From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: Gay rights group wants boycott to target Springs
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: doherty@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 06:10:07 GMT

By Louis Aguilar
Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph
December 11, 1992

Vowing to combat what they say is the hate sparked by Amendment 2, members of a 
new group dubbed Ground Zero declared Thursday that they will try to shift the 
budding nationwide boycott of Colorado to Colorado Springs.

Before a crowd of about 300 people in the All Souls Unitarian Church, 
organizers said the group will identify businesses supporting the amendment and 
circulate lists of those businesses.  It also plans to contact potential 
convention groups and urge them to stay away from Colorado Springs.  The 
group's organizers also promised to increase the visibility of the local gay 
community to counteract the myths and stereotypes perpetuated by the 
Springs-based group Colorado for Family Values, the author of Amendment 2.

The constitutional amendment, approved by voters Nov. 3, bars laws protecting 
gays from discrimination based on sexual orientation.

As other critics have, Ground Zero officials say the campaign by the Springs 
group smeared homosexuals as "subhuman" and that its passage has brought 
increased gay-bashing.  In Denver, the number of hate crimes has jumped 
threefold since Nov. 3, a monitoring group has said.  Locally, Poor Richards 
Bookstore and Restaurant, a business with a liberal reputation, has suffered 
anti-gay graffiti, a broken window and threatening phone calls. 

Other plans by Ground Zero include coordinating a national gay-and-lesbian-
rights march in Colorado Springs next year, having local gays 
speak at churches and other community sites about the gay lifestyle and 
lobbying minority leders to speak out against the amendment.

The group has about 400 members, many of whom didn't get involved before the 
Nov. 3 election.  Those who spoke Thursday included a lesbian woman, Patricia 
Hewitt, who publicly "outed" herself by declaring her hoosexuality.  As a 
handful of people in the crowd did, she wore a paper bag over her head.  But 
when she rose to speak, she tore it off.  The crowd gave her a standing 
ovation.

"I have been an invisible lesbian for 20 yers.  But I cannot remain invisible 
any longer.  Amendment 2 has taken away my basic civil rights," Hewitt said.

Another Ground Zero member was "straight, white, Christian male" Rob Gordon.  
Gordon's speech was typical of the angry tone of the day.  "I refuse to remain 
silent in the face of such falsehood...such injustice...such intolerance.  And
I refuse to give over my Bible and my Gospel to a radical fringe of 
Christianity that misuses, abuses and perverts its message into one of 
condemnation and punishment."

He added, "Read the amendment carefully,  Skip the special-rights rhetoric and 
go right to the last clause."

The last clause bars homosexuals from claiming discrimination if they lose 
their job or are kicked out of a rental residence because of their sexual 
orientation, which Family Values official Will Perkins on Thursday described as 
a special right.  "I don't have a special right to keep my job as a 
heterosexual.  Why should they if they are homosexual?" he said.

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