From: trussell@cwis.unomaha.edu (Tim Russell)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,soc.bi,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: News story: "Growing Boycott Concerns Colorado"
Summary: Cool!
Keywords: boycott colorado
Date: 22 Nov 92 17:11:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: cwis.trussell.722452312
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha


    Any typos are mine.

                   GROWING BOYCOTT CONCERNS COLORADO
                             by James Coates
                           The Chicago Tribune

    Denver - Less than three weeks after Colorado voters approved an anti-
gay constitutional amendment, a boycott against the state launched by gay
activists is steaming ahead with surprising force.
    Already a labor group and a national labor organization have canceled
Colorado conventions scheduled for 1993.  Several other groups have said
they are thinking of canceling major conferences there.
    One large city has passed a measure banning its employees from spending
city funds in Colorado.  Several other cities are thinking of doing some-
thing similar.
    Celebrities are publicly denouncing the state over the gay-rights issue.
    Colorado civic and business leaders are so worried that they called an
emergency strategy session Saturday to plot a defense against the growing
calls for a boycott.
    But exactly what the state's leaders will be able to do about the
growing boycott is unclear.
    The measure, Amendment 2, was passed by Colorado voters Nov. 3.  Re-
scinding it would require another referendum unless a federal lawsuit
against the measure is successful.
    The boycott effort, dubbed "Undo Two" by its proponents, seeks to
create a movement similar to one that blacks launched against Arizona that
was widely credited with forcing voters there to reverse a state ban on
the Martin Luther King holiday.
    Proponents of the Colorado boycott include gay rights groups and enter-
tainers.  Singer-actress barbara Streisand joined the fray at a Los Angeles
AIDS benefit Wednesday.

    Recent days have seen a spate of real and threatened convention can-
cellations.  The Atlanta City Council approved its Colorado boycott
Tuesday.
    The developments are creating a widespread concern in a state where
tourism is the single largest industry.
    Major efforts to strike down the amendment and head off any boycotting
began Nov. 12 when plaintiffs, led by tennis star Martina Navratilova,
an avowed lesbian who lives in Aspen, filed a federal lawsuit.
    Ms. Navratilova volunteered to serve as a test case in an action filed
by the cities of Aspen, Denver and Boulder and the American Civil Liberties
Union charging that Amendment 2 would deprive Ms. Navratilova of her
constitutional freedoms.
    The amendment, which passed by 100,000 votes, struck down laws in the
three cities banning discrimination in hiring and housing against gays
and lesbians.
    Colorado officials say a boycott would unfairly punish the three
tourist-dependent communities of Boulder, Denver, and Aspen, whose pro-
gay actions were targeted by the amendment in the first place.
    A spokeswoman for the Atlanta City Council said officials in Boston;
New York; San Francisco; Oakland, Calif.; Los Angeles; and Chapel Hill,
N.C., had requested copies of Atlanta's ordinance.

                           Refuse to Visit

    Officials at the Chicago-based American Library Association said
Friday that an unknown number of their members had decided to drop plans
to attend a January convention of 2,000 librarians in Denver.
    The association's executive director, Peggy Sullivan, noted in a
newsletter to be mailed to the membership this week that although it was
too late for the group to cancel the Denver plans this year, it was likely
members would vote to scrap a 1998 convention set for the city.
    On Wednesday, the Coalition of Labor Union Women canceled its 1,500
hotel reservations for a November 1993 convention in Denver to protest
the amendment.  The day after the vote, the gay- and lesbian-oriented
American Association of Physicians for Human Rights canceled plans for
a 1,000-member Denver convention.
    Denver tourism officials admitted that the National Education Assoc-
iation, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and several
other groups all have contacted them to discuss whether to cancel major
conventions planned for the city.

                         Punishing the Innocent

    Rich Grant, spokesman for the Metropolitan Denver Convention and
Visitors Bureau, noted that the cancellations announced or threatened to
date involve only a small fraction of the approximately 1 million con-
vention and business visitors who come to Denver each year.
    "But we are very concerned at the fact that some whose visits we
value have cancelled and others are talking about it," he said.
    "We just hope that they will hear our plea that it isn't fair to
punish Denver, where people voted 60-40 (percent) against the amendment
and where the City Council has passed one of the country's strongest bills
protecting gay and lesbian citizens," Grant said.
    But he acknowledged that the new round of cancellations came after a
brief period in which boycott sentiment appeared to be on the wane after
Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and others made that same argument.
    Last weekend, for example, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
announced it had decided against calling for a nationwide boycott against
Colorado although many of the group's members said they would implement
boycotts on their own.

                            Vote for Hate

    Then, on the heels of the Atlanta boycott vote, Miss Streisand urged
a crowd of stars including Elton John, Liza Minelli and Dolly Parton to
abandon any vacation plans in Colorado.
    Miss Streisand, who skis frequently in Aspen, said, "Just look at
the vote for hate in Colorado, where voters rescinded any protection for
gays in employment or housing.
    "There are plenty of us who love the mountains and rivers of that
truly beautiful state, but me must now say clearly that the moral climate
there is no longer acceptable, and it we're asked to, we must refuse to
play where they discriminate."
    Briggs Gamblin, press secretary for the mayor, said Friday that Denver
took Miss Streisand's move seriously because it could trigger a boycott
among trend-setters and entertainers similar to what happened in Arizona
over the King holiday issue.

                              Backlash

    Gamblin said that at Saturday's emergency session, Webb would offer to
boost a planned advertising campaign to urge Americans not to boycott the
slopes of Colorado.
    But the mayor also will recommend a campaign to meet with gay and
lesbian leaders and other critics to argue that a boycott would create a
backlash among ordinary voters, making it even more difficult to amend
the constitution again.
    "People in the West often take the view that they're not going to be
pushed around by people in the big cities on the coast and back East,"
Gamblin said.  "A boycott could get our voters' backs up and make winning
impossible for those of us who feel strongly that the law is very wrong."

--
   Tim Russell                 Omaha, NE              trussell@unomaha.edu
      "Who can doubt that pleasure is the only goal of a reasoned life?"
                                                   -- Epicurus
Newsgroups: soc.motss