Dear Mr. Daly:

With your on-the-air comments [Wednesday] morning, you demonstrated an ugly ignorance. But [Wednesday] afternoon you also showed the grace to apologize for your odd remarks, as you should. I hope that now you’ll take the opportunity to learn about the gay community, and how diverse it is. Gay men and women come in every shape and size: short, tall, slender, stout, delicate, and powerful. They do not deserve to be stereotyped, nor categorized. Yes, my gay son was known in our family for bringing me flowers on my birthday and Mother’s Day. He also was known for careening down the rugby pitch, and, on the morning of September 11, 2001, for charging unarmed down the aisle of a doomed Boeing 757 to face knife-wielding Islamist thugs in a hijacked cockpit. No one among his pick-up team of fellow passengers was asking “Are you straight? Are you gay?” No one doubted that a guy who weighed 220 and stood 6’4” tall — who could run over a charging opponent on the field, and ran with the bulls in Pamplona earlier that summer — would be an asset to a desperate group trying to overcome a threat onboard an airliner. My son and the brave straight guys who fought alongside him weren’t able to save their own lives that morning. Terrorists plowed the plane underground during the struggle for controls. But Mark and his fellow passengers were able to keep UA Flight 93 from crashing into the U.S. Capitol Dome, and kept many people in Washington, D.C. off the rolls of the dead.

The world has its share of strong, heroic gay men. Gay men in sports uniforms and military uniforms have been winning America’s games and fighting America’s battles for a long time: quietly, humbly, and in the face of vicious bigotry.

I hope you and I may have an opportunity to talk sometime. I prefer to believe you didn’t mean to offend. Good luck to you.

Alice Hoagland

Mother of Mark Bingham

California Golden Bears Rugby, University of California, Berkeley

San Francisco Fog Rugby Club

United Airlines Flight 93 Newark to San Francisco 9/11/2001