Two days.

That’s all it took. Two days full of unspeakable grief and pain, two days of stunned disbelief staring at images on the television screen with teary eyes and a heavy heart. Two days that I suspect we all will remember for the rest of our lives.

Then I found out that the Terrorist attacks were partly my fault. Well technically it wasn’t my fault alone, but it was the fault of people like me. You see I am a gay man, and to some people that really makes a difference. Who told me that it was my fault you may ask? Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson did, that’s who.

A mere two days had passed when Jerry Falwell, while appearing as a guest on the national syndicated show “700 Club”, stated: ” the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen’.”

After hearing these words Pat Robertson, who runs the Christian Broadcasting Network and is a former candidate for the Presidency of the United States, stated three little words shook me to the core of my existence. His three little words were “I totally concur.”

Wow.

I vote regularly in elections (not for Bush in case you were wondering), I am a student getting more education to be a better person, I pay taxes, I contribute to charities, I am a Christian and I love America. But all of these things makes no difference to Falwell and Robertson. The fact that I believe in a woman’s right to choose and that I am a gay man is all the justification they need to lump me in with the most inhumane monsters of our current times. And God help me because Falwell and Robertson won’t.

I have to admit that I am not in any way surprised. I knew that it would only be a matter of time until the Conservative Christian Leadership found a way to link these horrible attacks to their favorite political enemy. What did shock me is that it took only two days for these two men to attempt to use this awful event to further their own political agenda.

In the last week since the attack on humanity, we have seen the bipartisan support that our President has received from virtually every American. Although I personally dislike President Bush, I have done all that he has asked of me, as I suspect others have. President Bush asked for our prayers, and I prayed. President Bush asked for cash donations, and I donated. President Bush asked for all Americans to donate blood, and if they would have let me (gays legally can’t donate blood) I most certainly would have.

I have done my part for God and Country, and I deeply resent these statements. In a time of hurt and pain all they have done is add to that hurt and pain to a segment of our population and that pisses me off. I was not allowed to feel like an American, I was made to feel like I was less than human, I was made to feel substandard.

To those of you that agree with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, that somehow from my simple existence here in Norwalk I am at least partly responsible for the atrocity that happened to our county and our world, I say that you are mistaken. And while I’ve got your attention, please stop linking us with terrorists.

Because we are people.

Lee Harmon