A Voice for the Akron/Canton Area Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community

AOL has found a new use for the screening and sorting technology that allows you to check off your vehicle performance preferences and get back a report on the vehicles you'd like best . AOL calls the new use (keyword) Presidentmatch.

Your best Presidential candidate is just a few mouse clicks away. Yes, no longer do you need to watch boring conventions, read editorials, listen to TV pundits, thumb through tedious biographies nor endlessly search the worldwide web. With a few clicks of the mouse you express your position on the environment, political reform, taxes, welfare and poverty, health care, gun control, crime, education, abortion and individual rights (gasp! there's even a question about gay rights). Of course I found terrible inconsistency between the bold typeface headers and the actual statements or questions I was to "favor" or "oppose." The simplicity with which complex issues were presented was absolutely breathtaking…well, actually closer to mind-numbing.

Click, click, click, .click, click, click, .click, click, click .and my favorite Presidential candidate by a substantial margin is .Al Gore, followed by Ralph Nader, John Hagelin, Harry Browne, and then, well down the list, George Bush, Pat Buchanan, and Lyndon LaRouche. AOL lets you email your results to a friend. Gee, I wonder what the Stark County Board of Election's email address is; I could get my voting done, online, right now.

Actually the technology is kind of neat and tremendous effort went into gathering position statements from even Congressional Representative candidates (just enter your zipcode, natch). Presidentmatch is worth a look…even if just to know why you don't like it.

But beyond the electronic wizardry (which is still inaccessible to most of our citizenry), we need to realize that politics is about people power, the power of our presence at rallies, debates, and putting out signs, as well as making ourselves known as out and affirming LGBT persons to the candidates. Politics is not just speaking my piece, it's listening and being challenged, being open to new approaches to old questions. It is the dynamic interplay that forms community.

As president of Stonewall Akron, I encourage you to be sure that you, your family, coworkers, and friends are registered for the November election. (Board of Election phone numbers are elsewhere in this newsletter for your convenience.) The opportunity we US citizens have to discuss, and cuss, to rant and rave and then get to a reasoned decision, topped off with the privilege of a secret ballot is a wonder that most people have never known. I don't intend to be bored between now and November 7^th, nor do I intend to turn my thinking over to AOL's software. I trust that you too will neither be bored, nor simplistic, about the upcoming election.

H. Paul Schwitzgebel