Subject: Paras: Tear off the mask of moderation
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 12:52:50 -0400

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National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
PRESS RELEASE
contact:   Robert Bray or Tracey Conaty
pager 800/757-6476,  voice 619/595-7949
Gay and Lesbian Media Center, Republican Natl Convention, San Diego
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San Diego, August 13, 1996...The following statement on the extremism
underneath the moderate front of the Republican National Convention is by
Melinda Paras, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
(NGLTF).

STATEMENT OF MELINDA PARAS, NGLTF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

 The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has come to the Republican National
Convention in 1996 to tear the mask of moderation off this convention and the
GOP.  The Republican Party is more extreme, more anti-democratic, than it was
in 1992, despite attempts by Republican leaders to have the American public
believe otherwise.   Make no mistake, there is no moderation.  The party and
its platform are embedded with bigotry, hatred and intolerance.

 The convention platform is the platform of Pat Buchanan.  The Republicans,
in their 1996 platform language, advocate continued discrimination against
gays and lesbians.  They falsely claim that extending anti-discrimination
statutes to gays and lesbians would distort these laws.  The Right attacks
gay and lesbian families.  In their platform they  oppose the right of
same-gender couples to marry and imply that gay families threaten the
apparently fragile institution of heterosexual marriage .  The Republican
Right calls for a purge of gays in the military.  Ignoring common sense,
actual experience, and the Defense Department's own studied conclusion, they
claim homosexuality is incompatible with military service.  The Republican
Right strives to squash our progress on AIDS and the hope Americans have only
recently begun to feel.  The party platform re-writes the GOP's checkered
record on AIDS and AIDS funding by falsely claiming a history of Republican
support for AIDS prevention and reseaarch funding.  It was this GOP that
placed serious limits on the efforts of AIDS educators to speak plainly about
sex and sexuality.  This is a platform that while it claims to support equal
opportunity for all continues to perpetuate discrimination against the gay
people.
   Leadership of the Republican Party is so far to the right it's chilling.
 We are not fooled by the false face of moderation worn these past two days
under the guise of speakers such as Mary Fisher and Susan Molinari.  Today,
we begin to see the real deal.  Today the stage is given to some of the
Right's most notorious spokespeople:  Defense Of Marriage Act sponsor
Representative Steve Largent , anti-gay and AIDS-phobic Congressmember Robert
Dornan, and Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed.

 Thursday, the true face of the GOP continues to reveal itself.  The
spotlight will shine on civil rights opponent, Congressman Dick Armey.  Armey
is best known for calling his openly gay colleague Representative Barney
Frank, "Barney Fag."   We will also hear from Senator Trent Lott of the
secretive and far right Council for National Policy and featured in the
anti-gay video Gay Rights Special Rights."  And of course we will have vice
presidential nominee Jack Kemp, the party's wolf in sheep's clothing.   While
he appears to be a mainstream conservative who offers the ticket a focus on
conservative economic policies, Kemp is, in fact, an extremist out of step
with mainstream America.   Over the last fifteen years, Kemp has been part of
the leadership of the hard Right, whose agenda is antithetical to democracy.
 His voting record brands him as a right-winger on such issues as abortion,
discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders, and people
living with HIV and AIDS.  Even Kemp's arguably moderate views on affirmative
action and immigration can be called moderate only in the context of the
Republican extremism that surrounds him. 

 And finally, we  culminate  with the nominee himself, Bob Dole.  Dole, on
issues ranging from civil rights to gays in the military, to gay marriage, to
youth issues, has shown himself to be no friend to the gay community.   Bob
Dole and the right-wing dominated Republican Party is the Trojan Horse and
America is Troy.   Let's not open the gates of the country for the Trojan
Horse to enter.  We must keep ourselves defended from the forces of the
Right.

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