From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: Amendment 2's grass roots
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: doherty@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 02:58:18 GMT

>From the Editorial Page, Gazette Telegraph, Colorado Springs
December 15, 1992

One way gay-rights advocates have tried to denigrate the success of Amendment 2 
at the polls last month was by charging that it was fueled by "outside money," 
in particular money from the so-called religious right.  Like many of their 
other claims about the amendment, this one has fallen flat.

Although you wouldn't know it from some of the state's news media, it turns out 
that backers of the amendment received none of their money from the well-known 
national evangelists to whom they'd been unfairly linked.  It also turns out 
that the unsuccessful opponents of Amendment 2 outspent the amendment's backers 
by a roughly 2-to-1 ratio.

In a study of Federal Election Commission reports, one Denver newspaper in a 
commendabale effort determined last week that most of the $378,792 raised by 
Colorado for Family Values came from inside Colorado.  CFV is the local 
organization that organized the effort to pass Amendment 2 which prohibits 
gay-rights laws in Colorado.

Nowhere in the FEC report could the reporter find any evidence of money from 
major conservative Christian organizations outside Colorado.  No direct money 
came fro either Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, two well-known and politically 
active ministers who head national conservative organizations.

Of the $2,246 raised by CFV during the final weeks of the campaign, all but 
$1,109 came from contributors who live in Colorado.  The article concluded that 
the FEC report "lends credence to claims by Colorado for Family Values backers 
that their was a grass-roots movement."

We hope Denver Mayor Wellington Webb saw the article.  On the "Arsenio Hall 
Show" earlier this month, Webb claimed that money from outside Colorado has 
financed the effort to pass Amendment 2.  The mayor's assertion is simply 
false, and the mayor and others seeking to undermine Amendment 2 should now 
admit it.

If anyone tried to sway the vote with "outside money," it was Equality 
Colorado, the group opposed to Amendment 2.  Among its contributors was David 
Geffen, a recording executive from Los Angeles who gave $20,000 to fight the 
amendment.  We wonder how many other big, outside donations Equality Colorado 
accepted from Hollywood and elsewhere to meet its $681,485 budget--a total 
almost twice as large as the amount spent by backers of Amendment 2.

In the end, it really doesn't matter who raised how much or from where the 
money came.  The real issue is the merit of Amendment 2, and on that question a 
clear majority of Colorado voters made the right decision.

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