From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: Educators back down on boycott
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: doherty@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 21:08:13 GMT

Group's decision may mark 'turning point'
By Louis Aguilar, Gazette Telegraph of Colorado Springs
December 7, 1992

Leaders of a state education association that had pledged to support a boycott 
of Colorado in retaliation for Amendment 2 backed off Saturday, and they will 
urge an affiliated two-million-member national education group to do the same.

The Colorado Education Association's decision to delay a vote on the boycott 
marked another victory for Denver officials trying to halt a backlash against 
the state for the Nov. 3 passage of the constitutional amendment, which gays 
perceive as a mean-spirited effort to deny them civil rights protection.

Earlier in the week, Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director 
Roger Smith said if the association backed down on its boycott stance, it could 
be a "turning point" in the fight to keep conventions in the state since 
education groups are "more prone" to balk at Amendment 2.

The amendment prohibits laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination based 
on sexual orientation.  It also repealed such laws in Aspen, Boulder and 
Denver. State voters approved the amendment by a 53 percent to 47 percent 
margin.  Denver alone has lost $10.6 million in canceled convention business, 
and tourism officials were scrambling late Friday to verify if another two 
minor conventions had pulled out of the city.

The 35-person board of directors for the Colorado education group decided 
Saturday in Denver that it wouldn't follow through on an earlier threat to 
support the boycott movement made during a November board meeting, said the 
group's spokeswoman Deborah Fallin.

Instead, the group's board members will go back and seek the opinion of its 
2,800 members on whether the group should take a stand on the boycott, Fallin 
said.  Group members are mainly public school teachers across the state.

The board also will formally ask the leaders of the National Education 
Association in Washington, D.C.,. not to boycott Colorado.  In October, the 
national group said it wouldn't go to any state or city that passed a law 
considered discriminatory.  The national group's board members meet Friday and 
Saturday.

The national educators group has about four or five conferences a year in 
Colorado, officials said.  The national group already has canceled one 
convention that was expected to bring 450 people to the Cheyenne Mountain 
Conference Resort in Colorado Sprins.  Another two conventions are scheduled 
for the Colorado Springs resort next year, officials said.

The decision of the Colorado teachers' group Saturday was influenced by Denver 
officials' lobbying effort to halt the boycott, Fallin said.

Winning the favor of education groups is a clear goal in the lobbying effort by 
city officials, said Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director 
Roger Smith.  Smith is currently in New York City along with Denver Mayor 
Wellington Webb and other city officials to meet with the national press to 
discus the so-far informal boycott and the amendment.

"Looking at the other groups that have decided to drop plans for conventions, 
they are the type of organizations that are more prone to boycott, mainly 
because of their own strong antidiscrimination policies," Smith said.

"If we can get groups like the national educators group to think twice, that 
could go a long way.  We'll certainly use that in our efforts" to halt the 
boycotts, he added.

In other Amendment 2 news:

*	A Los Angeles organizer of the Gay Ski Week in Aspen in January
	said fellow ortanizers have decided to boycott the event.  The
	organizer, producer Robin Tyler, also dropped plans for a
	$60,000 celebrity fundraiser.

*	A spokesman for New York City Mayor David Donkins said the 
	mayor would urge the U.S. Conference of Mayors to move its annual 
	meeting scheduled next June in Colorado Springs.

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