What will they do next? read on:
TEXAS GOP PLATFORM CALLS FOR DISMANTLING OF THE ADA Targeting People with Disabilities During an Election Year
(August 3, 2004) Your action is urgently needed to contact President Bush and the Texas Republican Party and tell them to reverse their call for an amendment to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which would eliminate protections for millions of citizens with disabilities.
The platform politicizes the ADA, a nonpartisan law, by trying to associate it with hot button issues and seeking to "exclude" categories that are NOT covered by the ADA such as "homosexual practices" and "current illegal substance abuse."
Furthermore, the platform goes after those that are currently the most disenfranchised citizens in our country - children with learning and behavioral disabilities, individuals with HIV, and those with mental disabilities. (And of course it's not as though Congress hadn't already thought about coverage of people with mental disabilities and infectious diseases when they passed the ADA - at the time there were proposed amendments to exclude people with mental disabilities & HIV that were soundly defeated.)
Page 14 of the 2004 Texas State Republican Party Platform reads:
Americans with Disabilities Act - The Party supports amendment of the Americans with Disabilities Act to exclude from its definition those persons with infectious diseases, substance addiction, learning disabilities, behavior disorders, homosexual practices and mental stress, thereby reducing abuse of the Act.
The entire document is available online in PDF at: http://www.texasgop.org/library/RPTPlatform2004.pdf
What You Can Do:
- Use the information below to contact President Bush (whose own father
signed the ADA into law), the Platform Committee Chair, and the Republican
Party of Texas.
- Tell them to take this divisive and bigoted proposal out of the Texas Republican Party Platform!
- With the ADA being weakened in the courts, with growing waiting lists for
mental health services, and with millions of Americans with disabilities
needlessly forced to live in institutions, ask them why they are targeting
some of America's most disenfranchised citizens during this election year.
President George Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
to live in institutions, ask them why they are targeting some of America's
most disenfranchised citizens during this election year.
President George Bush 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, US 20500 Phone: (202) 456-1414 Fax: (202) 456-2461
Mr. Kirk Overbey, Chair of Platform Committee 6306 Leatherwood Cove Austin, Texas 78759
Republican Party of Texas 900 Congress, Suite 300 Austin, Texas 78701 Phone: 512.477.9821 Fax: 512.480.0709 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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