Is Robert Brandon Sandor the enemy?

Robert Brandon Sandor, the "unstoppable protagonist" HIV activist based in New York City, continues to blame HIV "experts" and "specialists" for not addressing the issue of serosorting with him with open arms. Sandor continues to brand their emails as hate mails and continues to make them public.

What will it takes all the leaders of the LGBT Community to call each other, draw a plan and invite Brandon for a talk? What will it takes for them to create an outline and address the issue without fear of losing the credit to other people? When will they accept the fact that people like Sandar exists?

And what do Sandar gotta do to be accepted? Sandor must surely want to be heard and be accepted. Otherwise he will not be wasting his time fighting with the people he is fighting with via the Net. He has to have a reason to stop fighting.

For a decade, Brandon’s been actively expressing opposition or hostility toward established activists, including Brad Becker of the LGBT National Help Center, Ken Fornataro of The Network, and Dan O’Connell of the NYSDOH-AIDS Institute.

None of these leaders have been willing to debate this controversial issue openly in public, tho O'Connell has been actively replying to Sandor's emails in the last few weeks, giving his reasons. But O'Connell has yet to accept or meet with Sandor in person (willingly with open arms) to discuss ways to solve their differences. O'Connell, has, on many occasions told Sandor he (Sandor) needs to reasses his serosorting program since it is entirely based on the foundation of trust. And that not all gay men are telling the truth about their HIV status.

Ten years ago Sandor created a series of social and sexual parties for pozzies in various cities. HIV advocacy groups, however, weren’t so pleased. They questioned whether the participants were all telling the truth about their HIV status.

Sandor promoted the use of condoms all the way and did tell the participants to think of safety first.

The success of these parties led him into the uncharted waters of HIV-negative parties recently.

Advocacy groups didn’t think the message was clear enough and that Sandor had failed to note that HIV can be transmitted in other ways than sexually, and that there was the possibility of other nasty (if not fatal) STDs.

But many also have voiced that serosorting is really worth considering. While it is hard to keep pozzie and neggies out of each other's bedroom, it is certainly a new trend which can be promoted or sponsored to reduce the HIV infection among men having sex with men (and women, and vice versa). How can it not be a good exercise?

The enemy is the indifference within the LGBT community. The enemy could be hiding among us (queers who tell lies and those who refuse to find out about their HIV status and yet not afraid to protect others).


COMMENTS POSTED ON THE CHICAGO EDGE:
JMichael in Fort Worth
Arlington, TX Reply »
|Report Abuse |#1 Nov 14, 2007
Politics - and political correctness - aside, serosorting is a lousy idea in terms of stopping the transmission of HIV and AIDS. All it takes is one "false negative" person (or one liar) having unprotected sex to set a whole chain of sero-conversions in motion. Better to either stop playing the field altogether, or to play safe. Responsibility begins and ends with each individual.

Queergam: Sandor was right about asking participants to play safe and wear condoms.

riffraf002
Litchfield, ME Reply »
|Report Abuse |#2 Nov 14, 2007
I think it is a good idea for hiv positive men too have their own dance party and hiv negative men too have their own dance party. We see alot of discrimination and people not telling others the truth when it comes to their status because gay men who are negative turn away positive men.

fuzi

Queergam: We think it is a better idea for all men to know their HIV status and tell the truth so they all can party and play together safely while knowing who is poz and who is neg.


Joined: May 19, 2007
Comments: 882
Atlanta, GA
ISP Location: Atlanta, GA Reply »
|Report Abuse |#3 Nov 14, 2007
That only causes some men to either lie about their status or to not get tested at all. And I'm not advocating that position, just stating what occurs whether we want it to or not. In the ideal world, everyone would get tested and nobody would ever lie about their status just to get laid, but we don't live in that kind of world. So these "serosorting" events are at the least silly and in some ways insulting.
As well as dangerously deceptive.

Queergam: Serosorting is not the only issue that is based on the foundation of trust. If we kill the idea, we will find it harder to reduce the HIV infection.

Should obese airline passengers pay for two seats?

According to a recent news report, most Australians believe obese airline passengers should pay for two seats so they don’t take up space from the people sitting next to them, according to a survey released yesterday.

Sixty-three per cent of the 2,810 respondents wanted “excessively overweight” people to be charged for an extra seat, according to the survey for travel company, totaltravel.com.

The issue resonated strongly with travellers, especially because seat space was at a premium since the launch of low-cost carriers, said totaltravel.com global marketing manager Paul Fisher.

“Airlines should be working out a solution to the problem, whether it is discounted second seats or speciallydesigned chairs for larger people.”

Miss You Most At Christmas Time

Christmas Wishes 2007

Christmas is here again. I want to take this opportunity to wish you a happy holiday and hope Christmas Eve will find you where the love light gleams...

We remember our loved ones who are no longer with us today. We miss them most at Christmas time as we feel the pains and the sweetness of loving them with all our hearts. We continue to cherish their memories. We continue to mourn for them tho we should stop and move on. Instead of mourning, it is time to celebrate the love they kindly and gently, naturally, willingly and unconditionally brought into our lives. The sweetness of their touches, sweet kisses, kind words, and warmest hugs we remember so well.

We'd always be wishing - wishing that they will magically appear infront of us in familiar places like Duane Reads, Subway, Subway Sandwiches, Gristedes, T.J. Max, Starbucks, Penn Station where we used to take the NJ Transit to Sommerville or somewhere else to spend wonderful time with our loved ones, and many other places we used to visit together like Key West, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Palm Beach, DC, New Hope, even Little Rock, to name just a few.

We will always wish that one day, one fine day, they will be back in the form of someone new who'd walk through the door and be someone we can always count on again.

And that is the point...we never give up. We never stop thinking and remembering, crying and smiling in the dark...and knowing...knowing they knew.

So this Christmas, instead of mourning our loved ones who are no longer here, try to have a happy time and say nice things via a card or an email and make someone cry...happy tears.

My wish for this Christmas is that we all feel the love, find love, give love, make love, and be loved in return.

Let's stop asking: where are you Christmas? Christmas is here, Christmas is everywhere. Christmas is here if you care...if there is love in your heart and your mind, it will feel like Christmas all the time...Let's give someone Christmas this year...

To think that it is ok...

As reported on a very popular gay blog today, posted by the famed gay blogger, Micheal Petrelis, an editorial in today's Washington Post castigating GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee for his outrageous endorsement of quarantining people with AIDS and lack of tolerance for gays is miles ahead of what the Human Rights Campaign said today in a letter to Huckabee.

The "HIV Clueless" editorial is notable not just because it takes Huckabee to task for his dangerous views, but also for using the words homosexual, gay, and even lesbian, and not in a direct quote from the candidate:

"Actually, in 1992, the year after basketball star Magic Johnson made the dramatic announcement that he was HIV-positive, it was already widely understood -- and widely publicized -- that HIV could not be spread by casual contact or even through close physical contact short of unprotected homosexual or heterosexual sex.
"Nor can his view on AIDS be separated from Mr. Huckabee's animus toward homosexuality, which at the time he called "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle."

"But in refusing to "recant," as he put it to Fox News, his 1992 views on AIDS and on homosexuality as a "lifestyle," he fails to lay to rest legitimate doubts about his objectivity and fairmindedness when it comes to the rights and interests of gays and lesbians, and the public health concerns of everyone."

On the HRC front, the nation's largest gay advocacy organization also expresses criticism and strong concern over Huckabee's views, but the group is more upset over his AIDS quarantine remarks and doesn't hold him accountable in anyway for his anti-gay thinking.

Serosorting the way to go...why argue about it?

SEROSORTING.

This is one major word that could be our next term of endearment. Whether we like it or not, serosorting, at the very least, could help us to think deeper about (and look deeper at) HIV/AIDS epidemic as life goes on. I know one thing is still missing -- a chat room/party room just for safer version of serosorting for gay HIV-negative men like us. I know my bedroom is a place for me to practice safer version of serosorting but that is not the point. Is yours?

Unfortunately serosorting exercise is based on the foundation of trust. So, who should we trust? No one. That should make serosorting an even more effective way to reduce the HIV infection in this country. Because we couldn't trust anyone we practice safer sex. If our trust is broken at least our condoms stay while it lasts.

Queers may be in for some trouble, or we may be heading for an age of glory. Thanks to people like Robert Brandon Sandor who is a friend of HIV-negative men and a representative of HIV-positive men. His mission: saving HIV-negative men from being infected by HIV-positive men. And what is wrong with that? We should thank him. We should open our hearts to his idea -- HIV-UB2.Net -- and copy the idea. Create rooms/avenues for safer version of serosorting.

His tactics and approaches may be different and hard to accept but his message is very clear: one out of every four people in this country do not know their HIV status and 40,000 new infections are occuring in this country each year. The facts provided by the GMHC recently are indisputable. With such powerful facts in front of us, how can the issue of Serosorting not be regularly discussed or debated when infact half of the new infection have occured among adolescents and young adults? That's like 20,000 of our young people living with HIV! The LGBT leaders who are devoting their lives to fight against HIV/AIDS should stop taking things personal. They have to be more open-minded and be more approachable even when they are approached the wrong way time and again. They have to stretch their arms and accept all kind of ideas from all walks of life or else we are going to lose out to HIV/AIDS and the drug companies that makes millions in selling HIV drugs that don't cure HIV/AIDS. Of course their mission (and their scientists' mission) is to find a cure. They'll keep on finding. One fine day (soon we hope) they will find a cure. Until then, they will make more money selling drugs that don't cure HIV and until then safer sex is the way to go.

We have to project ourselves (and protect ourselves) more forcefully now or risk being overshadowed by HIV drugs and drug companies. We are very happy for having HIV drugs and drug companies for making and selling HIV drugs to help prolong lives. But it is also based on the foundation of trust. Do we trust drug companies? Do we trust the HIV drugs? We also have to remember that not all HIV drugs are working well. Some HIV drugs are not working while others are giving HIV-positive men more years to swallow the pills.

Here's the thing the LGBT leaders should remember: the face of HIV, as portrayed by drug companies and their aggressive ads in gossy billboards, magazines, newspapers and even on TV, is very handsome and healthy-looking. It shows no sign, whatsoever, of the virus that lurked within, ready to strike the immune system in the human body. The true faces of HIV/AIDS are lying in beds in hospitals or at homes somewhere, lonely and afraid, some are unloved, waiting to die. People say HIV/AIDS is now no longer a death sentence and many of us believe it...we need some serious education. We need to consider serosorting seriously.

Billy Gilman-Oh Holy Night

It is the night of our dear Savior's birth...the thrills of hope...falls on your knees ...

"IT'S STILL ELEMENTARY" - a gay edumentary is out

Teaching Gay Acceptance to Kids: It’s Elementary
by Ambrose Aban
EDGE New York City Contributor
Thursday Dec 6, 2007

A gay "edumentary" is remaking astonishing inroads in America’s education system. A San Francisco-based company, GroundSpark, produced It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues In Schools for elementary and high schools educators and students a decade ago. Bypassing the political and media worlds, GroundSpark’s work has provoked the question asked by parents across the country: Will they allow their third-graders and teenage kids to study civility, tolerance and acceptance for gays and lesbians in schools?

To mark the 10-year anniversary of the film, there’s now a companion film launched last week in New York City. It’s Still Elementary: The Movie & The Movement is a sequel--and also dramatizes the special relationship between homosexual and heterosexual children and teachers in elementary and high schools. The subject matter, however, remains the same as the first one--tolerance. But GroundSpark (formerly Women’s Education Media) is targeting adults and lawmakers with the new effort. There is a plan afoot to put the two versions into a DVD next month for the general public.

The new film--shot in a raw, on-the-spot way that captures all the opinions of children and adults alongside the cold hard facts of life--is certainly one of the most realistic community service films of its kind, yet presses all the right buttons in a viewer.

Tolerance not only includes gritting one’s teeth and putting up with other people and their opinions, but also demands acceptance of the other person (if not of the opinion itself). For elementary school kids, it is about learning how to accept that gay people exist and that the only way to study, live, and work with them is to accept them for who they are.

Debra Chasnoff, a feature documentary Oscar-winner in the mid-’90s, set a seemingly straightforward task for her staff at GroundSpark to relaunch her theme line of videos, Talking About Gay People In Schools, into the new 48-minute version, the aptly titled It’s Still Elementary. In doing so, she plunged into one of the most controversial aspects of the gay-rights movement, namely, how young people should be before they learn about homosexuality.

The issue of whether society should tolerate, accept, or even celebrate homosexuality has become one of the most volatile cultural issues of the 90s. But nothing seems to generate more passion on both sides of the ideological divide than the question of whether schools, even as early as kindergarten, should be teaching children that gay is OK.

Chasnoff believes that change happens in response to acceptance. "It’s not a ’culture of niceness,’" said a lower Manhattan’s fourth-grade math teacher of two gay brothers in New York City who was interviewed for this article. "This is a ’heart thing.’ We can be nice to people, but getting our hearts lined up with it: That’s the challenge."

Rethinking tolerance & acceptance

It’s Still Elementary is meant to reinvigorate a movement to make schools safe for all children to discuss lesbian and gay people in age-appropriate ways. What sets this new video apart from the one produced by the American Family Association, Suffer The Children Answering the Homosexual Agenda in Public Schools to counterattack It’s Elementary is the unapologetic way in which Chasnoff and producer Helen Cohen delve into the crumbling mind of straight people and those who run the straight community and organizations.

The idea came about after Chasnoff won her Oscar. What next? she asked herself. It struck her that homophobia hurts all children: one only has to consider the consistently homophobic content of bullying.

Tackling Bullying, Suicide & STDs:

In the ’90s, when most schools were focusing on preventing the spread of HIV or suicide, typically limiting discussions of homosexuality to health class lessons, Chasnoff put together a small set of crew and filmed several classrooms around the country where teachers brought up the subject of gays and lesbians with fourth graders and students in high schools.

One of her "talking heads," third-grader Emily Rosen-King, submitted her article for a school essay-writing contest and the teachers realized that her essay really stood out because she was clearly talking about acceptance, tolerance and love. In the film, her teacher invites her to the front of the classroom and asks her to read her essay, praising her grandma and proclaiming the virtues of having two loving mommies. Emily of course knew all along about being a gay couple’s daughter. Now in her late teen, she realized what she was writing and reading in her classroom then was really a very important deal.

Bob Chase, who was President of the National Education Association from 1996 to 2002 says there was enormous reluctant to address gay issues back then. And Kevin Jennings who is the founder of GLSEN, a gay and lesbian education network, remembers there was nothing going on and there were no teachers addressing the issue of tolerance, "let alone talking about gay people," he said. "And there was none to protect kids from harmful harassment."

"It was a scary time for the kids," says Frieda Takamura, who is the co-founder of The Safe Schools Coalition, adding kids were subjected to all kinds of negative innuendos about gays and lesbians and the info they were getting from so many people were all the anti-gay and slurs.

Driven and challenged, Chasnoff used her documentary-making skills and filmed It’s Elementary in a raw unedited honest way, capturing the much-needed human emotion into the film.

Real Kids Reel Life:

The film is not your average everyday documentary. No picture-perfect children. No perfectly groomed moms with understanding husbands. No toothy teens and baby golden retriever leaping around the screen. Instead, it shows something you seldom see on film outside of the news. Real life.

As the first video resurfaces after a decade and the newly released one generates a new brand of energy and passion like never before, many schools across the land are ready to accept and screen the new film. But some of the same controversies are arising similar to the first one in 1996.

But It’s Still Elementary targets parents, teachers, and community and world leaders by sharing, telling and measuring the positive impacts the first film had made in 10 years. The kids featured in the videos, now in their late teens and early 20s, watched the video again as adults and have spoken freely and respectfully about gay people. They have become allies.

Indeed, it seems that It’s Elementary has helped countless educators and parents think about their role in helping to prevent young people from harmful bias and prejudice toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Rather than focusing on political differences on this issue among adults, the film takes the point of view of children and features them discussing the information and the misinformation that they have absorbed about what it means to be gay or lesbian.

One of the kids, Brandon Rice, now 23, told EDGE in phone call from Wisconsin that the film touched him in many different ways. "Today, I am thinking about kids across the country facing discrimination at school," he said. "So to me personally, it’s very important to keep LGBT issues in schools as early as elementary, because it’s helps kids develop tolerance early on for their adult lives." Rice added that many kids struggle with their identity, and if we give them tools and educate their peers, in return they will recognize bad behavior towards each other, and can easily correct it.

If you remember, there is a phenomenal episode of South Park in which the main characters are forced to visit a "Museum of Tolerance" where they are bombarded by PC propaganda on various social and racial issues. When the brainwashing does not work, the kids are sent to a Nazi-style "Tolerance Camp" for indoctrination that is more intensive.

’We really wanted to share the story of why It’s Elementary was made in the first place’The moral of the story, according to a professor at an institute of Asian studies in New York, is the difference between acceptance and tolerance. To tolerate something, as one of the young heroes precociously explains, is simply to put up with it. It does not mean you have to like it or approve of it. Therefore, not all that coercive inculcation had been to impart the children with tolerance, after all, but rather to mandate approval, to force acceptance.

"The distinction is lost on many people," says Pauline Griffiths, who has written on the subject of tolerance. "We should seriously want social toleration, in the narrow sense, meaning the willingness of people to coexist with those of different opinions, lifestyles, religions, ethnicities, and so on, and to refrain from using force to make others conform to their own will."

Many people have trouble with this concept because they tend to believe that their own idea of what is good and bad should be enforced by the state.

"School students should be encouraged to be civil and responsible in order for tolerance and acceptance to take place in elementary schools and even in universities," said LaMore Longines, a straight financial writer who was bullied as a fourth-grader because his then-11th-grade elder brother appeared to be gay and behaved flamboyantly.

A Movie Ignites a Movement:

"Many people think that elementary is too early to start, and elementary schools are seen as the wrong place to start planting the seeds of civility and tolerance and acceptance," Rice said. "But if your child is old enough to understand a heterosexual relationship, why deny them the opportunity to learn about the other side?"

Once they start to talk about homosexuals, they can branch off into other issues: same-sex marriages, gender identity, lifestyles etc," he added. It’s Elementary has certainly ignited the national "safe schools" movement, contributing to the growth in the number of gay-straight alliance groups in schools and the increase in the number of K-12 schools with inclusive non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

In 1990, the number of gay-straight alliances in US high schools was only two compare with 3,700 in 2007. The percentage of school districts that train staff about sexual orientation issues was less than 1% in 1990 compared to 29% in 2007. Also the number of states with law supporting the issues was only one state compared to 10 states in 2007. That is testimony enough to spread the videos to schools. The number of times anti-gay slurs rolled out of students’ tongues in 1990 was 26 times every four minutes.

As a TV station manager in Idaho who’s featured in the film says, "This is the issue we really need to deal with". On the other side, people like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson have condemned the film. The American Family Association, AFA, The Coral Ministries, the Family Research Council, and a few others had also openly condemned the first film, saying the video failed to cover the "Christian" part and lied about the biblical view of homosexuality.

With inspiring footage shot in schools across the country, It’s Elementary makes a compelling case that children need to be taught respect for all - and that this kind of educations needs to start in elementary school. But parents however continue to be divided and one of them, Kevin Brown, a straight father of a fourth-grader in New York says he does not believe such topics are appropriate for his son and for elementary school students.

"Teaching young kids about tolerance are a commendable thing," he said. "But teaching them about gay and lesbian lifestyles on the pretext of promoting tolerance and acceptance is not elementary education."

In It’s Still Elementary, Chasnoff and her team once again hit on a novel way to touch people in the street by injecting the element of reality into the documentary. The result is touching - there is life, movement and characters in the films.


A Look Back--& Forward:

The message is clear: a dramatic relationship between children and teachers. In terms of execution, it was also very unusual. Chasnoff and her team must have asked a lot of flexibility, which the schools and parents gave them. Their trust was well appreciated and it paid off.

It’s Still Elementary looks at the impact of the original, which has been viewed by millions of people as well as shown on public television as it features follow-up interviews with some of the original students, as well as with educators, activists and the film’s production team who discuss the political and cultural reaction to and impact of the original release of the film.

"We really wanted to share the story of why It’s Elementary was made in the first place," Chasnoff explains, adding, "it allows for a moment of reflection and a time to recommit ourselves to do more."

Many schools and parents decided not to run away from the issue and the religious ones are starting to feel they need to look at the anti-gay prejudice. Because of seismic cultural shifts, gay and lesbian teens are acknowledging same-sex attraction at ever-younger ages and questioning the concept of both "coming out" and "the closet." Increasingly, their challenges look less like the public health crisis of the 1980s and more like the ones their straight peers have always faced: How do you know when a boy likes you (versus just liking you)? How do you ask a girl out? And what do you do when your mom hears about your new boyfriend from one of her friends at the supermarket?

To understand the experiences some teens have today, we must go back at least as far as 1989, when a startling report on suicide rates was released. Long-invisible populations in high schools, gay and lesbian teens were suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Many adults were horrified by students’ stories of hostile school climates, isolation, and even parental rejection.

GLSEN’s Jennings (and a onetime teacher at Concord Academy), cautions that while life may be better for some teens in some schools, verbal and physical harassment remains a serious problem, especially in the 40 states without laws explicitly prohibiting harassment based on sexual orientation. A 2005 national survey by his group found that nearly one in three LGBT youths skipped school during the previous month because they were too afraid to attend - and that the majority hears anti-gay language on a regular basis.

But he believes activism and "the incredible leadership of straight allies like Bill Weld" have changed the landscape for many of the estimated 15,000 gay and lesbian students in Massachusetts public high schools. "I think the reason you’re seeing that shift in Massachusetts and across the country is because there’s been a concerted effort to make life better for these young people," Jennings said. "What happens in Massachusetts seems to be what happens in the rest of the country 10 or 15 years later. Hopefully, what you’re seeing is the next wave."

That means at least some of the gay teens who come out at a young age will not stay out. Alternatively, to borrow a more apt metaphor from one Gay-Straight Alliance faculty adviser, today’s teens are more casual about "trying on the gay hat to see if it fits." Some of them will decide the hat does not fit them after all.


Caught between the moon and New York City which he calls home since 2000, Ambrose Aban wrote for Malaysia, Singapore and Bangkok Tatler, reviewed restaurants and wrote special ad supplement, "Christopher Street", for HX Magazine New York, contributed to leading English dailies in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. Ambrose loves giving up the secrets of everything from where to find the most delicious Orange Glazed Peking Duck to how to prepare extravagant chic soirees in the city.

World AIDS Day 2007

Let's Educate. Let's Learn. Let's Empower. Let's Help.

Not all muslims are killers...

I've been meaning to post this on Queergam. In the wake of September 11, my American queer friends asked me about Islam. I had to confess that I do know a bit about the faith because I was born in a muslim country, Malaysia. Muslims in Malaysia are great people, loving and caring for other people - Chinese, Indians, Iban, Kadazans, Penan, Orang Ulu and even the lovable Orang Utans. As I learned more about Islam I discovered that there are over one billion Muslims around the world and several million here in the United States. The United States is home to more than 1,200 mosques where Muslims worship Allah, which is their name for God. Muslims are not only Arab, but can be from any ethnic or racial background.

Islam comes from the Arabic root word for "peace." In Afghanistan, Islam is the primary religion. All over Afghanistan, people stop their work or studies at five specific times each day to say their prayers to Allah. Religious leaders read from a holy book called the Quran. Muslims believe that faith, prayer, charity, fasting, and one trip to Mekkah (their holy place) are the five most important responsibilities to Allah.

In the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, they celebrate Ramadhan. It is a time to remember the point in history at which Muhammad received the first words of the Quran, (in early part of the seventh century) as they were given to him by the angel Gabriel. All Muslims are asked to fast for 30 days (they can have small meals at night) and to be kind to their neighbors. At the end of Ramadan, there is a festival called Hari Raya Aidil Fitri (in Malaysia that is and I don't know what it is called in other muslim countries) when the community puts on their best clothing and enjoys a feast of thanksgiving. Now, let me tell you -- Hari Ray is my favorite thanksgiving day in Malaysia - the food/cakes/sweet savories/guilty delights beat anything else on this planet earth. They are soooo delcicious! So Islam is a good religion. Some muslims are not. I lived with my very good, God-fearing Muslim people in an islamic community in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The city is ultra modern and people are super educated. The country is richer and more stable, both economically and politically than most Asian countries. We live together and respect each other's religion and beliefs. Not all Muslims are killers (as some of you might think) or want to kill others in order to go to heaven. The real killers are those powerful muslims who didn't stop other muslims to kill others knowing Allah didn't ask muslims to kill to be in heaven. That is my personal opinion.

Jonathan Swift once said, "We have just enough religion to make us hate, and not enough to love one another." The sad fact is that terrorists feel justified in their actions. They believe they work for a higher or greater purpose. As an adult, I cannot make sense out of the reasoning that motivates terrorism so answering a child's "why" questions becomes a special challenge.

As I searched for a simple explanation to this complex question, it seemed that all forms of terrorism shake down to one common denominator: fear. Timothy McVeigh was afraid the federal government was getting too powerful and predicted they would take away civil rights from citizens - unless he stopped them. Islamic extremists are afraid the United States is invading their land and will influence Muslim people away from their religious traditions - unless they stop us. Their fear turns into hate and hate feeds on itself. The predictions of extremists become their prophecies, and in their minds we become a real threat. They convince themselves and others that violent action is the only way to defend their values.

The same fear that motivates terrorism is also at the root of intolerance. In fact, on September 11, 2001, Americans were the victims of intolerance. Men, women, and children were targeted simply because they were American or worked in America.

Since the World Trade Tower attack, there have been reports of discrimination and even physical assaults against Arab Americans. In Anchorage, Alaska, vandals wrote anti-Arab remarks and destroyed equipment at a printing company owned by an Arab American family.

In Chicago, Illinois, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a school for Arab American children. In Cleveland, Ohio, a young man drove his car through the front doors of a local mosque where Muslims meet to worship.

In Houston, Texas, a Goodyear tire store owned by an Arab American was set on fire.

In Los Angeles, California, authorities reported more than 40 hate-related incidents targeting Arab Americans within two weeks of the terror attacks including assaults and bomb threats. And in Reedley, California, an Egyptian man was shot to death in his grocery store two days after finding a death threat on the windshield of his car. The police believed he was killed because the assailants thought he was Arab.

Beyond the obvious moral problems with racial discrimination, it is also just plain bad strategy. First, it is not possible to determine someone's ethnic background just by looking at them. Different races often share similar physical characteristics, which make it hard to identify ethnicity by appearances.

In Los Angeles, a Latino man was pulled from his car and assaulted by a group of men who thought he was Middle Eastern. The assailants will serve time for assaulting someone who had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks.

Secondly, discrimination and hate crimes only serve to perpetuate hate and division. Hate doesn't teach anyone "a lesson." It is always counterproductive. Even if someone believed their cause was fully justified by the horrific toll of terrorism, punishing people because they are of the same race is useless and serves no purpose other than draining resources from the pursuit of the real criminals. If the same "guilt by association" standard was applied to the Oklahoma City bombing, we would have to condemn all white American males with military backgrounds.