X-Message-Number: 23593 Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 00:14:08 -0500 From: randolfe wicker <> Subject: Politicians Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Every movement has to discover certain verities on its own. I happened to share my own personal experiences in the homosexual civil rights movement with another Immortalist a few weeks ago. I told him that politicians tell people what those people want to hear. However, in the final analysis, they vote the way they basically believe or believe to be the 51%plus opinion. I was involved with the Gay Activists Alliance in NYC in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We had a non-discrimination bill in the City Council that said you couldn't fire someone for being gay if they were doing their job correctly otherwise. The young naive gay activists went to NYC Hall. They got 26 members of the NYC Council to pledge that if "they got the bill out of committee" that they would support it. Being naive, they believed the politicians. To the politician's surprise, by shutting down dances on a Saturday night and leading over a thousand rather non-political homosexuals to demonstrate outside the committee chairman's apartment house--complete with feigned attempts to crash Police lines which sent waves of horror through the councilman's neighbors (It is a political game. You act angry and push at the Police Line but you don't really try to break through because they would cave in your head. However, to the press and others it looks like social political tumult.) Well, with the bill out of committee and with 26 committed votes when only 21 were needed, we all went down to NYC Hall to celebrate the victory of the passing of this historic legislation. Well, when push came to shove, the bill got only 18 votes and was defeated at that time. I still remember standing in the rain outside NYC Hall and watching the fat well-paid bureaucrats laugh as we flew into a rage and went out and sat down in traffic to block Brooklyn Bridge. But that is what you come to understand when you are pushing politicians on an unpopular issue (or an issue they think is unpopular), they make deals, make promises and then simply stab you in the back. Wake up, supporters of cryonics, the fight has just begun. These so-called "men of God" want to shut down those facilities that offer an alternative to rebirth in Heaven through Christ. Cryonics is blasphemy. Cryonics is blasphemy because it offers a real alternative to current religious beliefs. Cryonics is a belief based on "faith", (still have you with me here I suspect. Cryonics is a religion. (Just lost most of you) Until, you can equate your beliefs and "faith" in cryonics as being equal to the myths of contemporary religion, until you can equate your "burial rituals" with those of other religions like the Muslims washing the dead, the Jews burying before sunset, the Roman Catholics disapproving of cremation, etc., and lay claim to your rightful rights to religious freedom,. you are doomed to be the scapegoats of politicians and other moral scum that tars you as "kooks who deny the dead their human dignity by denying them proper burial". It is as simple as that. You believe in one type of burial, cryonic suspension, and they believe in another--underground or cremation, etc. Until you place your flag into the ground and declare your rights to religious freedom, you are just what those good recognized religionists call you: "Lost souls!" My faith in science is superior (or at least equal to) their faith in mythology. The United States of America was founded on one principle: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM! We have the same right to our beliefs, our religious freedom, as others do. We must demand our right to practice that which we believe in. We must not be intimidated into being considered "an ideology" or "a cult". We are people of faith and we will fight for what we believe in. If we do not, then the traditional religionists will destroy our institutions, spill liquid nitrogen on Arizona sand, cremate or bury those who have placed their faith in us to keep them in a state for possible future revival! When true believers face the choice of fighting for what they believe in or retreating before intimidating enemies, history shows that those who dare to stand and fight are the only ones who manage to survive. Our values, our beliefs are second to no others. We know that we have the most likely key to rebirth into another life. We have to fight for the our own lives, for those who have entrusted their lives to our care. We have no choice but to recognize we fit into that category many of us have resisted entering/recognizing. We are a new religion of hope, of belief in science, of belief that a human being can rescue his/herself from oblivion with our combined intelligence and perseverance. A Holy War has been declared against us. We must label it as such. Americans don't approve of Holy Wars. We can only survive by fighting this issue on its true battleground--the battleground of religious freedom and practice. Cloningly yours, For eternal life, Randolfe (Randy) Wicker Founder, Clone Rights United Front, www.clonerights.com Spokesperson, Reproductive Cloning Network, www.reproductivecloning.net Advisor, The Immortality Institute, www.imminst.org email: phone: 201-656-3280 Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23593