From: robertl@luciano.Stanford.EDU (Robert Lodenkamper)
Subject: Re: Maybe CO-2 isn't so evil after all.
Organization: Stanford University
	<1992Nov23.061755.17959@microsoft.com>
Date: 23 Nov 92 16:40:11

In article <1992Nov23.061755.17959@microsoft.com> leecr@microsoft.com
(Lee Crocker) writes: 

   Ed Arnold provides a lot of good information and makes some good
   points about Colorado's Amendment 2, but I would like to risk
   serious flamage here by what I consider sincere and reasoned
   argument.

   [...]

   Mr. Arnold supposes that Colorado Amendment 2 passed because of
   publicity by CFV and other religious organizations and because of
   voter confusion.  I would like to argue the point that maybe it
   passed because more voters have come to realize that using force
   (i.e. laws) to change people's attitudes doesn't work, and that the
   best way to combat private discrimination is with private action,
   not with government force.

Some people voted yes on 2 because they were confused.
Some people voted yes on 2 because they are bigots and proud of it.
Some people voted yes on 2 because they are bigots and ashamed of it.
Some people voted yes on 2 because of a principled stand against
     antidiscrimination legislation.
Some people voted yes on 2 because the q-word was mentioned in the
     text. 
Some people votes yes on 2 as a knee-jerk reaction against perceived
     "special rights".

Somehow, I think those who really voted yes on 2 based on a
well thought out principled position against anti-discrimination laws
are a small minority of the yes on 2 crowd.  

   To this day, over 20 years of civil rights laws have done nothing
   to change the minds of some of my family's worst bigots, and indeed
   only steeled their resolve and forced them to move their bigotry
   underground.  I'm afraid I have to sympathise with some of them
   that many civil rights laws do not eliminate intolerance, they just
   move it from one group to another.

As has been pointed out many times, civil rights laws aren't intended
to cure bigotry.  The intent is to limit the damage bigotry can do.

   How can I as an individual honestly say that my idea of right and
   wrong is any more deserving of government support than theirs?

Are you an ethical relativist?  Are all ethical positions "the same"?
Do you think that a government can be completely ethically neutral?
If so, give reasons to believe such a thing could exist.  If not,
would you prefer to see tolerance or intolerance enforced by the
state? 

   Do the bigots not pay the same taxes I do?  I must conclude that
   using the government force to make an individual do something he
   honestly believes is morally wrong with his own private property
   (such as renting a room to a homosexual couple) is not justifiable.

Is bigotry a moral cipher then?  Is the only evil you see in the above
scenario the possiblity of legal coercion (an extremely remote
possibility for a 1-room landlord, I might add)?

   It is time for enlightened minds to fight the real enemy--coercive
   force-- not bigoted attitudes.  

Bigoted attitudes aren't an enemy?  News to me.  Coercive force is not
necessarily evil --- locking up murderers so that they don't do it
again is certainly a case of coercive force which is generally
considered to be good.  In fact coercive force, like any other tool,
is itself ethically neutral.  What matters is why and how it is used.

   In the private sector, those who practive discrimination openly
   without fear of government action can be boycotted more easily, and
   opposing groups can form their own private countermeasures (your
   basic United Negro College Fund approach).  This moves the
   battleground of ideas out of the hands of government guns and into
   the hands of free trade.  Our ideas are not so radical that they
   need to be backed by guns; we are on the right side, and
   enlightenment will win.

Will this blessed event occur before or after the earth is vaporized
as the sun runs out of fuel?

   Let us spread the idea of tolerance by practicing it ourselves,
   even toward bigots.  

They want to defeat us politically as a prelude to exterminating us.
We need to defeat them politically in order to survive.

This is why equating our intolerance for their attitudes with their
intolerance of us and our attitudes is stupid.  They simply do not
compare. 

   We should reserve our strongest condemnations for when the bigots
   try to use direct government force against us, as in the Oregon
   Prop 9 case wherein they would mandate public schools teaching
   homosexuality as a "perversion".  But we should fight it on the
   basis that it is wrong for the government to tell free people how
   they must think; we must not try to use government to force them to
   think our way.

I'll settle for a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness" that is in no way less than Joe Straight's version of that
right. 

This does involve using government force to prevent the bigots from
exterminating me and mine, but such sacrifices are the cost of
progress.  Somehow, I'm almost sure the bigots will survive the
ordeal.

   Let them take Colorado Springs--we will move elsewhere and compete
   against their narrow minds in the free market, and arise victorious
   by right, not by force.  Narrow minds will fail of their own
   accord, we do not need to give them ammunition by trying to fight
   their intolerance on their terms.

Again the fallacy that the gay community is returning hate for hate at
anywhere near the level of the bigots.

I would be interested in hearing a historical case study in which real
progress "just happened" without good-hearted people doing everything
they could, politically, socially and culturally, to bring change
about.

I would also be interested in hearing a good reason why Colorado
Springs should be ceded to the army of the night without a struggle.

- Bob
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