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EDITORIAL

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

ccording to Gloria Gibson, spokesperson for the

Catholic Diocese, who attended the meeting called in

December where two experts on gay marriage spoke,
”A~number of the people there had met on this question and a
few more joined them there. I feel that this meeting was where
TIP was born.”

The meeting was called by Bishop Angel, and members of
the Burlington Ecumenical Society were all invited. Gloria
Gibson also revealed that the,Diocese donated 200 dollars to the
fund to print up the flier, but
knew nothing about where the ‘
rest of the money came from.
When I asked her what the
Bishop thought about the mis-
sion statement that directly
states that ”Homosexual
Rights” is a priority of the
group. At first she knew noth-
ing about it and denied that it
was the mission statement.
However she returned my call
the next‘ day by stating that
they were unaware of the mis-
sion statement as filed with the
State, and that they were press-
ing for a refiling. The statement
was an error on which she
blamed ”lawyers.”

The problem is that TIP
is an organization that is both V
covertly and overtly pushing
for bigotry against Gay and
Lesbian people. The Bishop
stated in a press release that he
will not support a group that
harbors these motives. Unfor-
tunately, it seems the Bishop
wanted to separate the anti gay ,
marriage fight from the anti
gay rights fight. Anyone who
has watched this fight knows that there is no separating the two.
Fighting gay marriage can only be an anti—gay battle. The Bishop
somehow thought he could form a coalition with some of the
state’s most notorious opponents of gay rights, Craig Benson,

Jerry Smiley, Dick Trudell, and have the group focus on ”the
marriage question” but not appear to be inspiring bigotrylor
violence against ”our brothers and sisters of homosexual orien-
tation.”

Tip also commissioned a survey of Vermonters to find out
if people are against gay marriage, part of that very same sur-
vey was the question ”do you approve or disapproveof elemen-
tary and secondary schools in Vermont teaching that homosexu-
ality is an acceptable lifestyle?” A question that has nothing to
do with same gender marriage,
but specifically about educa-
tion and rights.

The most homophobic
thing that TIP has done, and
the act that is most likely to stir
up bigotry and violence
against the GLBT community
was the flier that was distrib-
uted in five daily papers across
the state. The flier painted gay.
people as outsiders, and not
people; but subversives that
are attempting to dismantle
Vermont and America. The
usual right wing propaganda,
and the usual assault that ev-
ery time — in Hawaii, in
Maine, in Oregon and Colo-
rado — leads to an increase of
Violence against. gay people.

Perhaps the Bishop
has a different idea of what
bigotry is, or perhaps the
Bishop has found it easier to
have anti bigotry PR, while
working with a group whose
goal is the persecution of his
”Brothers andlsisters of homo-

sexual orientation.” The ques-

tion will only be answered if '

the Bishop pulls the diocese support out of TIP, rather than peti-
tions the grouplto change a statement that reflects the groups
obvious intent. Either way, he should know that actions speak
louder than words. if