victims...
...1 faced up to my repressed homosexuality and thereupon experienced a surprising and lasting upsurge of inner strength...
...I don't appreciate that...
...it is a chance soldiers take when they sign on the dotted line...
...But I must take issue with Rapping when she savs Ciar-cia's music was "to relax to...
...Garcia's life work is one of amazing bounty and unique creativity...
...December issue) is glaringly manifest in Joanne Marrow's and John M. LaForge's criticism of Col-man McCarthy's characterization of the violence of abortion as a "war" on pre-born life ("Books...
...Some shows stunk: some were transcendent...
...soldiers could be killed...
...The pervasive pressure of our heterosexist culture is hard to resist...
...When only women may reflect on the morality of killing the unborn, then only blacks may speak about black concerns, only the poor about theirs, only the greedy about theirs...
...in print...
...The University of San Francisco is on record firmly opposing all forms of prejudice and bigotry...
...Yes, President Clinton has stooped to warmed-over Cold War rhetoric to defend the plan, and yes, the operation is fraught with danger for all concerned...
...Rapping sounded like a goddamned snob...
...For the peace movement, supporting the arms embargo all these years in the name of "anti-intervention" is Or-wellian...
...I served nine years in the Army, including Desert Storm (a war I opposed...
...troops serving there in a peacekeeping role than hear of one more genocidal incident like Srebrenica...
...Virtually all I know are not...
...If this could be accomplished without the dispatch of troops, I would be much happier...
...and all we need to be...
...I worry much more about men who favor abortion availability...
...The man who wants women to be sexually available to him without any natural repercussions is also the man who wants to believe that it's her desire...
...Both situations just happened that way...
...A close friend recently asked me why people who speak movingly of diversity do not include lesbians and gay men...
...John Bite...
...Bishops Gumbleton and Hunthausen...
...Beth Daily Madison, Wisconsin Deadheads Unite I would address these comments to the piece by Elayne Rapping ("The Sixties...
...For Bosnia, demilitarization and reconstruction are the only sane prescriptions...
...October 1995...
...The Grateful Dead never pretended to be the apostles of political change...
...Throughout their glorious run...
...Isn't the partition plan they have imposed pretty much the inevitable result of the policy you called for...
...show...
...They won't stick...
...have done...
...All these publications should receive the same treatment and censorship...
...In the meantime, let us work together on the huge, life-crushing problems that face us...
...She was more upset by this definition than I was...
...It's stupid to paste him and tile Dead unit) the bilge of American politics...
...Please note that there is no one by that name on our psychology faculty or any other department, nor is there anyone in our psychology department who advocates Dr...
...Had anyone thought to read even the introduction to any of Professor Roediger's books, instead of relying upon the interpretation of a newspaper feature writer, it would have been discovered that Roediger's approach to the issue of race in American history is one that progressives should applaud, rather than ridicule...
...Cormne Stibo Sun Aitoiuo, I exits Thank you for your December editorial...
...Melvin Wong, one of the psychologists collaborating with certain Christian ministries to "cure" people of their homosexuality...
...Wong's perspectives...
...and I trust that The Progressive will replace that person in the future...
...I wish there were demonstrations every day working towards toppling this rotten society, but there aren't...
...Mam pi'ogressi\e people share his opposition to \ io-lenee against hung beings, including unborn children...
...When done right, a man pro-hlc position can aUo be the most pro-woman stand, if it assumes that the man who in even case was iList as responsible for making the bah\ is equalh responsible for the bab...
...Maya Angelou...
...They reminded us that our lives were sinful...
...Damn it...
...And why would any progressive not recognize that the imperial powers would, inevitably, send troops to keep the "peace" they have imposed on Bosnia...
...In the current unregulated international markets, government spending creates not only good jobs in the United Slates, but low-paying jobs in such undemocratic havens as Mexico...
...I saw their last show July 9. 1995...
...There is no easy solution...
...What you chose to boldface in the Jennifer Harbury interview (December issue...
...Two ex-gay co-workers...
...firms increasingly relocate to these low-wage havens...
...Your arguments fail when we are trying to stop the killing rather than start it...
...I, too...
...Bosnia demands this of us because it is the place where ethnic hatred and genocide have emerged with the greatest virulence in our time...
...Illinois Without detracting from an otherwise wonderful piece...
...That was followed by more than three decades of trying, rather successfully, to be heterosexual, and I consequently now have a fine ex-wife, three tine hetero sons, and four grandchildren...
...There can be as much corruption and abuse in some gay and lesbian literature as in magazines such as Penthouse...
...Indeed, "NATO has never been anything but a U.S...
Vol. 60 • February 1996 • No. 2
