Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
Date:         Sun, 13 Sep 1992 17:51:48 EDT
From:         gaynet@GALLIFREY.KENT.EDU
Subject:      GayNet Digest Volume 6 Issue 24

In this issue:
                POLITICAL REALITY AND THE GOVERNOR OF CA

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From: Trenton del Rey Gallowglass <trenton@cebu.qdeck.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 13:59:02 -0700
Subject: POLITICAL REALITY AND THE GOVERNOR OF CA

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.]




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