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By Jack Nichols Miami, Florida— Complaining that too few protesting Democrats had been on the scene November 22--compared to the hundreds of Republican zealots present— Florida’s veteran gay activist Bob Kunst told me how vicious threats to his physical safety had led him to a radical reassessment of Republican behaviors.Kunst had been brandishing his buttons and bumper stickers which
read The Miami-Dade canvassing board, he said the next day, had decided to quit counting disputed ballots because they could see truly frightening fanaticism in the GOP’s crowd of faces. "This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in the country," Kunst told me, newly fearful of pro-Bush outbursts by teams of gun-loving right-wing militia men, of Christian fundamentalists, Elian Gonzales Republicans and of countless other GOP "gang members" hurrying to the Miami-Dade Stephen C. Clark Government Center from unspecified locales. The Republican crowds demanded that an immediate stop be put to the hand-counting of votes that had earlier been given a green light by Florida’s Supreme Court. Kunst was not alone in his wonder and concern. "It is absolutely breathtaking," noted CNN’s Jeff Greenfield, "how confusing and uncertain this election will be." Democratic Vice-presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman held a weekend afternoon press conference to denounce the Republicans’ Wednesday intimidation that, he said, had led in great part to the canvassing board’s decision to quit the counting of the disputed ballots. Republican telephone banks had urged Miami’s GOP zealots to descend on the locale where the board was counting and to demand that it stop. The city’s foremost Cuban-American radio station urged its listeners to do likewise. According to the New York Times, a Republican lawyer stirred the crowd’s ethnic passions by telling Hispanics that the canvassing board was was conspiring against them to deny their votes. According to both Kunst and the Times, the Republican protest turned violent when the canvassing board decided it could not accommodate the GOP’s noisy anger and closed its doors. Joe Geller, Miami-Dade’s chair for the Democratic Party, among others, found himself being led by police to safety. The Miami-Dade Canvassing Board voted to stop counting the vote in the immediate wake of the frightening Republican protest. "When the ruckus was over," wrote the New York Times reporters, "the protestors got what they wanted: The Miami-Dade Canvassing Board voted unanimously to call off the massive effort of hand counting ballots that they had endorsed by a similar vote that morning." One of the canvassing board members, David Leahy, who had also needed a police escort, admitted that the threatening protesters had led him to change his mind about the count. "If the Republicans get their way," Bob Kunst said, "they’ll fix things so that their fascist dictatorship can’t ever be undone. They’ll be as ruthless as fascists can be and anyone who gets in their way has plenty to fear. They are so angry that they’re ready to kill to hold on to power. I’m sure of that. I’ve been threatened by them. It was a sobering experience." Anti-Bush Slogan Gets Wide Notice Kunst’s "No More Bushit," slogan has sold in great quantities on both buttons and bumper stickers throughout Election 2000 in the U.S. Kunst, with this popular slogan, appears in last week’s U.S. News and World Report and David Letterman unwittingly brought wide notice to the activist’s slogan late last week on his nightly TV show. Kunst gave one of his buttons to New York visitor Rev. Al Sharpton, who promptly pinned it to his shirt. The two activists, standing together under the watch of network TV cameras, agreed to meet in Washington, D.C. on Friday where they would join hands in a circle around the U.S. Supreme Court building. "This isn’t about getting Bush," Kunst explained to me "it’s about citizens’ rights in my very neighborhood; its about having their discarded votes count properly in this most important of national elections." Kunst’s group, which came into being immediately following Rev. Jerry Falwell’s founding of The Moral Majority, is called The Oral Majority. He says it has already received a Washington, D.C. protest permit for January 20, Inauguration Day. Kunst is calling upon all able-bodied people, he says, to join, if Bush is proclaimed the winner, in protesting his "illegitimate" presidency. "I experienced plenty of intimidation from the GOPerverts twice last week," says Kunst, brisling. "While Florida is being called ‘the joke’ of the Millennium, in reality we are trying to save the nation from ‘fascism’ and the kind of ‘mob rule’ so evident in the GOP-engineered mayhem that took place in Miami to stop the ballot counts." ______________________________________________ Order $2 No More Bushit bumper stickers: The Oral Majority _________________________ Jack Nichols’ latest book, the Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists, published by Prometheus Books, is available through BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com.
READ JACK'S COLUMN FROM LAST WEEK Jack Nichols is Senior Editor at GayToday www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com. Jack Nichols is also the author of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin); Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove & the Pines (St. Martin's Press); and is co-author with Lige Clarke of I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (St. Martin's Press); and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male/Male Relationships (St. Martin's Press)
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richard e. schiff,
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