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The Democrats have promised to help us, and are keeping their promises. Both the state and the national platforms say:

Government has a special responsibility to those whom society has historically prevented from enjoying the benefits of full citizenship for reasons of race, religion, sex, age, national origin and ethnic heritage, sexual oritentation, or disability.

All groups must be protected from discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age or sexual orientation.

We will support legislation to prohibit discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation. [Not quotas, but simply assurance you won’t be fired if your employer discovers you are gay.]

We will assure that sexual orientation per se does not serve as a bar to participation in the miitary. [Under the Reagan Administration discharge from the military for suspicion of homosexual activities has increased by 30%.]

We will support an enhanced effort to learn the cause and cure of AIDS, and to provide treatment for people with AIDS. [Rather than seeking increased funding for AIDS research, it has come from the pitifully small general Public Health budget, and Secretary Magaret Heckler has boasted of this meager support.]

And we will ensure that foreign citizens are not excluded form this country on the basis of their sexual orientation. [Successful Dallas businessman Richard Longstaff is still facing deportation for no other reason.]

Violent acts of bigotry, hatred, and extremism aimed at women, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and gay men and lesbians have become an alarmingly common phenomenon. A Democratic Administration will work vigorously to address, document, and end all such violence. [The Reagan Administration refused the request to keep track of cases of anti-gay attacks. The National Gay Task Force, with very few resources, has documented over 200 cases per month of such violence, about 1% of them purely gratuitous killings.]

Walter Mondale has stated publicly: “I will, within the first three months of my administration, issue executive orders banning discrimination in federal government employment on the basis of sexual orientation…[which] would extend to federally contracted private employment. In matters of equal rights, there can be no double standard; either our nation is committed, as I am, to equal opportunity for all Americans, or it is not committed at all.”