From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: Interview with Mayor Wellington Webb
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: doherty@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 18:36:03 GMT

Transcript of interview with Mayor Wellington Webb of Denver; Linda Fowler, 
Chair of the Denver Gay and Lesbian Advisory Committee; and John Andrews, 
Republican nominee for governor in 1990.  Broadcast on KNUS Radio on Monday, 
December 7, 1992, on the Gill Gross Show.

G = Gill Gross
W = Wellington Webb
F = Linda Fowler
A = John Andrews

G - I welcome you all to the show.  Let me start with you, Mayor Webb.  First 
of all, thank you for being with us.

W - It's my pleasure to be here.

G - There's a demonstration outside our studios.

W - Well, I've seen a few today.

G - Yeah, they're following you all around.  They are gay groups that are 
demonstrating even though I know you are basically on their side, right?

W - That's correct.  I oppose Amendment 2.  60% of the people in Denver voted 
against Amendment 2 and it's our sense that for some of the groups and 
individuals that have called for a boycott that that's not the best strategy.  
It's an inadequate strategy, its -- we understand the goal, but I'm not sure 
that we'll achieve the goal of providing equal rights based upon calling for a 
boycott of Colorado and a boycott of Denver and Boulder and Aspen and the 
cities that had equal protection ordinances protecting the rights of gays and 
lesbians.

G - I'm going to come back to the boycott because that is the central differene 
between you and the picketers, and it's one of the things that obviously has 
you on this tour and has you talking to us tonight.  First, for the 49 other 
states and the other people listening in Canada and everywhere else, people 
who hear this program who aren't quite sure what happened in Colorado, tell me 
what did happen.

W - Well, what I'd like to do is kind of give you some background and history 
and then ask Linda to explain and maybe talk about the ballot title.  To begin 
with, Colorado and Denver specifically has had a progressive civil rights 
history.  We had an ordinance passed in 1989 sponsored by Concilwoman Kathy 
Reynolds.  That ordinance passed the Denver City Council.  There were 
individuals that wanted to repeal that ordinance, and that ordinance basically 
stated that gays and lesbians would be granted the same civil rights 
protections as a protected class in public accommodations, employment, housing 
and everything else, the same as every other group.  Individuals then tried to 
repeal that amendment and 55% of the public sustained that effort to maintain 
that amendment on the books.  Amendment 2 was placed on the--through an 
intiiative process and Colorado has a very easy initiative process to get 
issues on the ballot.  That ballot title was there and we felt it was going to 
be defeated.  The polling up until the day before the election even showed 
Amendment 2 losing by as much as 9 to 10 points.  When the votes were counted, 
60% of the people in Denver had voted no, the people in Boulder had voted 2 or 
3 to 1 no, people in Aspen had voted 2 or 3 to 1 against it, but the amendment 
passed.  There was a real disbelief among many quarters of the state and the 
city.  As a city--as mayor of Denver it's my belief that we needed to fight 
that issue given the fact that the attempt is to overturn the will of the 
voters of Denver.  Our city council, my city council, then voted 12 to 1 to 
support the effort to repeal Amendment 2.  So on four separate occasions this 
issue of protecting the rights of gays and lesbians, along with all other 
people of the city and county of Denver, was sustained by the voters.  Now the
specific ballot title we think is an interesting one because in Colorado the 
ballot title was extremely differently worded than it was in Oregon.  I'm going
to ask Linda to kind of talk about the ballot title, because I think that is 
one of the reasons that some fo us feel that is also passed.

G - All right.  Linda, before you even explain that, what does this do?  What's 
everybody so upset about?  What is it?

F - I think the thing that everybody is primarily concerned about is that at 
its core, what this does is legalize discrimination against a specific group of 
people.  That's the issue.

G - In what way, though?  I mean, I know that you guys have been through this 
for months, you know exactly what you're talking about.  You got people in 49 
other states and Canada going "I still don't know what this does."  What does 
it do?

F - There are a number of issues or points that were spelled out in the ballot 
title.  Things such as, for example, quotas were addressed.  Quotas are 
something that no one in the gay and lesbian community in Colorado has ever 
asked for or sought.  In fact, I don't know anywhere in the country that that's 
been done.  What they finally got aorund to addressing and eliminating was the 
right of any protected status based on sexual orientation, meaning that and 
specifying that people who are gay or lesbian could not have protection against 
employment discrimination, public accommodation discrimination or housing.  So, 
in other words, if you're thrown out of your job, thrown out of your house, 
because you're gay or lesbian, you have no recourse.  You have no protected 
status based on that.

G - OK.  And you two, of course, both hate this thing.

W - Correct.

G - All right.  And we've got John Andrews, I told you earlier, on the phone, 
who, I take it, was for this?

A - Well, I'm a strong believer in the rights of the individual, and I think 
every American can insist on being treated exactly the same by his and her 
government--federal government, state government, local government.  I think 
that when rights begin to be assigned to groups that we're getting into an area 
where we need to be careful, and the history of the civil rights movement in 
this country has said that race or gender or permanent physical disability or 
age is reason enough to treat someone with minority status or protected status. 
When you take it a step further and you have government defining on the basis 
of yours and my sexuality that it's going to take a special interest in us, it 
cuts two ways, and it may look in the short run as if government taking a 
special interest in people identified as different because they have a primary 
attraction to members of the same sex that that would be beneficial.  But I 
think when you look farther down the road, you have to be quite concerned about 
the way a free society erodes when government begins identifying people by 
groups and singling out people for minority status, protected status, a 
preference or claim of discrimination, and Linda has accurately quoted that 
those are the four items which are covered in the amendment.  Cutting to the 
chase, I believe that Amendment 2 actually strengthens the rights of every 
individual human being, homosexual or heterosexual, in Colorado.  Amendment 2 
by no means authorizes violence to be done against anybody, intimidation, 
vandalism, theft, destruction of property.  In other words, the entire 
guarantees of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights are still in 
force for everyone in Colorado, homosexual or heterosexual, but I think that 
the amendment on balance does something that we needed to do by making it clear 
that government isn't going to determine your rights according to your 
sexuality.  Government is going to treat everybody the same.  Now, the private 
employer or the private landlord is going to have to reach their own 
understanding with someone applying for a job or applying for a rental and, 
from all that I know, and maybe Linda can correct me, there are not very many 
examples of abuses of individuals failing to get along just because one of them 
is homosexual here in Colorado.     

W - Let me take John's argument and raise this issue.  What if you take that 
to its logical conclusion?  One could suggest that--with which I would 
agree--that in a perfect world there's probably no need for any civil rights at 
all because we would treat all people equally regardless of religon, race, 
creed, color or anything else.  But what John is suggesting is that if you took 
any one group that presently has civil rights protection, the argument that 
he just made has been used on every other group.  It was used on seniors, it 
was used on the physically handicapped, it was used on blacks, saying that 
civil rights protection is already guaranteed under our Constitution.

A - Mayor Webb, let me introduce one word that I think sharpens the respectful 
disagreement that you and I would have over this issue,and that is the notion 
of behavior. I don't believe that it's clinically determined whether from birth 
or genitically or by brain function some people are primarily attracted to 
members of the same sex.  But I think we can agree that until the behavior is 
acted out or declared, no one is going to be able to tell one way or the other, 
and I think, Wellington, there is a very real line that is crossed when you 
move from a passive characteristic like race or gender to a behavior, an 
activity or an area of conduct, and we've got to admit that our sexual 
expression is a behavior.

W - But you would agree that there are individuals that are homosexual who have 
experienced through patterns and practices a discrimination, and that based 
upon them being singled out as a class of people, some of us believe should be 
guaranteed civil rights protection under the law in order to provide them 
protection.

A - I don't think that it is an absolutely clearcut call, an easy call, and one 
of the reasons I welcomed Gil's invitation to talk with you on the program 
today is I want people to hear a voice from Colorado of someone who has thought 
deeply about what human rights mean and a voice which I hope the listeners will 
be able to tell is not motivated by hate or by any sense of anger or 
condemnation of anybody.  I have no quarrel with anybody's sexuality, but I'm 
deeply committed to seeing if we can maintain this as free a society as we 
possibly can.

G - John, let me ask--I'm confused.  Since I'm a person that doesn't live in 
Colorado, I take it that a lot of listeners are confused.  So clear up my 
confusion.  On the one hand, you're saying that this isn't a problem because 
nobody's discriminating like this, and on the other hand you're saying 
that--what--that this law could lead to--what?  I mean, what's the problem 
here?

A - Well, I see that it opens the door to an increasing intervention of 
government into the choices of individuals about how much they want to have to 
do with one another on their own peaceful initiative, to either have a close 
association or not associate closely with one another, and you know--

G - That seems like a long way of saying whether or not I can rent or sell a 
house to somebody or give a job or not give a job to somebody. In which case 
this is exaclty the same argument used against every other minority in this 
country.

A - Well, no, because every other minority that we can name in law except 
people who are protected by their religious preference is such with passivity 
that it is never changing, it is readily identifiable and it is not a behavior.

W - How about mentally handicapped?

A - It's a passive status.  And handicapped.

W - Mentally handicapped.

A - What about mentally handicapped?

W - There are civil rights laws that protect those that also are mentally 
handicapped in order to provide civil rights protection.

A - Well, but it doesn't guarantee a mentally handicapped person a job for 
which the hiring authority concludes that individual isn't qualified.

W - Well, now that's true--the same way you don't hire a blind person to fly a 
plane.  But the issue is that in the event that this person has the capacity to 
do the job, is it right for that employer to not provide that job opportunity 
for that person that has a different sexual orientation or that has a handicap?

A - It isn't just sexual orientation.  It is a behavior.  It is very intense.  
It is clincally intense and is not fully understood and it is intensely private 
and as such my definition of a free society says until there is a compelling 
overwhelming truth that a lot of people are being disadvantaged and harmed and 
being deprived of their basic humanity that you allow individuals to work this 
out among themselves.  If I may--I don't know Linda, but I'd be interested to 
have Linda's input on this about the question I raised a few minutes ago.  Just 
how much evidence is there that in Colorado that people--gay and lesbian 
people--are indeed being deprived of employment or...

G - John, you can ask that later because I've got to take a break because we're 
running late.  Let me take a break and you can do that.  It's also time for me 
to let our listeners in on this.  We haven't even gotten to the boycott aspect 
of this, which is why the Mayor is here.  1-800-456-1227 is the number, as it 
is each and every night.  1-800-456-1227.

                           Commercial break.

(Part II later.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrections, new info, and requests for info: amend2-info@cs.colorado.edu
Administrative comments                     : amend2-mod@cs.colorado.edu
General Discussion                          : amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Boulder/Denver area local meetings/events   : amend2-local@cs.colorado.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To subscribe to a list, send mail to Majordomo@cs.colorado.edu, with
        subscribe <list-name>
in the BODY of the message.  For multiple lists, use multiple lines.

Newsgroups: co.politics.amend2.info