He died early this morning and I got a call around 8AM.

I'm stilll in shock. Below is his bio from www.gaytoday.com, but I know Jack for nearly 30 years on a whole different level and wish to share this experience with you as much as I can.

We've been speaking weekly for many years, and the call this morning came from a guy about Jack, I met at the Mango Strut in Coconut Grove this last December.

I was there pushing "No More Bushit" stickers (over 40,000 out there, and I saw 3 last week on Miami Beach), and he mentioned him being a friend of Jack's in Cocoa Beach.

Jack and I met in 1976, when he came to one of our Transperience workshops with groups of 'swingers' in Broward County, where we did consciousness-raising sessions for months and very successfully.

This was a prelude to Dr. Alan Rockway and myself introducing and passing the world famous 'affectional and sexual preference' ordinance, which Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell led opposition to. We would lead in a 3 year campaign, and in 3 elections, the most visible and successful 'coming out' of America, via Dade County-"The Holyland of Gay Rights," and go from a minority to a majority and prove that the Right Wing could be used and beaten in the ballot box, while getting millions out of their closets and thousands of groups formed as a result and the battle still raging to this day.

The movement still doesn't get it.

Jack understood our process of keeping sex and lifestyle alive, telling the truth, doing it non-violently and winning the war. Every effort and every coming out was our victory.

I'm write now finishing my book on that experience and in the last four days, here is the balancing act: I see where on June 6, 1977, I'm handing out flyers in front of the Archdiocese of Miami, the day before the lst election to repeal 'human rights.' I'm making national news.

Then this last Thursday, April 28, 2005, the Archbishop of Barcelona, Spain is equating "Gay Marriage", which Spain is going to pass, with Nazis at Auschwitz. Meanwhile, I'm writing letters all over the world attacking this revisionism and homophobia, also coming from a Vatican who has chosen a Pope that was once a Hitler Youth.

Also last Thursday, Microsoft's cowardly multi-Billionaire, Bill Gates, has gone 'soft' altogether, for rescinding support for gay rights legislation in Washington State, by one vote no less.

Gates had caved to pressure from an NFL linebacker turned local pastor, Ken Hutcherson, who threatened a nationwide boycott, if Gates continued supporting this statewide bill for Human Rights.

Again unnecessarily, capitulating to the Right Wing, only showing that Nazis have rights in this nation and those who oppose them are treated as expendible, regardless of one's 'affectional and sexual preferences'. Can Gates be this stupid?

Although Jack is in the hospital through all of this, he'd appreciate the drama and theatre of it all.

Then on Sat., April 30, the anniversary of Hitler committing suicide in 1945, and also my brother's 58th birthday, I hear from Marsha and Marlene. Marsha, I haven't spoken to in years, and yet we all went and graduated from Miami High together and our 45th reunion is coming up in July. Marlene, I speak to daily for all these years, such is our friendship.

Then in the afternoon, Jeannine, who documented the 2000 stolen election and I go to see at the Gay Film Festival on Miami Beach: "We are Dad", which talks about this gay male couple from here who've taken in 5 HIV kids, and one turned back from being positiive, only to be threatened with being taken away after 17 yrs., by Jeb Bush, of Terri Schiavo and stolen election fame.

Fla. is the only state to ban gays adopting children, which started with Anita, but 5 other states are also pushing this disaster.

Meantime, I'm speaking on 6 occassions in the film about how 3000 kids are missing in the state's files, and 40,000 kids are abandoned by Jeb, who'd rather they had no one, if they had to have gays care for and take care of them. There is no end to Jeb's and this country's sickness with homophobia.

Meantime, we're talking about reinstating the Orange Juice Boycott, since Fla. is where this mess started with Anita and Falwell and can be finished here, since the Citrus industry controls the politicians in Tall. N'est Pas?

Then in the evening I'm watching Betty Davis, in her fabulous role in "Watch On The Rhine" and the struggle against Nazism. It tells of our individual and collective greatness in risking this opposition to and how weak the opposition is, once confronted, and how each of us must make that statement when our time comes.

Last week's Passover Seder, I reminded everyone that while we celebrate going from Slavery into Liberation, that this struggle continues daily in our own self-discoveries and our need to defend liberty constantly or it will be taken away from us otherwise.

Then for "Desperate Housewives" last night on ABC, I see advertised for the late news that Laura Bush identifies herself as a 'desperate housewife', while I see two ads worth noting in this "cultural war" we won back in 1977, when we became 'role models' of the alternatives and is reinforced with these two ads.

In one ad, a guy says: "I'm not gay, but I'll drink to that guy", while looking at this male stripper, with G-d knows what's in his pants.

Then in the second ad is for a t.v. show "Hope and Faith", this woman says: "Doesn't anyone want to sleep with me without any strings attached?"

Jack and I got along so well because we understood this whole picture of both sides pushing on so many levels, and then putting it into action via writing or movement or both, placing into the debate all the humor possible and relishing our victories, where Madison Ave. isn't capitulating and caving in like Microsoft.

I'd tell Jack that during Anita and the 'gay marriage' issue, and I having to respond to over and over again, our efforts were not for being 'accepted', but by accepting ourselves, first by defining our experiences, which is what Transperience Center was all about: "tension-prevention", we were pioneering.

I stated thousands of times since 1976, the issues is: All about love, in all its consenting adult forms. It's all about 'taxation with representation', which is why we fought an American Revolution and why we pay taxes. If they want to discriminate, let them pick up the tab.

Why would I want the emotionally and sexually insecure Bible Bigots and Christian Reich, Jack also detested, endorse our love-making, which is none of their business in the first place?

Meanwhile, our so-called movement has been highjacked by those in our community who want this 'acceptance' via 'gay marriage', which the Right Wing has jumped on and defeated in 13 states, with the homosexual activists pushing it, not knowing how to deal with it, or how to fight the Right Wing.

The result is undeserved and unearned empowerment for the Right Wing on all issues, so that a Microsoft can cave in, in spite of the fact that most on the Internet are doing Porn, and so many are singles, etc. and our crowd.

If the best defense is a good offense, then the movement is doing a lousy job. But of course, if you nurture the roots the blossom will grow, but why would they ask us when they have supposedly all the answers and all those defeats as a result.

So many in NY, Calif, or D.C. ,think that only they make decisions for everyone, and yet out of S. Fla. and Miami-Dade and Cocoa Beach, etc. so much of the key revolutions on human sexuality has come from the very South they all want to condemn and yet have benefited from.

Of course Jack and I complimented those who were kissing each other for 'gay marriges', on the evening news as part of a real revolution, which every family had to witness at dinner time. Yet, I'd share with Jack that in my 16 year relationship with Doug, we want the same benefits, we're entitled to, but don't need or want the state or churches to tell us how to love, or what to do with our lives or to invade our privacy or to hold us expendible to internal or external terrorists.

IT'S NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS! THEY'RE PRODUCING THE VIOLENCE. WE'RE PRODUCING THE LOVE!

Jack knew what we were talking about and agreed with our answer in relationships.

So when I was shlepping in a lifetime of activism, Jack and I communicated weekly by phone and many visits to Cocoa Beach, where he lived or his visits here.

We did chapters of Oral Majority and Cure Aids Now in Brevard County.

We protested Gary Bauer for Pres. and Jeb Bush in Melbourne, when I was leading passage of a statewide Constitutional Amendment on Rights, which passed statewide in 1998 by 2.5million votes.

When www.floridafightsback.com and www.oralmajorityonline.com did over 1000 events nationally,on Bush 'stealing' the 2000 election, Jack documented along with us, as the only media in the nation to keep this issue alive and constant and made an enormous difference while the rest had given up and why today's mess.

Jack came to my kick-off in Orlando, for running for Gov. against Jeb in 2002, and helping us to get over 42,000 votes on demanding a federal investigation of what happened here in Fla..

In 2000, when our Oral Majority honored" Gays in the Military" in front of the Pentagon, as part of the Millenium March, Jack would cover our rally and effort as much as the New York Times.

If you took Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman and threw in joy, love, and being years ahead of his time, with all the humor and entertainment one could have with him, Jack was indeed a powerhouse for all of our community and for all of America.

Jack spoke Farsi, from Iran, besides the language of love, and knew the grassroots there was not behind the Mullahs.

We enjoyed together several space shots from Cape Canaveral.

When John Glenn went back into space, we had a memorial for Mathew Sheppard, who was murdered in Montana for being gay. We had many folks from a local gay bar join with us, and the multitudes who came by us on U.S. l for the space shot, also saw our protest and statement, which was indeed powerful, besides the media who gave us more exposure.

This was Jack, gentle but powerful. An artist, like myself, I could banter with in conversation and he'd know and be a part of.

His original father was an FBI agent, who rejected Jack for being Gay. That rejection from his dad, helped to formulate his activism.

I remember standing on his balcony in Cocoa Beach and being photographed and interviewed by Fla. Today, who called on him many times for commentary on lots of issues.

Jack was particularly holding the local police accountable for entrapments of gays, while real criminals were running loose, and how the local Baptist church wanted cameras in the toilets among the musings of Cocoa Beach. Any wonder they can't find terrorists?

Jack was 67, but acted with all the brilliance and vitality of many his junior, only better.

He led a great life, and I'm glad to have been part of it.

He'd agreed to write a foward on my book on www.Hillarynow.com before he got sick and I'm also going to dedicate this book to him among those who made our activism possible.

He will always be in my heart and his spirit is alive and well to share with everyone as to his life story.

I only gave you a tip of the iceberg of consciousness and our activities we shared, and hope I was able to convey what a very special person he was.

Yours Faithfully,

Bob Kunst
Pres. Hillarynow.com
Miami Beach, Fla.