From: briand@anasazi.com (Brian Douglass)
Subject: Re: Sexuality
Organization: Anasazi Inc Phx Az USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 01:49:50 GMT

In article <1993Jan1.142508.5901@ux1.cts.eiu.edu> cfthb@ux1.cts.eiu.edu (Howard Black) writes:
>In article <1992Dec31.201649.10590@anasazi.com> briand@anasazi.com (Brian Douglass) writes:
>>
>>Please indicate items of legislated bigotry.  If you were to mean Prop 2 in
>
>    Marriage, along with the many benefits assoc. with it.  Adoption.

Interesting points.  While I don't disagree with you legislated
prohibitions exist on both of these points, whether or not they are bigotry
is subjective to viewpoint.  Rather, I submit both are very old
institutions, and while open acceptance of gays cohabitating is very new,
these institutions have been slow to change.  Doesn't necessarily make it
right, neither does it make it bigotry.

>
>>Colorado, my reading of the amendment is that it prohibits legislated
>>protection for gays as an expressed minority.  It does not attack, merely
>>prevents protection.  Sort of like forcing the settlers outside the fort.
>
>    Cute analogy.  However, gays need protection, just as african-americans
>needed it awhile back.

Does it also mean affirmative action?  This was needed to right the centuries
of discrimination against blacks and give them a jumpstart into society.
Will you publically state that similiar action will not also be needed for
gays?

>>Personally, I am as opposed to laws that single out groups to prevent
>>protection as I am to laws that single out groups for protection.  In
>
>    Does this mean that you are against the civil rights laws that were
>enacted for the protection of blacks, and the Americans with
>Disabilities Act?  If so, please say so, since it will make understanding
>your positions much easier.

Yawn.  If this was trap to someone portray me as a bigot, it was quite
clumsy and bumbling.  However.

I am not adverse to laws that protect Americans from discrimination.  That
is why we needed the Bill of Rights to protect us against the potential of 
hostile government.  Such laws that protect us against hostile employers,
landlords, etc, is a noble concept.

However, and this subtlety seems to be the failure of most people on either 
side who paint with broad strokes, I am opposed to laws that enumerate those 
under protection.  Such laws by their nature say these people are seperate, need
special protection, and are incapable of achieving it if left to their own
will.  I'm sorry, but I have more faith in the individual to be able to
decide what is right or wrong for him, than I do in legislators,
psychologists or other such experts in society in deciding that for
society.

What I advocate is a level playing field for all members of society, not a
disjointed one broken up into a myriad of levels according to the lobbying 
power of its constituents.  At the heart of bigotry are prejudices, and the
biggest one of all is perception of advantage by one group over another.
And when the playing field is not level, it is no longer perception, but
reality.  And it is just as wrong to put one class of people above the
field as it is to hold another below it.

So, while I, as well as a number of "experts" have problems with many of
the specifics of Civil Rights legislation, I stand firmly behind the tenet
that "all people are created equal; and are endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights."


>>either case they have the same effect of labeling, stereotyping, and
>>seperating a group of people into a separate but supposedly equal class.
>>And any such seperation is the fertilizer of prejudice.
>
>    You have the cause and effect reversed.  It is the prejudice that
>necessitates the protection.

All this does is perpepuate the circle.  Where do we get of the carousel
and move forward in life without class distinctions?  Particularly those
which an individual has no choice over?  I agree there have many aggreegess
actions against minorities in the past, but why must I pay for the sins of
my Father?  Ancestral debt was abolished a long time because it held the
debtors posterity in perpetual servititude.  Have we replaced so much
enlightment for dogma that we have forgotten this simple fact, and the
abolishment of class distinction is what we founded this country for?

>-- 
>   ******************************************************************
>     Howard Black                             cfthb@ux1.cts.eiu.edu
>     Department of Chemistry                  Eastern Illinois Univ. 


-- 
"The best government of all is that government which governs the least."
	Jefferson
Brian Douglass		briand@anasazi.com 	602-870-3330 X657
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