Working Paper 93-28, July 20, 1993(1)
By Mike Booth
Reporter with The Denver Post
(1) This paper is an edited transcript of a talk given by Mike Booth for the Intractable Conflict/Constructive Confrontation Project on April 10, 1993. Funding for this Project was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the University of Colorado. All ideas presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Consortium, the University, or Hewlett Foundation. For more information, contact the Conflict Resolution Consortium, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0327. Phone: (303) 492-1635, e-mail: crc@cubldr.colorado.edu.
© Conflict Resolution Consortium. Do not reprint without permission.
I'm a reporter with The Denver Post. I have covered a number of different subjects for them but I've been covering Amendment 2 for about a year now. Before November we, like a lot of people, thought Amendment 2 would fail and go away very quickly. Obviously it didn't. Since November I have been covering Amendment 2 full-time; I haven't been writing about anything else. People at the paper often ask when I am going to get bored with it; so far I haven't been the slightest bit bored. I am fascinated by all the topics it involves.
If I have a personal bias in this issue it is in favor of as much fair and accurate information as possible. That has been sorely lacking from both sides throughout the entire debate, especially from Colorado for Family Values. But both sides have played a role in disseminating information that has hurt the quality of the debate. It has been a very emotional conflict and the need for accurate information is even more important in such a conflict.
I don't know how many times in stories we have tried to explain the dispute over "special rights" and the fact that protection against discrimination itself is not a special right. After the election I was getting a dozen calls a day from people arguing with me about my coverage--usually from conservatives saying that we were a mouthpiece for the gay groups and that we weren't even trying to be unbiased in our coverage. But, "special rights" kept coming up over and over again. People would call me from an office where they were arguing about Amendment 2 and put me on their speaker phone so I could explain it to groups of people. Even after explaining it to people in person, they will often not believe what you have said or simply misconstrue it.
The paper has been through a lot because of Amendment 2 issues, mostly consisting of attacks from the conservative side on our coverage. We have lost a great number of subscriptions, by far more subscriptions than on any other political issue that we have ever written about because of people's perception of our coverage. Most often, the perception is that we are a mouthpiece for gay groups.
This reaction escalated with the boycott. That seemed to upset people who normally would have never picked up the phone and called the newspaper. It has upset people to a degree more than any other political issue in Colorado. They seem very disturbed that people were trying to attack their state and, ultimately, their jobs, ironically exactly mirroring how gay and lesbians must feel about their job security. The boycott seemed to threaten a lot of people where they hadn't been threatened before.
Some of the tactics employed by both sides contributed to the position that we are in now, which, according to the polls, seems to be like before the election, perhaps going even further in the direction favoring Amendment 2. No one seems to be willing to change their mind. Particular tactics contribute to this impasse. The term "Nazi" was used so frequently by both sides during the debate that we got very tired of hearing it, and very tired of trying to determine exactly what was meant when it was used. Conservatives would say, "They are trying to create a police state where no one can discriminate, where no one can make any choices on anything." The Colorado Springs human rights ordinance that was defeated was called a gestapo tactic because of the way that it would have been enforced. The liberal side's first reaction is to call Colorado for Family Values "Nazis" or "Fascists." Once this sledgehammer word is used, there is no way to get beyond it. It is the ultimate weapon because there is nothing worse in our history than what the Nazis did. So this term implies a horror that is unimaginable. How can you discuss a point after that?
Quoting the Bible is another tactic that is very difficult to get around and stifles further debate. The group that promoted Amendment 2 and many of their supporters believe that everything in the Bible is literally true--this is a very fundamentalist point of view. Therefore, in discussing an issue they always have an alternative position in quoting the Bible and if the Bible says it is true, there is no room for further discussion of the matter. This is another tactic that should be kept out of future political debates because it stifles genuine debate. Such people never allow themselves to change their position because they have a document in front of them that they consider to be the ultimate truth. They will not move from that position because they think that doing so would be a sin. So, it is very difficult to talk about anything once people start quoting the Bible. The liberal groups and moderate groups that were arguing Amendment 2 also used the Bible, but they used it differently. They were willing to engage in a theological debate about what exactly the Bible might mean in a certain section. That debate cannot take place with people who are on the far right side of the issue.
A fundamental thing that needs to change if we are to get anywhere near mediation is for people who are on the liberal to left side of this debate to strive to come to some kind of understanding of the people who are in the middle, the right, and the far right side of the middle. That seems to happen even less frequently than it happens with the people on the right side of the issue trying to understand the left-wing side. The right clearly has its misconceptions about what gays are like, they have their stereotypes, and to them it is all about sex. On the other hand, there are people who fought against Amendment 2 and are still fighting against Amendment 2, who think that everybody that voted for Amendment 2 and advocated it is a card-carrying member of the either the Christian Coalition or Colorado for Family Values. That is simply not true; 810,00 people voted for it in Colorado--they are not all members of these groups. We have to keep repeating that over and over again if anybody wants to get beyond the present impasse.
The philosophy that was espoused by Colorado for Family Values reached deep into the mainstream of Colorado. That is why it passed. It cut across economic and educational lines. The demographic studies done from polls after the election show that it cut across minority lines as well. The voting for this issue crossed over any expectations of ideology or patterns that one can think of, except perhaps, geographic ones. Denver, Boulder, Aspen, and all of the ski counties except Grand County and a couple of others here and there voted against Amendment 2. But everywhere else in Colorado, the majority of people voted for it. Even in places like Denver the vote against the Amendment was less than 60 percent.
To understand this means realizing that not everyone who voted for Amendment 2 or has some problem with homosexuality comes at it from a religious perspective. Many of the phone calls and conversations at the paper are with people who say, "I'm not a religious person." That is their first comment. Their second comment and the comments that lead off from there indicate that they have a gut reaction to homosexuality that prevents them from being tolerant. There is this gut reaction, right or wrong, among a large number of Americans. That is why movements like this are spreading to other states. Some people have some flutter in their gut when they think about homosexuality; it is just not homosexuality, it is about sexuality in general. Americans have a very difficult time talking about these issues. But when talking about a minority view of sexuality and a sexuality that has been criticized for centuries as homosexuality has been, it gets even more difficult. That gut feeling will have to be addressed if there is to be a rational mediation of the dispute.
Is homosexuality a choice, or is it genetics? Ultimately, Joe's1 conclusion was that the answer may not be that important right now. Even if it is a choice, what does that mean in terms of discrimination? We don't allow discrimination against other choices, such as religion. But there is another reason that the answer can be important. It is not the most important issue right now, because it is no where near being solved, but it can be important in the future. I spent a lot of time in the last few weeks talking to various religious groups, not fundamentalist religious groups necessarily, but everyone from Presbyterian Church USA which has a very strong liberal streak in it, to a lot of other churches that vary greatly in their views on homosexuality. Many do not consider themselves fundamentalists, but within their congregations, there is great variance when they talk about official church doctrine.
The Presbyterian Church for example, has had a running dispute on this issue for several years. They considered a new report on sexuality in America and the recommendations in that report which advocate an end to discrimination against homosexuals and the ordination of gay ministers before their General Assembly. These recommendations were adopted and have been upheld. They ended discrimination in the Presbyterian Church. One of the ministers describing this issue focused on the fact that the difference between choice and genetics can be very important to a certain portion of the congregation that are uncertain about their beliefs on the issue. They may want to be tolerant, but they still have this gut reaction. If it was proven to them to a reasonable degree that homosexuality is genetic and that there is no way to change it, many problems would be solved for the Presbyterian Church. Their view is that if it is genetic, if it is inherited, it cannot be a sin. Therefore, it would take away the disapproval that is currently attached to homosexuality in their church. If homosexuality is no longer a sin then they can get beyond that issue. Thus, there will be another group that is perhaps willing to come to a more rational conclusion to this debate. So the genetics versus choice issue, although it is not the burning issue right now, is potentially a very important question for a lot of mainstream religions in America.
Another common view fueling the impasse in the Amendment 2 debate is the assumption that what happened in Colorado was part of a conspiracy by the religious right manipulated through lines leading directly to Pat Robertson's group in Virginia. This conspiracy context, more adamantly proclaimed immediately after the election than now, portrayed the Amendment as part of a carefully orchestrated plan. There is certainly collaboration among the groups. Colorado for Family Values agrees with most, if not all, of what Pat Robertson says on television everyday, along with other groups in Idaho and Oregon. Colorado for Family Values did coordinate some of the legal wording of Amendment 2 with the National Legal Foundation, which used to be a branch of Pat Robertson's group and is still very conservative. Also, they had support from groups around the nation for everything from the way that they wrote their literature to the way that they ran the grassroots campaign. But, I'm not sure if that's any different from a liberal in one part of the country consulting with the ACLU on how to write a piece of legislation or another group in Washington, People for the American Way, about how to get their issue passed and how to get support from mainstream voters. But, with the amount of reporting that I have done on it, I don't see it as necessarily more of a conspiracy than has occurred among other groups that have fought for political change in different parts of the United States. There are eight states now (Minnesota just passed such protection) and more than one hundred cities that have passed gay rights protection. This equally could be considered a conspiracy among liberals to pass gay rights legislation around the country. But it is not seen that way; it is seen as a political movement, as an evolution of values. Over time we may see that is simply what has been happening with the religious groups on the right-wing side of the issue. So, the conspiracy issue should also be set aside in order for people to get a better understanding of what exactly did happen and, therefore, how to change what happened.
In the matter of responsibility, gay activists and their supporters in Colorado could also have done more with respect to a measure that we haven't mentioned--Greg Walta's compromise. Walta is a Colorado Springs attorney who has been very active in civil rights issues. He wrote a compromise measure. Walta called it a compromise; Colorado for Family Values called it a capitulation. Many people had trouble with the compromise measure because Walta specifically mentioned the term "special rights." Those unsure of the measure felt that in trying to achieve a compromise this loaded term should not be used. What Walta was trying to do was to diffuse "special rights." In the compromise he pointed out that there is no such thing as special rights and there is no such thing as job quotas for gays right now and it is unlikely that there ever will be. Walta also addressed the issue of discrimination and the extension of discrimination protection throughout the state. He was hoping to ??get this measure on the 1993 ballot in order to end this controversy. Walta ran into trouble for a number of reasons and it looks like now he might not have been able to get it on the 1993 ballot because of the way the legislature is interpreting Amendment 1 and some other laws.
But, even if he had been able to get it on the ballot, he faced a lot of opposition from groups in the liberal community in Boulder, Denver, and Aspen and especially the gay activist community. This opposition stemmed from the fact that he had written some exceptions and exemptions into the law for who would not be covered by the discrimination clauses. Even though most of the laws I have ever seen do include exempted groups such as religious organizations, small apartment buildings or two-family homes, etc., there was an immediate protest on the exemptions. Many gay activists adopted the stance, "We can't compromise on civil rights; the minute you start to compromise you are giving up something." Well, the fact is that people have always compromised about civil rights in order to get things passed. Every civil rights bill that has been passed is some form of a compromise because that is the way things work when things have to be voted on. Walta since has withdrawn the measure, and has said that he will not come back with it until 1994, if ever. There was a responsibility in the liberal community and the gay community to take a closer look at the measure drawn up by Walta and to give it more consideration, to spend more time talking about it, and to more carefully consider what kind of compromises they were willing to make in order to have this situation go away.
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1 See CRC Working Paper #93-27 by Joe de Raismes.