From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: The broad net of 'gay rights'
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: blough@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 21:51:51 GMT

Editorial from the Gazette Telegraph, Colorado Springs
December 4, 1992

Opponents of Amendment 2 have painted the motives of the amendment's supporters 
in the ugliest of terms: hate, fear and a desire to deprive a group of people 
of their basic civil rights.  But two recent news items help explain the more 
noble motives of those who supported a statewide ban on gay-rights laws.

In New York and Minnesota, the concept of "gay rights" has taken on meaning 
that goes far beyond protecting anyone's basic constitutional freedoms.  It has 
become a weapon to impose unreasonable costs on society, undermine the 
institutions of marriage and family, and force schools to teach values that 
challenge the authority of parents.

In a Minneapolis case last month, a civil rights panel awarded $90,000 in 
damages to three gay public-library employees.  The panel ruled that the city 
had violated a local gay-rights ordinance when it refused to extend 
health-insurance benefits to the employees' lesbian lovers.  Ann DeGroot, 
executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Action Councl, hailed the 
ruling as "a major breakthrough" in combating discrimination based on sexual 
orientation.

In New York City this week, the chancellor of the city's public school system 
suspended a school board in Queens becuase it refused to adopt a curriculum 
that teaches first-graders to respect and appreciate the gay lifestyle.  The 
curriculum, called "Children of the Rainbow," requires that children be taught 
to "view lesbians/gays as real people to be respected and appreciated."  It 
directs teachers to "include references to lesbians and gays in all curricular 
areas."  It offers storybooks like "Daddy's Roommate" and "Heather has Two 
Mommies."

Understandably, the school board in this heavily Catholic section of New York 
City balked at the directive.  The board's motivation was not to deprive anyone 
of basic rights, but to avoid being a party to indoctrinating 6-year-olds that 
being gay is OK.

These two cases reveal the broader scope of the gay-rights agenda.  The aim of 
many gay activists is not just protection from job discrimination, but 
recognition of gay partnerships as a type of marriage contrct, including full 
access to employee benefits for their homosexual partners.

The precedent set by the Minneapolis case will not only impose an additional 
financial burden on businesses, raising prices for everyone.  It will also 
lead, as it already has in Minneapolis, to domestic partnership ordinances that 
allow homosexuals to register as couples, clearing the path toward putting 
their relationshps on a legal par with heterosexual marriage.

And, as the New York case shows, the gay agenda includes active promotion of 
homosexuality as a legitamate, alternative lifestyle.  These promotional 
efforts go beyond voluntary persuasion aimed at adults to include involuntary 
indoctrination of our children through the tax-supported public school system.

Of the many Amendment 2 supporters we've met, none profess a hatred of 
homosexuals as human beings.  Nor do they fear homosexuals.  Instead, the most 
common concern is a reluctance to carve out a special niche in the law for a 
group of people based on their sex lives.

These real-life developments show that their concern is not based on mere 
conjecture.  Passage of Amendment 2 was a rational, pre-emptive effort to head 
off a legal revolution that threatens to undermine basic institutions and 
trigger endless litigation.

What we've seen in recent weeks in Minneapolis and New York City supports the 
belief of most Amendment 2 supporters that the issue of "gay rights" is not 
really about basic constitutional rights that belong to all Americans.  It is 
about special rights that would give homosexuals a privileged status from which 
they could force others to acept and condone their lifestyle.

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By exercising a great deal of self-control, this article does not include any 
editorial comments by me.  


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