The New Republic

In the newest issue of the magazine, fourteen eggheads and eminences wrote short essays announcing whom they'd be voting for and why. We'll be unveiling these responses on The Plank throughout the next two weeks. This is what Larry Kramer, an AIDS and gay rights activist, had to say:

I cannot support any of the candidates thus far running for president because none of them supports me and my people in the ways we need to be supported. This is not just about gay marriage, which has become a nonspecific red herring for non-specific maybes. (Why do you hate us so that you will not permit us to legally love?) Of course we want gay marriage, but that is not all we want. We want safety. (We are the only people in America that it is socially and legally acceptable to hate and discriminate against.) We want no more taxation without representation. (When I die, our government gobbles such an unconscionable amount of my estate that my partner will no longer be able to afford the house we both have put so much of our money and energy into.) We want the approximately 2,000 benefits our government provides to heterosexual married couples. (Why don't we get them? We pay the same taxes they do.) In other words, we want equality. We want everything straight people have and get and are entitled to. And there is not one candidate who has come anywhere near offering anywhere near any of this. In fact, I am afraid that there is not a one of them who, when push comes to shove, would not continue to sell us down the river. In fact, I have come to believe that forbidding us all of these things we are entitled to is based on hate, pure and simple. There are, by some estimates, 20 million of us. But we don't make as much noise as our enemies do. In fact, we don't make any noise at all. More fools we.

Part one: Randall Kennedy

Part two: Judith Shulevitz

Part three: Erica Jong

Part four: John McWhorter

Part five: Paul Berman

Part six: Graydon Carter

Part seven: Allison Silverman

Part eight: Alan Wolfe

Part nine: John Anderson

Part ten: C.K. Williams

Part eleven: Todd Gitlin

Part twelve: Daniel Alarcón

Part thirteen: Larry Kramer

Part fourteen: Alan Dershowitz

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