From: pgr@crhc.uiuc.edu (Paul Ryan)
Newsgroups: soc.motss,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Colorado Amendment 2: The First Fatality
Date: 13 Nov 92 04:26:10 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: copland.crhc.uiuc.edu

gs> Gary Strand



gs> It does not deny homosexuals equal rights. 

Colorado's Ammendment 2 grants protected status to the chosen behavior of
discriminating against queers.  

The people of Colorado have voted to protect their freedom to discriminate
by sexual orientation.  In fact, such discrimination is a right they value 
so highly that they have ammended their constitution to prevent their 
legislature from ever passing any law against discrimination based on 
sexual orientation.

Further, if you think this does nothing but stop laws, you haven't read it.
It applies to government all the way from the governor to the dog catcher
including every school, office and agency under any form of government in
the state.  It prohibits statutes, regulations, ordinances and policies.
It denies me minority status, quota preferences, protected status and
claim of discrimination.

Can the governor decide that his own office will not discriminate?  No, he
is prohibited from setting any such policy.

Can a high school principal tell a homophobic teacher not to degrade a
queer student? No school district may create a policy granting queers
protected status - you tell me who's going to win the lawsuit.

Can a local police district create a special task force to address 
hatred-based random violence against gays?  It's a branch of the government
and it sounds a hell of a lot like a policy to protect gays - you tell me
what the ammendment says.

The nasty bits are well worded and well hidden - but this is about a hell
of a lot more than denying me quotas I never asked for.  This is about
denying me equal protection under the law.  This is about protecting your
right to discriminate me.

And now that it's law, I don't for a moment believe that the gay-baiting
hatemongers who put this in place won't be milking it for every anti-gay
aspect it can be made to display.

You are incapable of justifying this ammendment to me.

gs> Teenagers commit suicide for puppy love, because they have bad skin, because
gs> they don't get good grades, because Dad didn't let them have the car, and so
gs> on. Teenagers are, for the most part, so emotionally immature and insecure
gs> about themselves that they commit suicide for incredibly bizarre reasons.

Teenagers are remarkably prone to suicide, for many reasons, and most seem
trivial to adults.  However, a great deal of responsible research has shown
that a gay teenager is 3 times more likely than his straight friend to commit
suicide, all other influences being equal.  It has shown further that the
problem can be directly attributed to the emotional abuse that child suffers
at the hands of the straight world he's born into.

Your callous, insensitive and clueless willingness to dismiss this problem
is exactly the sort of ignorant, careless attitude I have come to expect
from straight white men.  Do all those deaths not matter because they're
gay, or is it just that you're so hopelessly unaware of what it is to be
a gay teenager that you truly can't understand what you're hearing?

gs> I'm white, male, and het

Big surprise.

Paul
-- 
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Center for Reliable High-Performance Computing     Urbana, IL 61801
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Newsgroups: soc.motss