To the Readers' Forum:
It's been filtering back to the gay community in Erie County about what has been going on in Jamestown vis a vis the attacks on your City Council President Greg Rabb.
I've known Greg ever since I moved into Western New York back in 1997 even before he was on the Jamestown City Council. I am stunned by the viciousness of the attacks against him now, especially since Greg has told me time and again of how his sexual orientation after initial shock value seemed to count for very little and that the good people of Jamestown accepted him.
But now that he's coming up with a very good idea to have same sex couples come to Chautauqua County and Jamestown particularly to get married and spend what are pretty good tourist tax dollars in this region, he's being attacked for promoting the so-called 'gay agenda'. Which in my mind only means that gay people will enjoy political, legal, economic, and social equality, a concept most with a decent IQ embrace without a problem.
Western New York has enough real problems with the drain of decent employment from this region. That people want to get so savage over the fact that a same sex couple now has some legal protections and that their commitment to each other is finally recognized by the State of New York is baffling to any intelligent individual.
If these hateful fundamentalists succeed in driving someone like Greg Rabb from public office then I assure you Jamestown will get a reputation the same as Dayton, Tenn., got for the Scopes Monkey Trial. That's what Jamestown is flirting with, make no mistake about it.
Hopefully your paper's editorial board will think long and hard on this campaign and will come down foursquare in Greg Rabb's defense.
Bruce Kogan
Buffalo