Alicia Colon is a columnist for the Staten Island Advance. Her column appears every Sunday in the "Perspective" section, and her e-mail address is Alicolon@aol.com. Read more of her commentary at www.aliciacolon.com.

During the vice-presidential debate, Dick Cheney broke with the Republican Party platform on the issue of gay rights and the right wing murmured its discontent. However conservatives express their disapproval, it probably will not be as aggressive as that directed at me when I dared question the legitimacy of gay rights legislation in a column.

Speak freely at your own risk

As an artist in the New York community and airline employee for much of my pre-wedded work life, I am not going to say that some of my best friends were homosexual but rather that I actually had more gay friends than straight. I joined many of them for late-night bull sessions about the growing gay rights movement that blossomed after the Stone Streets riots in Greenwich Village.

I wrote my column against gay rights legislation last September because Democratic primary candidate Bill Bradley had proposed changing the 1965 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation. Even liberal Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., argued that the idea might endanger the underlying legislation.

I have a real problem with legislation based on whom a person wants to sleep with and it is not because I am morally offended by their choice of partner. There are laws on the book forbidding certain sexual activity -- incest, bestiality, pedophilia and prostitution. If civil rights legislation can be passed based solely on the sexual orientation of gays, then what would preclude any of the taboo practitioners from asserting their own civil rights?

In addition, civil rights laws were implemented to atone for the injustices that minorities suffered in their pursuit of employment and housing. In my column, I noted that demographically, gays enjoy a higher than average income and do not account for a significant portion of the homeless population.

Well, I expected some disagreement but certainly not the avalanche of hostile mail and letters to the editor. Alicia Colon is a bigoted and homophobic evil person. How can the Advance allow her to spout her hateful comments, etc, etc. So the letters went week after week.

Gay and lesbian organizations condemned my column both by direct letters to me and to the paper. For months, I would receive packages in the mail from just about every gay publication in print, many of them health newsletters reporting the latest AIDS news. Most of these I had already received because I have donated money to the Gay Men Health Crisis (GMHC) and am on their mailing list.

I started getting subscriptions and bills for OUT and the ADVOCATE, someone having kindly ordered them in my name. However, the straw that proverbially broke the camel's back was opening my mail in front of my young daughter only to see "feelthy pictures" of handsome young men in compromising positions.

The hate and filth of gay rights extremists

All right, they had won, I thought, but I was not going to go quietly. So I wrote another column relating all that had transpired and noting that because no one had written in support of my column, I would no longer address the issue. That triggered another storm of letters -- but this time the letters came from supporters as well as my adversaries.

One letter of support was from a priest whose parish was listed under his name in the paper. He, too, began receiving packages and subscriptions. At least two of the letters offered silent support but requested anonymity because they were fearful of retaliation.

My AOL e-mail address has to be blocked from receiving pictures because of the explicit photos sent to me. One young man did not even try to hide his profile, and when I reported him to AOL, nothing happened. He is still there.

After publication of my second column, I was being called vicious but at least knew I had some of the community on my side. But I also was getting angry, especially because of a letter accusing me of contributing to the deaths of gays caused by homophobia. It brought up the name of Matthew Shepherd, and I recalled a column by Andrew Sullivan of the New Republic denouncing the martyrdom tactic of gay activists.

In one last column, I noted facts I had researched via the Gay and Lesbian Task force Web site. The total murders of homosexuals in all of 1999 numbered 20, and other homosexuals had committed some of them. I wrote that 20 blacks and Hispanics probably were killed every week in southcentral Los Angeles and that far more hatred and savagery was directed towards prostitutes than homosexuals per se.

I ended my column with the defiant words, "I'm here, I'm square, and I'm in your face." This time, the letters called me a thug from the mean streets of Spanish Harlem where I grew up.

Live and let die

The entire experience is making me somewhat bitter, and I find myself less tolerant of the gay agenda, which is sad. I know that the militant activists who leave no room for discussion do not represent the majority of the gay community. But they do more harm than good.

I, the former Bohemian live-and-let-live advocate, find myself counting the increasing number of superficial gay characters on mainstream television programs. I note that my newspaper is now including notices of civil unions between gays on the wedding pages. And I remember how many of my friends have died from AIDS and how their "lifestyle choices" contributed to their early demises, and I seriously wish truth-in-advertising were a requisite part of the gay propaganda.

My tormentors made a mistake of sending me a copy of the Feb. 29 issue of The Advocate. I read it, and it was hardly flattering. A column by Brendan Lemon talked about his guilt after seeing footage of the AIDS devastation in Africa and of the orphaned children dying of that disease. He was conflicted because he had just been invited to an orgy. He went and had unprotected sex anyway, all the while feeling very, very guilty.

Bet they don't show that on Will and Grace.