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Thank you for this. What a world! I’m planning to be one voice among many explaining the difference between madness and sanity (who knew this would be necessary? Ah, Robert Heinlein, Cyril Kornbluth, Theodore Sturgeon, et al).

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I was in highschool in segregated Panama City, Florida when you were born.

When it came over the PA system that Kennedy was assassinated it felt like we were having an earthquake.

I was a Yankee Queer from the Detroit area whose family moved to Florida when I was 13. In grade school my best friend was black. We were constantly harassed by kids whose parents had moved North for jobs. We had to end our friendship because of those bastards.

So, when Kennedy was assassinated that feeling like an earthquake was the students and perhaps some teachers were cheering, pounding on the walls and stomping their feet. The only 3 in the room were the teacher, my best friend, and I who didn't celebrate.

The celebration went into the night with carloads of cheering bigots and horns blowing and no sign of police anywhere.

I lived in the South for too many years but moving to Atlanta 2 months after graduation helped. Plenty of gay people there and integration seemed to be moving more quickly than in the rest of the South. I still had to be silent in my wishes that the Freedom Riders would succeed.

The United States Government has never followed the lead of the Founding Fathers because they consistently brought their twisted versions of Christianity into office with them thus denying rights to people born in America but not the right color and gender ID rights that should have been automatically taken.

I quietly took my rights by marrying a woman, allowing myself to be drafted into the army, and going to Vietnam. I regret and resent having done any of that because no one bothered to keep our governance separate from religion. I actually know what Jesus is about and believe his Word is a Word to live by. I don't believe in a Virgin birth or miracles; only in the Word of Jesus. For the rest I'm an atheist and that's the only thing I can thank the churches and their hypocrisy for.

So, yes! Fight back against the lying bastards until they're smothered by our resistance.

Thank you for reading.

Richard La France

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