This is an open letter to friends and acquaintances of mine who are thinking about voting for John McCain next month. I hope that you read this and take me seriously.
If you pull the level or send in your absentee for Sen. McCain, you really need to think about why you are even friends with me.
Clearly we disagree on all of the fundamental issues of our time. You would be voting for someone who wants to continue the destruction of our economy, helping out the rich and screwing over the poor. You would be partially responsible for this continue pillage of the American working classes, and I do not like thieves.
You would be voting for someone who wants to continue an erratic foreign policy of aggression and war. You would therefore be held partially accountable for the wars that John McCain would inevitably get us into, and I do not like murderers.
You would be voting in support of policies that hurt our environment and fail to secure the future of our energy. I cannot respect someone who would put profits for oil companies over our nation's safety and ability to go forward in prosperity.
You would be voting for a continued stoppage of health care for children whose parents could not afford to cover them. If you are willing to watch some children die while others get top-notch care, on the basis of their parents' wealth, you are an immoral person.
And finally, and most personally for me, you would be voting for a candidate who is against workplace equality for LGBT persons, who is against covering LGBT persons in hate crime legislation (something we could really use here at Georgetown), who supports the continued barring of individuals from the armed forces on the basis of their sexual orientation, who wants to continue the biggest legal discrimination in our nation today by preventing rights for LGBT couples, and who wants to cut AIDS prevention measures for LGBT people.
If you do no think that I deserve equal rights, that I deserve to be protected from violent crimes, that I deserve to have the same chances at jobs than everyone else, and that I don't deserve to live as a safe and free citizen in this country, why are we friends? This isn't a rhetorical question. I would love to know why you would want to be friends with someone who you thought it was okay to discriminate against, segregate, and even commit violent crimes against.
Because frankly, I have a lot of reasons to not be friends with you.
