From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,alt.politics.homosexuality,co.politics
Subject: Re: Colorado Amendment 2: The First Fatality
Date: 12 Nov 92 22:36:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Nov12.223659.22676
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
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[first try had too many typos]

From the keyboard of gary@colossus.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand):
:  It does not deny homosexuals equal rights. It denies the the ability of the
:  state to create quotas for gays, or give gays minority status, and it denies
:  gays the use of the legal system to correct alleged cases of discrimination.


"denies gays use of legal system ... cases of discrimination."

*THAT* is clearly denying of equal rights.  Anyone who isn't straight may
be fired or turned away from housing or public services for no other
reason than how they are, and you have wiped out their legal recourse.
What other group has ever been so singled out in this country?  It makes a
joke of "equal protection under the law".  Gays and bisexuals no longer
have it, and are especially singled out for less than equal protection.
If you're straight in Boulder and fired because of it, not only can you
sue, but that employer has broken a local ordinance.  If you're gay, tough.  

I don't care if the majority voted for it.  THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT RIGHT.
If the majority of Germans wanted to deny basic rights to Jews in the
30's, would that have made it right?  Of course not!  It's not right now,
and we don't have to stand for it.

And it's not clear that the majority actually consciously voted for this
abomination.  The deceptive Center for Nazi^WChristian Values, whose new
headquarters is going up right across the street from me, lied and slurred
and deceived the public.  Many people who voted "yes" thought they were
voting away quotas and special rights, when in fact they were voting away
equal rights.  There were no quotas or special rights.  It was an evil 
smokescreen.

Who's next?  Will they pick another target, like unwed mothers, or
will they further imperil the well-being and constitutional protections
of non-straight people?

If these same people who voted yes to Amendment 2 were all asked "Should
matters of employment be based solely upon the individuals' ability to
perform that job?", I believe most would have voted yes.   Now one 
group has tricked the public into legalizing their bigotry and hate.

Funny how what was and should be a group about love turns -- in the
hands of the small-hearted -- so quickly into a group about hate.  The
misery inflicted upon innocent people in the name of Christ, both today
in Colorado and throughout the ages in all the world, is so great that
were he to walk amongst us again today, he would surely weep in pain
and anguish that his name has been so used to hurt so many.  Too often,
the Evil these men do so overshadows the Good done by real Christians
that I for one find it embarrassingly hard to think of anything but the
overrighteous, pharisaic bigots across the street from me when I think
of Christianity.

And that's too bad.

--tom

-- 
Wherever, therefore, it has been established that it is shameful to be
involved in homosexual relationships, this is due to evil on the part of
the legislators, to despotism on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice
on the part of the governed. -- Plato, "Symposium"