A majority of the active membership of the USS Harvey Milk and Voyager Visibility Project voted in November, 1998, to boycott the film "Star Trek: Insurrection" and all Star Trek television programs, merchandise, events and conventions.

We urge further individual action in the form of letters and pickets at all theatres showing the film, at all future Star Trek events and conventions, and at Star Trek attractions and the Paramount studio.

This boycott is to protest the failure of the program's producers to add a gay or lesbian character to the any of the spin-off television series, as promised by Gene Roddenberry himself in July, 1991 in relation to "The Next Generation" and confirmed by Rick Berman shortly thereafter.

After eight years and two new series, we have yet to see a gay or lesbian character as a member of the crew. After mailing more than 40,000 signatures to the producers and writing repeated unanswered letters and faxes, we are tired of being ignored and taken for granted as an audience who the producers apparently feel have no choice but to watch. We have a choice and we plan to make our voice heard. The producers of this program no longer deserve our support, nor do they deserve the benefit of any doubt.

Even if they were to act now, the producers of Trek are hardly on the cutting edge, since the recent proliferation of gay and lesbian characters on situation comedies and some dramas. This makes it even harder to understand their reluctance to move forward. Trek has even lost the chance to be the first science fiction television series to establish an on-going gay or lesbian character. True, "Babylon Five" promptly killed off its character's lover after one night of passion; we never even saw the characters touch; and the poor thing has never been seen with a another female partner since that publicity-producing single unsatisfying episode. So Trek could still make history by introducing an ongoing gay/lesbian character whose sexual orientation is not an issue for the crew --but is recognized and dealt with as an important part of the character's identity. But they are going to have to work harder to make it work. And, frankly, we doubt that Mr. Berman or Mr. Pillar have the talent, guts, conviction or experience necessary to carry it off. They need to be replaced. They have needed to be replaced for some time, as demonstrated by the current state of both "Voyager" and "Deep Space Nine".

It is no longer as important for Trek to have a gay/lesbian character because they now appear elsewhere? No, it is just as important as it ever was to show that gays and lesbians will exist and will be accepted in the future; to show that homophobia has gone the way of racism, poverty, sexism and war among humans in Roddenberry's vision of the way things will be; to give another face to gays and lesbians that may help change the way today's population --especially the young-- thinks of them, to give hope to boys and girls and young men and women who are just realizing they are gay or lesbian.