From: buckmr@rpi.edu (Ron Buckmire)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Why PETE WILSON will veto CALIFORNIA's GAY RIGHTS BILL unless YOU CALL!
Date: 15 Sep 92 22:23:09 GMT
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Reprinted from the Los Angeles Times, 1 September 1992



Perspective on Gay Rights:

POLITICAL REALITY AND THE GOVERNOR

By Randy Shilts



To imagine what it is like to be homosexual in America
in 1992, heterosexuals should envision a society in which
they comprise only 10%, and the most basic decisions of
their lives are made by the other 90% who are gay.



Imagine a society that rigorously pronounces what kind of
jobs this minority can and cannot have.  No heterosexual
can serve in the military; that's official policy.  Nor,
effectively, can you have a job in the public or private
sector that requires a security clearance; you can't be
trusted.



Being a schoolteacher in most districts would be risky
too, so you had better choose another line of work.
Don't try to go to the courts for relief.  The U.S.
Supreme Court has determined that this discrimination is
entirely legal.



As for your private life, the nation's highest tribunal
has even said that you can be imprisoned for having sex.
If you are a man and fall in love with a woman, don't
expect to be able to marry her; that's against the law.
Besides, everyone knows that heterosexuals cannot sustain
a meaningful relationship anyway.



To complete the scenario, imagine that when these issues
arise in political debate, the most outspoken
politicians, including the vice president of the United
States, will argue not that there is too much repression
but not enough.



Visualize all this, and you might get a glimmer of how it
feels to be gay and watch the public-policy debate over
homosexuality this year.



Gay rights will shortly dominate California politics
again because Gov. Pete Wilson must decide the fate of AB
2601, the new gay-rights bill. which would ban employment
discrimination against gays and was passed by the
Legislature last week and awaits the governor's
signature.



No matter what Wilson says about this bill, it's clear he
privately favors it.  From the first days of his campaign
for governor in 1990, Wilson indicated repeatedly that he
was inclined to sign such legislation.  His aides
privately assured gay Republican leaders that he would
sign the 1991 gay-rights bill -- right up to the day he
vetoed it, unleashing gay riots in Los Angeles and San
Francisco.



Wilson claimed that he vetoed the legislation because it
might have hurt businesses and clogged the courts with
litigation.  The current gay-rights bill was crafted
specifically to address Wilson's every objection, but
don't hold your breath expecting him to sign it.  He will
veto it again because he must.



The tenor of the times, particularly in the Republican
Party, demands such action from a politician with his eye
on higher office.  Conservative religious fundamentalists
now dominate the Republican hierarchy in the South, and
in several northern states.  Opposition to gay rights is
as important to them as a staunch anti-abortion position.
No Republican with national aspirations can cross them on
this issue and expect to survive.  Pete Wilson will veto
the 1992 gay-rights bill because he wants to be a viable
candidate in the 1996 Republican presidential primaries.



The Fundamentalists' rhetoric is beguiling to millions.
Gay rights, they allege, represents "special privileges."
The argument is reminiscent of Simone de Beauvoir's
observation that there are two kinds of people: human
beings and women -- and when women ask that they be
treated as human beings, they are accused of wanting to
be men.  In this case, when gays ask for the same rights
as everyone else, they're accused of wanting special
privileges.



The reality is that the story of gays in America is less
a story about gay people than about heterosexuals.  Gay
people, in truth, have very little control over the most
basic conditions of their lives.



Heterosexuals restrict our opportunities in most
professional fields.  Heterosexuals are sometimes amazed
that so many gays end up as hairdressers or interior
decorators, oblivious to the fact that these are some of
the only fields where more obviously gay people are
allowed to work without penalty.



Heterosexuals deny our relationships the legitimacy of
marriage, because many seem to believe that the only way
to maintain their institutions of marriage and family is
to deny such rights to us.



In more subtle ways, heterosexuals even determine where
gays live.  Gays don't move to West Hollywood and San
Francisco because they like palm trees and Victorian
houses, but because these are among the few places where
we can find a modicum of tolerance.  These cities are not
gay Meccas; they are refugee camps.



Most heterosexuals, even those sympathetic to gays, seem
strangely unoffended at the elemental injustices that
they endure.  Any heterosexual expression of indignity
over a second Wilson veto will be faint, and soon
forgotten.



While the homosexual response remains a potentially
explosive wild card, the people who hate gays will never
forget it if a politician supports gay rights.  The
political tragedy for gays in this country is that for
the majority  of those heterosexuals who support gay
rights, the issue is not a determining factor when they
vote.  To most, it's not a big deal.  They have never
stopped to imagine what it is like to live as they demand
homosexuals to live -- alone, in fear and in hiding.
They won't have to, as long as homosexuals accept such
treatment -- but that time is fast running out.


[Randy Shilts' new book, "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays in the
U.S. Military From the Vietnam War through the Gulf War,"
will be published early next year by St. Martin's Press.]


Some of the numbers that you can call are:

	(916)445-2841	Gov's Sacramento Office
	(916)445-5106	Gov's Chief of Staff's Office
	(916)445-0658	Gov's Legislative Office
	(415)703-2218	Gov's San Francisco Office
	(213)897-0322	Gov's Los Angeles Office
	(619)525-4641	Gov's San Diego Office

---
RON BUCKMIRE, 11 Colvin Circle, Troy, NY 12180-3735. ``D.C. in '93!''
uunet!rpi.edu!buckmr||buckmr@rpitsmts.bitnet||buckmr@rpi.edu||+1 518 276 8910
"We don't necessarily discriminate.  We simply exclude certain types of 
 people." --Lt Col. Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor at M.I.T.,on D.O.D. 1332.14