Ms. Coronado:
In California this week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Harvey Milk day into law, which apparently infuriated you. The abject ignorance and stupidity you spouted in reaction astonish me:
I think it just absolutely denigrates the entire civil rights movement. Homosexuality is not a civil right. I don’t remember the last time that a homosexual person was forced to move out of their seat on a public bus, like Rosa Parks. And I don’t remember the last time that a homosexual person or student…was forced to go to a segregated school, as in the case of Mendez v. Westminster, which took place right here in Orange County, California.
Ms. Coronado, I have something for you to watch:
That’s security camera footage of gay man Jack Price, 49, being beaten to within an inch of his life by two young men. His attackers share the same views of gay people that you just spouted – views that allowed them to commit this atrocity.
Ms. Coronado, your words, attitudes, and ignorance are a threat to the safety of every LGBT child in the school system you oversee – to gay people everywhere, really – as chairwoman of the Orange County California Board of Education. You are a monster, Ms. Coronado, on a scale the young killers in this video will never attain.
If one day you wake up and realize just how terrible a person you have really been, I encourage you to seek out Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming by yet more young men who shared your view of LGBT people. Perhaps Mrs. Shepard, in her nearly infinite grace and strength, will be able to tolerate your presence long enough to dispel your ignorance.
- Aaron T. Akins.
