The Miami Herald, Inc.; Tuesday, April 8, 1997
Robert L. Steinback; Herald Columnist

Was this just the desperate act of an irrational individual? Or was it a meaningful indictment of efforts to balance the budget of the world's richest economy on the backs of helpless and poor legal immigrants?

A man ashamed of his homosexuality creates a cult that makes good on a suicide pact.

Is he just an isolated nut who manipulated 38 weak people? Or is he a direct consequence of this country's insidious homophobia?

Suicide, almost by definition, is an overreaction to circumstances. Aside from the competent terminally ill, for whom suicide might be a sane alternative to a painful, wasting death, life always has enough hope, value and purpose to make greeting yet another sunrise worthwhile.

The suicide candidate, however, lacks the faith needed to believe that emotional wounds heal, bad breaks can be overcome, and adaptations can be made to changing circumstances.

Still, two recent stories suggest that while suicide itself is irrational, the external pressures leading to it can be very real.

A sense of panic

A revamped U.S. immigration law took effect April 1 that denies federal health benefits to many legal resident aliens. Miami Beach resident Alfredo Linares, 56, and HIV positive, panicked last week that his $480-a-month Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid benefits would be cut off, swallowed dozens of pills and lapsed into a coma. He died Sunday.

Linares, who arrived from Cuba during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, had options for continued care, as well as an option -- however difficult it might have been for him to accomplish -- to pursue full citizenship.

The temptation, then, is to dismiss him as an aberration: Just because one ailing immigrant takes his life doesn't mean U.S. policy is wrong.

But that would be a flawed conclusion. Linares' act represents the leading edge of a wave of human despair caused by this ill-considered, un-American law. Just because others are stronger or more resilient than Linares doesn't mean the law is therefore humane and fair. Linares' suicide is indeed a proper indictment of a heartless policy change that should have been applied only to future immigrants, not to those already living here legally.

To a higher plane

The suicides last month of 39 cult members in Southern California illustrate a similar point.

Marshall Herff Applewhite promised his followers that suicide was the first step in their ascension to a higher plane of life above human. It's easy, and a little too convenient, to dismiss them as delusional crackpots whose actions carry no implications for "normal" society.

Yet consider the emotional torture Applewhite endured most of his life because of his shame over his homosexual urges.

One wonders: If America maintained a more-civilized attitude toward homosexuality, would Applewhite have careered over the lunatic edge? Homophobia remains the last widely acceptable prejudice in modern society. Applewhite was so despondent over his urges that he tried to be "cured" of them, and finally resorted to voluntary castration trying to silence them.

Most homosexuals aren't driven to suicide, although others besides Applewhite surely have been. Most find a way to endure the hostility and scorn piled on them by a jeering society.

But their perseverance does not excuse society's attitudes, nor does dismissing Applewhite as an inconsequential fringe wacko. The Heaven's Gate suicides are a proper indictment of, and compelling testimony to, this society's homophobic cruelty.

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