They were not statistics or faceless names of unknown peoplethey were sincere and intelligent and dedicated peoplepeople I was proud to meet and to learn from. As an American. I am dismayed that the members of this organization. wishing to meet freely in a free country. needed to discuss in their native countries how to protect themselves from immigration authorities here. Our policy requires that lesbians and gay men hide. that they deceive American authorities. Indeed. its insidiousness is illustrated by the fact that it requires invisibilitythe very factor that lesbians and gay men have been struggling to overcome. a fundamental issue in their movement. I am outraged. as are all decent Americans. that the good people who have come here for this meeting. should have done so at the risk of arrest and deportation and that they felt fear at our border. Many of us in this country and in this Congress believe that the policy of excluding lesbians and gay men is an affront to decency and an obvious denial of basic human rights and of the principles on which this country was founded. We in Congress must repeal this law. must wipe it off the books. and with this action we must end forever the time when this country closes its borders to lesbians and gay men.
Keywords matched
immigration deportation