From: bobsarv@microsoft.com (Bob Sarver)
Subject: Clayton's mistakes about gays
Date: 14 Sep 92 23:21:20 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corp.


Folks, 

Sorry if this has already been said.  I haven't made it to the bottom of the
"Harassing phone calls" thread.  This is long, too; but Clayton said a 
lot of things that need to be corrected for accuracy.
=================================


Listen, Clayton.  Learn something:

1.  The standard objection (and the one I hear you voicing) to hate crime 
laws is "But these things are punishable under existing statutes".  

The fallacy in that argument is that a judicial system which has 
historically been hostile to gays has no incentive to prosecute these
crimes *at all*.  Police can refuse to take incident reports, district 
attorneys can refuse to take cases.  These are all matters of discretion
on the part of the officials.  

Hate crime laws force the legal system to:

	a.  admit that crimes of hate do actually exist against minority X;
	b.  admit that such crimes are wrong;
	c.  admit that such crimes should be punished.

While this may sound like precious little, it is a very powerful tool.  By
having a specific statute on the books which addresses the crime to 
a "T", it prevents the legal system from trying to sweep incidents under
the rug.  Now a plaintiff can point to a specific statute, and the
public spotlight is much more easily focused on a calcified legal system
that doesn't want to protect 10% of its population.

If you caught the "60 Minutes" piece last night (9/13) on gay cops, you
can quickly see how the police force is (along with the military) one 
of the last bastions of "old boy macho-ism" where it is socially
acceptable to discriminate against gays.  There was an interview with
a gay cop in the LAPD.  He went into a warehouse, surrounded by gang
members.  The dispatcher couldn't get a single unit to go to his defense
as a backup unit--all because he was gay, and the other officers in the
force knew it.  
Until this little artificial greenhouse of bigotry is removed, there will 
always be a problem of the cops and the justice system ignoring 
and mistreating gays--even when the gays are one of their own.

BTW:  If you're wondering why gays may sometimes have a "victim" complex,
go read history some more.  It's sort of natural for victims to complain
about being picked on.



2.  We have all been through this "large and vocal group / NAMBLA /
pedophile" bullshit before.  As I have said, there is not a large and
vocal group.  Period.  
Twenty people screaming may be loud, but they are not large, nor are they 
representative of the opinions of the whole.

And, "no", it is not the responsibility of each and every gay person
to police the actions of other gays.  Every person is responsible for
themselves.  Judge me by my actions, my words.  Don't ask me to defend
someone I've never met, who just happens to have the same sexual orientation
I do.  
While I admit that the actions of NAMBLA work against the gay movement at 
times, that doesn't make *all* gays responsible for what *some* gays do.  
Any more than all Irish are responsible for what the IRA does, or all Arabs 
are responsible for what the PLO does.  It doesn't work that way; never has.



3.  You seem to want to be able to rent to anyone you want, based upon your
own private criteria.  If you are hunting a roommate, or someone to share
your house with, then obviously this is valid. 
 
But if you are in a for-profit situation, then you are practicing 
discrimination pure and simple,  just as certain landlords used to 
practice against blacks.  Your objection is on a slippery slope; if
a landlord can discriminate in renting, then an employer can discriminate
for the same reasons.  Not acceptable.

The argument that "it's against my religion" is not valid, because many 
Christians feel it is against their religion to rent to Jews or Buddhists.  
Fortunately for Jews and Buddhists, though, Equal Opportunity Laws do
not recognize personal religion as valid reasons for denial of basic
human rights.  If such an allowance were made, then white supremacists
could deny renting to anyone who wasn't a WASP.  Or, you could even 
make up your own religion, write your own Bible, and basically generate
a strawman reason to act out your bigotry--just hide it behind a 
pseudo-religion. 

It is because businesses, landlords and companies receive the general 
benefit of taxes and governmental support that they must comply with Equal 
Opportunity Laws.  If you get the govts. money, then you play by their
rules.  If there were such a theoretical business that received no 
spinoff benefits or direct compensation from the govt, then you *might*
have an argument.  However, in the current state entertwined govt and
business, no such entity could possibly exist.


*****

When it comes down to it, you really just don't like gays, do you Clayton?
You haven't offered any concrete arguments yet, and in the face of
megabytes of facts, you still manage to whip these arguments out, totally
unphased by any data presented.  

You are bordering on making a faith-religion out of your antipathy 
for gays, Clayton.  If facts don't slow you down, then nothing probably 
will.