I am sure that you are getting thousands of emails from Americans from Truth, Free Republic, Concerned Women of America, and others. I am a writer and artist from Alberta, who went to high school in a high income exurban development much like Deerfield, Illinois. There were no queer texts in the schools, no queer books in the libraries. As a result of being out, I was harassed verbally on a daily basis, I was beaten several times, I had death threats against me, and there was very little if nothing done by the administration to stem the flow of destruction.

I came from a family that read heavily, and that believed that one kept to the ethics and morals of freedom of speech, of self identity despite all costs. I pushed so that my voice could be heard, that those voices who were less heard were spoken for. I saw Angels in America at a local production in my grade 10 year, and in addition to my parents--it gave me the strength to go forward. It would have been a miracle to have read that in school--not as an option but as a requirement. The theocratic organazations that are bullying you, want to silence you.

It makes me upset, though, this year, two gay teens shot, and gay teen suicide at its height, and you get something like angels, something angry, holy, beautiful, and raw--that is as adolescent as it is adult--finally, living in a culture that loathes queers, and they get support, and what happens neo-con assholes with no sense of compassion rip it out of its context, do such violence to the text, and as the midrash reminds us, doing damage to the text is doing damage to the people. Not the people, my people.