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Gay-rights activists are often their own worst enemies, as they demonstrated Tuesday night when they stormed the Democratic victory celebration in Denver.
Watching in amazement from Salida, I got this message
from them: We don't care about anybody else's rights of
speech and assembly. Nor are we going to build a coalition
to repeal this hateful amendment in 1994. Instead, we're
going to shout and stomp and destroy the evening. Nobody
has a right to celebrate unless we approve.
The gay fascists set the cause back by at least a decade, and that's worse than a pity. Amendment 2 is a blot on our state constitution, although its practical effect will probably be minuscule. I doubt that an employer or landlord who didn't discriminate against homosexuals last week will start discriminating next week.
Thus in many respects, Amendment 2 is like Official English: a mean-spirited statement, but not much more.
The major argument against Amendment 2 was that what you do on your own time shouldn't affect your employment -- only job performance should count.
There are many people besides homosexuals who suffer discrimination based on private-time factors that have nothing to do with job performance: having low-life friends, not playing golf, refusing to go debt for a power wardrobe, driving the wrong kind of car, caring more about one's family rather than an employer's P/E ratio, etc.
But the gay activists never pushed any comprehensive anti-discrimination laws -- they just worried about themselves when Denver, Boulder and Aspen passed ordinances.
The No on Two
ads should have said Look, if
you can be fired today because somebody doesn't like your
choice in roommates, what comes next? Will you lose your
apartment because you subscribe to Guns & Ammo and the
landlord is a pacifist? Do you lose a promotion because
you're left-handed? Will you get demoted after you ordered
coffee instead of iced tea when you had lunch with the
boss? Don't you think we would all be more productive if
the workplace was just that, rather than a nerve-wracking
game where we all tiptoe around and fret about images and
appearances?
But the gay activists never made those arguments. They acted as though only homosexuals suffer from meanness and stupidity in this society.
Some other hindsight observations:
· I expected a much closer presidential election.
But I should have known before that Bush was finished. On
Oct. 23, our congressional candidates, Mike Callihan and
Scott McInnis, debated in Salida. Callihan said he wanted
to go to Washington to help Bill Clinton and Al
Gore.
McInnis never mentioned his party's national
ticket and instead stressed his experience at building
bipartisan consensus.
When a Republican candidate in the conservative heartland put that kind of distance -- several light-years -- between himself and the national ticket, it should have been obvious that Bush and Quayle were doomed.
· The Denver commentators made much of the overwhelming margin against Amendment 6 in rural areas. But they never figured out why -- they seemed to think there's some sort of rural aversion to education.
But more money for Colorado schools in general would never have meant more money for our schools particular. I saw Gov. Romer stump for Amendment 6, but I've never heard him explain why a kid in Denver or Cherry Creek is worth twice as much as one of my kids in Salida. Until the equalization formula lives up to its name, you won't see any rural support for increased school funding.
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