This letter is published in today's City Paper. The author's wisdom is surely partially attributable to his age. He's 70 years old.
To the Editor:
What a vicious and pathetic bunch of mouth-breathing hillbillies we Tennesseans are. So we’re going to forbid gay marriage? What alien danger shall we root out next — subject-verb agreement? If our children want to understand the mindless instinct that put Jews into concentration camps, they need only look across the dinner table.
It is obvious that gays, their families and their supporters who live here can’t just pack up and leave Tennessee. But we can strike back economically by (1) discouraging our out-of-state friends and acquaintances from visiting, vacationing or sending their children to college here, (2) spending our disposable income on visits, vacations and catalogue purchases in gay-friendly, civilized states, (3) using every opportunity from word-of-mouth to letters to the editor to send our voices beyond the borders and denounce Tennessee for the Dogpatch it has become, (4) lobbying any organization we belong to against holding its meetings and conventions here, and (5) refusing to attend all sporting events that publicize and finance the state that uses tax income to discriminate against its own people.
In fact, I think we should organize a conference — perhaps in Vermont or Massachusetts — with the sole mission of bringing down the nation’s contempt on the state that treats gays so contemptibly.
If our fellow citizens are going to screw the gays over, then they should be made to pay something for it. And if our revenge should harm those “good Germans” who stand by silently while this inhumanity rages on, then so much the better …
Edward Morris
37204
