Subject: 2 Submissions & a teaser
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 08:12:04 -0400

The attached two articles by Daniel Curzon have been submitted to New Lesbian
and Gay Voice for distribution.  They advance positions that are definitely
not orthodox or conventional within the Lesbian and Gay Community, and you
may find them of interest.   Mr. Curzon is a writer of  novels and short
stories, and has appeared in three anthologies:  MAE WEST IS DEAD (Faber),
 APHRODISIAC (Coward McCann), and ON THE LINE (Crossing Press).  He was the
cofounder and operator of the International Gay News Agency from 1978-1984,
which supplied news and features to anywhere from six to twenty-five gay
newspapers around the USA.  (We accept opposing viewpoints as well.)

Hal Gordon, who wrote the two previous submissions from New Lesbian and Gay
Voice on Oscar Wilde and Roger Casement, has another article available.  It
is a short piece on  City Lights Books -- a literary and gay landmark in San
Francisco -- which you may find intriguing.   Mr. Gordon is also working on
an article about Britain's possibly gay Prince Eddie -- No!  Not that one,
but his great uncle, the grandson of Queen Victoria, who was suspected of
being Jack the Ripper.

None of these items have been previously published, and the authors would
appreciate your customary payment for such works.

If you would like to receive the Gordon items, please contact New Lesbian and
Gay Voice at the return address for this message.   Please identify the
publication which will receive the item.

We would also appreciate receiving information as to when one or more of
these items are published.

*****

			Vegetable Rights
			by DANIEL CURZON	

Oh yes, these days we hear much about the flagrant violation of the rights of
many groups, but where do we hear about the rights of the most abused and
oppressed of all groups? Nowhere, I'm afraid. Where are the cries on their
behalf!?  Where are the laws to protect them!? I speak of the rights of the
last great category of living creatures that it is still all right to demean
and mistreat. I speak of course of our friends, the vegetables. And I use the
term in its broadest meaning, for fruits and vegetables are natural allies in
their struggle against their oppressors.

	Since they can't speak for themselves, let me speak for them. I know their
feelings. I know their well-founded complaints.

	Let's begin at the heart of the matter. How many of you at some of your
vegetable friends just today, never mind during most of your lives? I'll bet
there isn't one among you who can say, "I have not." Many of you today still
demand that your children eat them, even when your children protest that they
don't want to eat vegetables.  You thwart your own children's natural
instincts toward good, gurgling to them about "yummy leafy green ones" and
"scrumptious yellow ones" without a thought in your empty heads about whom
you might be hurting. Oh, you can put cheese on them.  You can douse them
with sauces.  You can blind yourselves anyway you like to what you're doing,
but the fact remains that you re chomping and devouring the bodies of fellow
living creatures, most of you without so much as a glimmer of guilt!

	Do you really believe that peas WANT to be eaten? That they want your teeth
grinding into their delicate green bodies and mashing them into pulp, only to
be covered with your glutinous acids before being separated into bits and
turned into more of YOU?

	Do you really think for one moment that celery WANTS to be dipped into onion
dip and nibbled away, bite by bite, while you stand around at some cocktail
party and talk about who's going to win the Academy Award for best
cinematography?  It just goes to show ho you've let your insensitivity to
others' pain guide your entire lives.

	I ask you, have you ever bothered to listen to the screams of a carrot being
steamed? ... I think not! . . .  Well, THINK about it!

	Even so-called "vegetarians" like to think they're "sensitive," but here
they are bragging in their very name about the crimes they commit. They might
as well call themselves what they are--avocado killers, lettuce murderers,
broccoli butchers!

	If eating weren't enough, consider the other violations of vegetables'
rights that take place on a daily basis: Take those pants or that shirt
you're wearing right this minute. What do you think they're made out of?
Cotton, no doubt.  Where do you think cotton comes from?  From a PLANT,
that's where!  You people pluck and spin millions of your little brothers
into items to wear on your bodies. Do you think cotton wants to be somebody's
UNDERWEAR!?

	And what about the medicines made from vegetables--your eyedrops and your
gas remedies and your laxatives!  All products made from the unwilling,
unasked vegetables of this world.	To say nothing of your callous exploitation
of these same creatures for cosmetics. Yes, every day vegetables die for
eye-liner and lipstick and hair dye! I say to die for a dye is the sign of a
sick culture!	In laboratories all over this globe doctors in white coats are
experimenting on helpless vegetables even as we speak.  They rip off their
skins, pulverize their insides, crossbreed them, stunt, dehydrate, freeze,
and discard their husks--and more--without the slightest regard to any other
criterion but your selfish needs, without so much as a by-your-leave to the
vegetables involved.

	Now you may not want to hear what I'm about to tell you, but it's time you
listened, and listened good. There are actual places still operating today
where vegetables are grown under controlled conditions--yes, watered,
fertilized, given light--only then to be snipped off just like that and used
in so-called "bouquets" and "arrangements" to celebrate birthdays and
holidays. Some are actually worn to proms and thrown at people in parades!

	To say nothing of Christmas trees slaughtered by the millions so that people
can have them in their homes for a few week at most, their needles, once so
moist and full of life, robbed of their vitality, turning brown and brittle,
falling to their unmourned deaths on your living room carpets.  How long can
these practices continue if we want to call ourselves a civilized society?

	And then there's the ugly matter of vegetable discrimination.  How many
vegetables have you ever seen in the top management of the corporate world?
 None, I dare to venture.  Do you mean to tell me they're aren't QUALIFIED
vegetables out there able to do the jobs?  Even in companies with more
enlightened policies, there's still a subtle, but unmistakable, barrier to
the promotion of vegetables. It's very likely another side of the Greenhouse
Effect.  Whatever you call it, there is definitely a glass ceiling on the
rise of vegetables.

	And how many vegetables do you see in our graduate schools? Far too few. And
why?  They are WEEDED out, it's obvious.  Can't have too many uppity
vegetables getting in where they don't belong. Green may not be to
everybody's taste, but it's long past the time when we should be judging them
by the color of their skins and instead should be judging them by the content
of their characters.  Vegetation of color can compete if it's given a chance.
 I say change the compost and you'll change the composition of the
low-scoring, underachieving vegetables in our schools.

	It may even be time for Affirmative Action for vegetables.  After all, they
have been held down for centuries, and we can't expect them to compete even
when the playing field is level.  Some vegetables are bound to get squashed
in the interchange.  If they aren't included in the system, they may very
well turn against the system, and, believe you me, an angry vegetable can do
a lot of damage.  After all, what do most of them have to look forward to in
their lives but a lot of standing around or trying to distribute their seeds,
or, in far too many case, selling their brothers (in the form of cocaine and
marijuana) on street corners, only to wind up dead in a world that doesn't
care. When, oh when will we learn to make the most of the vegetables in our
midst?

	A word also needs to be said about Vegetable Access.  How long can we go on
denying our vegetable brethren the right to ride on public transportation? It
is not their fault that many of them are immobile. It is not THEIR fault they
need soil in which to thrive.  Therefore, buses and subway trains as well as
regular trains, airplanes, and all other forms of public and private
transportation need to be equipped with ramps and seats covered with DIRT so
that vegetables can ride in comfort and safety. Just as non-rooted passengers
assume their right to transportation, ROOTED passengers have ever reason to
demand that their requirements be met. For it is a foolish society that does
not look out for the needs of the neediest among its citizens.

	I've postponed the most serious issue of vegetable rights till last.  But I
will put it off no longer.  It is nothing less than the matter of . . . the
sexual harassment of vegetables.  Countless cases of abuse are being
documented at last. Chichita Banana has given an extensive interview in
PEOPLE MAGAZINE about her childhood memories with an uncle.  Mr. Potato Head
is finally speaking out as well.  Alas, human beings have for far too long
felt it their God-given right to squeeze melons in any supermarket they
choose, without first obtaining permission from the melons concerned.
 Indeed, they simply put their filthy hands all over any vegetable they fancy
and squeeze and probe and sniff and sometimes even taste (as in the case of
grapes) without any regard for the wishes of the poor vegetables themselves.
 Nor is this abuse confined to males. Some women have purchased cucumbers and
other similarly shaped produce and used them for self-gratification in a most
shocking and one-sided manner.

	Well, it's time that this harassment be stopped at once.  Vegetables will no
longer stand by and let themselves be exploited and demeaned with expressions
like "nice and firm" or "tender and succulent."How would you feel if you were
called "the pick of the season" and drooled over by people who toss you out
as soon as you're old and they're through with you? Vegetables will be
victims NO MORE!

	I know I've brought up some very serious issues here, but it's time to look
at certain realities which we can no longer sweep into a bin and say do not
exist.  The question is what will YOU do about these excesses? I know that I,
for one, am starting a campaign to be called Reparations for Vegetables.
 It's the least we can do for all they and their ancestors have suffered.
 Monetary compensation can never of course make up for what vegetables have
endured, but at least it's a beginning if we are to be a truly just and wise
world.
 
*****

THE REAL REASONS FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
by Daniel Curzon

	As a gay man who certainly knows what discrimination is all about and as a
college teacher of over thirty years, most of them during the Age of
Affirmative Action, let me give some reasons why everybody, especially gay
people, ought to support this wonderful concept.

1. Mainly, if you don't, Jesse Jackson will beat you up.

2. Next, you are white and don't have enough guilt of your own. You must also
pay for your ancestors' mistakes.

3. You are "of color" and know in your heart that no person "of color"has
ever been racist, discriminatory, or biased in favor of his or her own group
(not even in Rwanda) and thus you have no reason for guilt about yourself,
your ancestors, or anyone else who belongs to your group.

4. A person of color can't, in fact, be guilty of discrimination because he
or she has no power in our society, even if he or she happens to be the Head
of Personnel or a member of the Cabinet.

5. People who are black, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American are
"ethnic,"while people who are of German, Polish, or Irish descent are not.

6. You believe that every white person, despite any differences in ethnic
background, from Greek to Italian to Hungarian, or any differences in
socio-economic background, has had more advantages in every situation than
any person of color, no matter what economic background that person may come
from, even if it's middle-  or upper-class.

7. You believe that the original idea of Affirmative Action--that when two
completely equal candidates are competing for a position, the advantage then,
and only then, should go to the person in the approved group--has now
outlived its usefulness and should be replaced, as it has been, by the idea
that any person in the pre-approved groups takes priority over anyone not in
the pre-approved groups (white males).

8. You think a gay white male is just a white male when it comes to
Affirmative Action. (Gay white men can't suffer discrimination  from people
of color because they're just a bunch of faggots anyway.)

9. In the academic world, you believe that a black woman with a Master's
degree (earned during the Age of Affirmative Action at that) and one
published article is "equal" to a white male with a Ph.D., two  books, and
six articles.

10. You believe that people in the pre-approved groups who've come to the
United States since the implementation of Affirmative Action and become
citizens, even if they personally have never experienced discrimination in
the U.S. themselves, should be entitled to preferential treatment over
lifelong white citizens.

11. You believe that white males are supposed to be cool, calm, and
understated in presenting their arguments against Affirmative Action, but
women and people of color must not be held down by Western patterns of
thinking.

12. You think it's only fair that white males should stand to the side and
say to the pre-approved groups, "Here, take my job."

13. You really believe that minority groups only take jobs that the majority
wouldn't want, like office manager and dean of students.

14. Anyone of color who is not hired for a job or fired from one isalways the
victim of discrimination. It is never the result of poorwork habits, bad
attitude, lack of preparation, or incompetence.

15. If a member of an ethnic minority should ever have a bad habit of any
kind, it can be traced back as the fault of somebody else.

16. You believe that white people get anything and everything they want and
are never disappointed in job promotions or any other aspect of their lives.

17. You believe that low SAT scores, intelligence tests, college entrance
exams and the like are totally unreliable and were probably planted by the
Los Angeles Police Department.

18. You believe that merit should not longer play a part in job selection.
 Redress of grievances for the past is far more important than performance in
the present.

19. Anyone who criticizes someone of color or a woman for any reason is not
objective and is inherently a racist, a misogynist, or both.  On the other
hand, if anyone of color or a woman criticizes anything, that person is
accurate, trustworthy, and not to be questioned, because to do so would be a
sure proof or racism, misogyny, and so on.

20. Whenever there is conflict between people, it isn't because they are
individuals with conflicts (as in the O.J. Simpson jury). It's because It's
because the white are doing something wrong and must try harder to understand
the sensitivities of 'minorities.'  'Minorities' have no obligation to
understand anybody else's sensitivities.

21. When these 'minorities' become the majority, they will give Affirmative
Action to white males. (And of course gays too)

22. Your idea of fairness would be to replace black basketball players with
Asian ones in order to insure ethnic distribution in sports.  

23. You think whining is a form of aerobic exercise.

24. The only reason people do not rise to high positions is because of a
glass ceiling, residual racism, or some other exterior barricade and not
because of any limitation in the individual--despite Affirmative Action
quotas, immense legal pressure from both Federal and state government, and
the spirit of our enlightened times that says sanity has no place in American
life anymore.