From: smithw@col.hp.com (Walter Smith)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Call/Fax/Write Fernandez
Date: 12 Dec 1992 00:55:20 GMT
Organization: Colorado Springs IT Center
NNTP-Posting-Host: fajita19.cs.itc.hp.com

(I'm planning to move this to alt.politics.homosexual, since it has
been pointed out to me that this is an inappropriate place to ask
questions that are not 'pro'....I don't think *that* is a good thing,
but I'm not here to antagonize, so I'll go with the rules.  Please
direct all followups to there.  Any that come in here, I'll reply 
to and cross to there, and hopefully they'll all end up there.  If
you reply to this, remove soc.motss from the header...

mara@panix.com (Mara Chibnik) writes:
> 
> Careful, Walter:

Uh huh...

[careful wording of Col#2 deleted]

> And do you think that this "careful wording" represented an honest
> intention on the part of sincere people who are strongly against
> discrimination in any form, or do you think it represents a
> deliberate attempt to obfuscate a discriminatory measure by couching
> it in terms that would slip past the defenses of the sincerely
> anti-discriminatory voters?

You're joking, right?  #2, of course.  (NO smiley). 

Actually, I think it's even worse than that.  No good attempt at manipulation
would be so lame as to rely on a single layer for its success. 
The first 'layer' would be someone reading it over quickly, and seeing the
parts about no quotas for homosexuals, and the discrimination part being 
last, the person would already be looking positively at the amendment, since
he'd generally agree with the first couple of things.  By the time he
got to the discrimination part, if he read that far, his overall 'good' view
of what he had read might make him glaze over the possible badness.  2nd layer
is for someone who has taken more time to study it, and takes voting more
seriously.  He'll see that it calls for things that most people would think
are good: 
>or enable any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority
>status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination.

most people I know do not think sexual preference should constitute a
'minority', or justifies quotas, or 'protected status', whatever that means.
As for the claim of discrimination, they might have a problem with that.
But, I, and no one I've talked to, knows of any cases where it happens that
someone is fired or evicted just for being gay.  It's not uncommon for
companies to have anti-discrimination policies that protect from this
sort of thing, and the bad publicity they would generate from breaking
their own policy should be enough to keep them from doing it.  So, 
a lot of people would feel the need to prevent quotas and minority 
status overshadows the potential danger of the discrimination part. 
So they vote for it.  


>  >A lot of people who think everyone should be treated *equally* are
>  >the ones who voted *for* #2.
> 
> Then they don't know how to read.  The amendment clearly separates
> out homosexuality, lesbianism and bisexuality as sexual orientations
> that cannot be the basis for anti-discriminatory legislation.  The

Yes.  It also specifies that it cannot be the basis for getting minority
status and quotas, and 'protected status', whatever that means.  And 
people view those as a more realistic threat than the discrimination part.

> amendment does _not_ say that sexual orientation in the general
> sense must not be taken as a basis for anti-discriminatory
> legislation.  Do you see the difference?

Yes.  Do you see why a lot of people who have no connection to either
pole in this issue would lean in favor of it, because of the other items?

>  >(part of why I think the whole boycott-Colorado thing is so bizarre...)
> Oh?
> 
> It looks to me as though you think the amendment is a good thing, or
> at least an ok thing.  Am I wrong?

And what is this opinion is based on?

Walter Smith
smithw@cs.itc.hp.com

Newsgroups: soc.motss