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Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against our
Amendment 2
-- the no special rights for
homosexuals
amendment to our state constitution which
passed in 1992 with 813,996 in favor and 710,151
opposed.
The decision yesterday upholds a Colorado Supreme Court decision, which upheld a Denver District Court ruling. The Denver court granted an injunction against enforcement. Amendment 2, which overturned gay-rights ordinances in Denver, Boulder, etc., has never really been in force.
If I understand the arguments against Amendment 2 correctly, they go like this:
Suppose the Smallville Public Library decreed that it would not allow left-handed people (they're sinister and gauche, after all) to check out books.
The Sinister, Gauche & Ambidextrous Liberation Front could organize and appeal to the Smallville City Council, which might pass an ordinance requiring the library to treat all patrons equally, no matter what their manual preference. Or they might pass around petitions for a local initiative that prohibited discrimination against People of Other-Handedness. They could fight their cause on a local level through the normal political processes.
Now, suppose that Amendment 2 was in force, and the Smallville librarian would not lend books to homosexuals.
Homosexuals might protest. But if they tried to get the
Smallville City Council to pass an ordinance prohibiting
discrimination against homosexuals at the library, there's
Amendment 2. The state, and its political subdivisions like
Smallville, cannot enact, adopt or enforce any statute,
regulation, ordinance or policy
which allows a claim
of discrimination
based on homosexual, lesbian or
bisexual orientation.
Thus, left-handed people could get a simple local ordinance requiring the Smallville librarian not to discriminate against them.
But homosexuals could not. Instead, they would need to amend the state constitution. That's a higher hurdle than any other group must leap.
Amendment 2 thereby denies homosexuals the right to
participate in the same political process, and violates the
14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says that
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the normal privileges and immunities of citizens of
the United States.
If other groups of citizens have the right to petition
for laws to protect themselves against discrimination, and
homosexual citizens don't, then their normal privileges
and immunities
have been abridged.
At least, that's my understanding of the argument against Amendment 2.
I wish Amendment 2 had never happened. I have no idea whether the gay-rights ordinances in various Colorado cities were good laws or not.
These laws might have kept difficult lives from being needlessly more difficult, or the statutes might have led to bad lawsuits where employers or landlords had to prove they weren't discriminating, which would mean de facto quotas.
But over time, we would have figured that out on a city-by-city basis.
Amendment 2 kept that from happening. Instead, the
cherished Colorado doctrine of local control
was
abrogated by a statewide policy.
Granted, there were some benefits all the way around.
Barbra Streisand announced that she would boycott the
Hate State,
as did several other entertainers. I rather
enjoyed their absence from our fair state.
However, they still allowed their music to be sold here. Thus we also got an insight into Hollywood hypocrisy. They're happy to take money from our Hate State, even as they denounce it.
And they still entertained Colorado. Think of Streisand, with her latest joyboy hunk nearby, delivering morality lectures, and you see what I mean.
Other beneficiaries of Amendment 2 included various
pseudoscientists paid as expert witnesses
during the
court battles by Gale Norton, candidate for the U.S. Senate
and attorney general of Colorado.
Among those receiving payments was Paul Cameron, who got
$15,649.02 from Norton's office. Cameron, a professional
anti-gay expert witness, was expelled from the American
Psychological Association in 1983, and in 1982, a federal
judge in Dallas wrote that his testimony was full of
fraud,
misrepresentations
and
distortions.
Norton never used any of Cameron's testimony -- purchased with our money -- as evidence. Cameron obviously benefited from Amendment 2, and the rest of us will get our rewards with a deep and relaxing guffaw every time Chain Gang Gale talks about how she's for economy in government.
Amendment 2 served well to raise funds for lesbian and gay advocacy groups, and money for its defense was a frequent appeal in Colorado for Family Value propaganda.
And, I confess, it was always useful for columnists, of every political persuasion, on slow days. How are we ever going to get along without it?
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