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Although I am among those who fervently wish that Amendment Two had never happened, there's no good reason to celebrate the Colorado Supreme Court ruling which essentially killed Amendment Two.
The fading boycott will doubtless evaporate, but even this is not an unmixed blessing.
Do we really want Barbra Streisand to return with her latest joyboy hunk, when there are so many other locales which offer conspicuous consumption to the jet set? Or the city of Atlanta (capital of progressive Georgia, which still has sodomy laws) to cease issuing hypocritical moral statements to Denver (capital of bigoted Colorado, which repealed all such laws 21 years ago)?
Further, Amendment Two was always a good answer when some Rush Limbaugh fan complained of the alleged powers of the Liberal Elite Media Conspiracy. Opposition was almost unanimous in those circles, from the governor to hinterland columnists, yet Amendment Two still passed, which shows you how little clout such folks really have.
But to think that the judicial repeal of Amendment Two will generate an enlightened era of tolerance is to believe that Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 eliminated racial discrimination, or that Roe v. Wade in 1973 settled abortion.
Court rulings determine the law, but they don't change people's attitudes.
Given that, the pre-Amendment Two local-option approach to gay rights was good politics. The arguments were made locally; everyone got to participate, and thus, everyone had a stake in the outcome.
Since the results were not imposed by a remote court, the public had to be persuaded if a law was to pass. Attitudes thus changed, and the gay-rights laws in Denver, Boulder and Aspen reflected public attitudes.
That's much better than merely changing the law through a court, and then hoping that the public will conform to the wisdom of the judges -- because the public won't.
If all goes well, Amendment Two will go away, and it won't be replaced by either another horror from California for Phantom Values or by a statewide or federal gay-rights law or court ruling.
That's too much to hope for, but consider the main reason Amendment Two passed.
Certainly many who voted for it were bigots. But most
people I know who voted for it did so, not because they had
anything against homosexuals, but because they believed the
propaganda about a protected class.
The fear? Assume you're an employer, and one of your chattels should be canned for incompetence. You don't know or care who or what your employee sleeps with.
But if the employee is gay or lesbian, and if there's a gay-rights law, then you could end up in court trying to prove that you didn't fire that person on account of sexual orientation. To prove you didn't, you'd have to keep performance reports, evaluations, etc. You're in business to make money making widgets, not to maintain paper trails and suffer through depositions.
Or you're a landlord, and an enforcement agent appears and explains that 7.3 percent of the population of your city is homosexual, but only 5.8 percent of your tenants are, so obviously you're discriminating.
Those nightmares are the main reason Amendment Two passed. I think they're groundless, but a few years' experience with gay-rights laws in various Colorado cities would show whether those concerns are real or specious.
With that experience, Colorado gay-rights laws could evolve into statutes that enjoy public support while allowing individuals to have private lives without infringing on the legitimate rights of landlords and employers.
That would never happen in any court. So here's hoping that the gay-rights issue falls off the state-wide agenda and returns to local jurisdictions to be hashed over. Persuading the public on a city-by-city basis is a slow process, but it's the only one that will work in the long run. Court rulings don't matter.
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