An open letter to the U.S. Secretary of State, the Honorable John Kerry


Dear Secretary Kerry

Thank you for your inspiring words to the international community as we celebrate LGBT Pride around the world this month. There have been many examples of support and assistance given by your staff and the government of the United States to the struggling LGBT community in 76 countries where it is illegal to be LGBT. This stigma and persecution is also often transferred to LGBT allies.

Thousands of unhappy LGBT couples and families are deciding this week if they can hold out for a miracle to happen when the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down DOMA, now that they are deliberately not included in immigration reform.

Estimates range from 30,000 couples and perhaps 25,000 children affected by the news from the U.S. Senate when the “Gang of 8” (4 Republicans and 4 Democrats) caved into conservative pressure to exclude an important amendment for LGBT families.

(Editor’s note: The Rev. Canon Albert Ogle is en route to a UNAIDS meeting in Geneva where the difficulties of proving prevention and health services to men who have sex with men (MSM) will be the focus of the two-day consultation. Given that he criminalization of homosexuality in 76 countries makes it so much more difficult to reach and support these vulnerable populations, he describes how the work is being hampered in Zambia by religious zealots who have targeted one of the leading HIV activists there.)

Not many of us know who invented the word “homophobia” even though we use it every day. Dr. George Weinberg first mentioned the word in the 1960s in one of his groundbreaking books, “Society and the Healthy Homosexual.” He was interviewed in 1998 in New York and gave the background to his creation of this word.