Civil rights are NOT special rights!

The BBQ Pit
1

Grrrr!!! With a few @#$%^&* thrown in.

Our Topeka, Kansas City Council is once again set to debate and vote on an issue that should be incredibly simple, but was defeated once before. The issue? On whether or not sexual orientation should be added to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

And yet again the pointy headed fundies are coming out of the woodwork, saying that this is giving special rights to gays. The pastor of a city evangelical organization said that if the clause is added, that it should be repealed next year when our mayor-council form of government goes to the city manager form. Today there was a letter to the editor saying proposals are being drafted to require hiring quotas for gays, that churches will be required to hire gay pastors, all the old lies and scare tactics that have nothing to do with the proposal as it stands.

And since Topeka is the home of Fred Phelps his ugly signs and faxes are ramping things up a notch, especially targeting the newest Council member, (she’s lesbian), who got this proposal off the ground again. It may actually have a chance of passing this time around, which is why the bigots are frothing at the mouth.

We have nine council members. It would take five to pass. It lost four to five last time, but since then three council seats have changed hands, and two of them are folks who have at least stated their"sympathy" for the proposed change. And since the council members don’t have to worry about re-election, they may just do the right thing.

I’m thinking of writing a letter to the editor. See, I’m a landlord, but I’ve been a tenant too. I’d like to remind people that discrimination works both ways. If I was a tenant, my landlord could boot me out for being heterosexual, it would be completely legal, because the ordinance change makes no mention of homosexuality, just* orientation*.

People!!! Protecting the rights of others is the best way to protect your own!

Pant, pant, pant. Okay, I’ll calm down now. I’m just so damn mad at the whole situation. Keep your fingers crossed that the vote goes for civil rights next Tuesday.

2

What, specifically, is the city’s “anti-discrimination ordinance?” =D

Cheers!
BA

3

It prohibits, in the public and governmental sectors, discrimination based on age, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and so on. So you can’t refuse to rent to someone because they are black, say, or you can’t fire someone for being a woman. All that is proposed is that sexual orientation be added to the list.

4

I can totally agree that the anti-discrimination part should be included. What I think has a bunch of people up in arms is the belief that this will open the door to preferential (sp?) treatment. From there it goes to quotas.

Are there any rational groups (i.e. not Act-Up) that are trying to get this message out? The message being that if the basic rights are upheld (not given as everyone has certain rights) that it won’t just snowball from there?

Again, I agree with the CC passing this, but I also see why so many would be leary of such a proposal.

5

But you know something, Duffer? With the exception of Affirmative Action for ethnic minorities and women (which is a whole different subject, one I think worth discussing but not appropriate to hijack this thread with), nobody has ever affirmatively proposed preferential treatment or quotas with relation to any of these anti-discrimination programs. That issue is brought up by the opponents. Every single time. Trust me; I’ve been following these stories for over ten years now.

IMO, it’s dishonest of them. It might have been appropriate for people concerned about that to bring it up the first few times such ordinances/local laws/regulations were proposed – and it might be appropriate for someone to raise the question (and the national groups who already had it answered, answer it for them). But for them to keep raising the issue when it’s never been actively suggested – and based on my reading of HRC, GLAAD, and other group agendas, it won’t be – is purely dishonest and disingenuous. In short, it’s a scare tactic, aimed at depriving people of their civil rights, and any decent conservative should be condemning it as unworthy of conservative ideals. (You don’t see a whole lot of that, though – O’Reilly was pretty close to the only leading conservative figure to do so publicly prior to the last campaign.)

6

duffer, I guess I don’t understand your concern. There are no hiring quotas or anything like that for, say the elderly, or Eskimos, or even Episcopalians like me.

There is no preferntial treatment for any group. All it does is say you can’t discriminate in hiring, firing, renting, and so on, based on the “conditions” I named.

As the law stands, people of any orientation could concievably be at risk. If my boss was gay, he could decide he didn’t want to employ heterosexual, and I could be fired with no recourse. If I decided to boot out a tenant because I learned she was lesbian, my tenant would have no recourse.

7

Afterthought: May I add Barry Goldwater as a shining exception to that last comment? I wish I’d thought to include him before I hit submit – that’s a remarkable stance, and one I was very pleased to see.

8

OK, everyone can begin to back off. I never said this would all happen, I was pointing out that it may be a major reason for those opposing it. If you don’t want to hear about possible reasons for people opposing it, I’ll just keep it to myself. Try to give one side an opinion why the other side might be so worked up, and it just never works out.

When will I ever learn to avoid anything involving making sure gays have equal civil rights? :smack:

9

Yeh, duffer, and maybe another major reason for opposing the measure is that people will start marrying sheep if it passes. :rolleyes:

The point of the rant is that the seeimgly reasoned basis for opposition is a crock of shit. A pack of innuendos, extreme extrapolations, and outright lies, spewed out by bigoted ignoramuses. Anyone who’s getting worked up about it is a sucker for propaganda that plays into their prejudices.

As Polycarp said, it’s a scare tactic. It’s cynically pandering to the worst impulses of the ignorant and the easily led. It’s despicable.

10

A few points, duffer:

  1. It is ACT UP. All caps, no hyphen. I stands for AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power.
  2. ACT UP is not a “gay rights” group. ACT UP as a rule certainly supports gay rights but it is an AIDS activist group (actually a collection of groups operating independently under the same name).
  3. Tarring every group that has operated under the ACT UP name as not “rational” is ignorant.
11

Duffer, if it makes any difference, I am not angry with you – I’ve read what you’ve had to say. I simply pointed out the dishonesty (to be charitable in describing it) of the positions espoused in the views you were presenting.

Yeah, it’s an argument. Arguing that George Bush is no better than Hitler was an argument during the late campaign. They both had approximately the same degree of honesty and relevance – i.e., effectively none. Fair?

12

ROFL. Defensive much?

13

In his defense, it did have some similarities to the early phases of a pile-on, and if it wasn’t his intent to advocate the position he was describing (and for the moment I’ll take his implication that it wasn’t) then I cannot blame him for wanting to disassociate himself from it.

14

Thanks, Poly, it most decidedly wasn’t a slam on the proponents of the measure. It also was in no way an endorsement of those that would try to block the measure.

I was simply trying to point out why some would have a knee-jerk reaction to this, while reminding the other side that it’s a given that this resistence would crop up.

Defensive? Wonder why?

ACTUP. Better? You seem to have known what I was talking about. I have to assume not many straight people in Topeka, KS know the acronym. Just what they read in the papers and see on CNN. All I know of E.L.F. is what they do for attention, and doesn’t give mainstream America much reason to support them.

Once again, I’ve been shown no matter what position I take, I’ll be wrong. I’m done with it. I was smacked down in an earlier thread about gay marriage, and promised to just not care. Why I ever even entered this thread is beyond me.

Done with this debate forever. I’ll live my life, you live yours, and if never the twain shall meet, maybe we’ll all be happy.

I will wish you luck, though. I just won’t have anything to do with it.

15

Way to focus on the least important of my points to the near-total exclusion of the substabtive ones. No clue what ELF has to do with anything.

16

The fact that there’s even a controversy surrounding this is pretty sad. Then again, I think the same thing about teaching creationism in science classes, enforcing sodomy laws, and reforming voting procedure so it’s standardized and foolproof. So I guess I’m the one who doesn’t have her finger on the pulse of America.

P.S. I kinda got what duffer was saying. He was playing devil’s advocate. Right?

17

Semi-related to this was a post I thought significant in a GD thread about gay marriage, an analogy to interracial marriage was introduced and then responded to:

The only amendment ratified in 1865 is the 13th, abolishing slavery. Race is not mentioned anywhere in the text. The 14th and 15th amendments establish “equal treatment” for citizens and strike down racial restrictions for voting, respectively, and I can’t find a single justification in these (or any other) amendments supporting Huerta’s use of phrases like “singled out”, “special consideration”, “explicit guarantees of getting whatever whites get”, “explicit consitutional consideration” and “protected class status”.

I’m beginning to realize that this is shockingly common; the belief that a law mandating equal treatment is actually mandating special treatment, as though it was somehow “special” to be protected from being trampled if the majority really really really wanted to trample you.

18

I think you may have contradicted yourself:

It seems very possible that under this a church may be forced to hire a gay pastor.

Should the Gov’t have a say of a churchs hiring practice, if so what about the, non-existant in The Constitution, but everyone things it’s there, sepperation of church and state?

Also what about people who devotly follow their religion and happen to rent out a room, should they be forced by the state to rent to an openly gay person? What about a person who has a lot of hetro partners?

Where are the rights of the owners to decide what is best for themselves?

19

I am not an attorney, so I don’t speak from a legal standpoint. But I have not seen previously that the government has required churches to hire anyone than of their own choosing. Do you have any examples of it happening in other situations?

I don’t think that they would be allowed to discriminate against renting a room to a homosexual. If the room is in their own home, I would think that they would have a right to stipulate “no visitors.” What that person does outside their home is not their business. The same is true for a person who has a lot of hetero partners.

If the room or apartment is not part of their home, and the applicant meets all qualifications, then I think that the law is reasonable in requiring non-discrimination. I also think that the religious landlord or landlady might want to seek pastoral or rabbinical counseling about love and non-judgment of people. There is so much more to religion than a list of do’s and don’ts for the other fellow.

The owners should have the right to decide what is best for themselves when it directly affects themselves.

It is understandable if the owner chose not to rent to someone with a bad credit history, a known felon, a smoker, a Georgia Bulldog or Alabama Crimson Tide football fan or the like. But if the person is not likely to cause harm to you or your property in any way, you would have no reason to discriminate.

20

Good Lord, give me strength. Here I go again.

I think we can all agree that from a legal standpoint, I may refuse to rent an apartment to persons employed as clowns. I don’t need a reason, but let’s say my entire family was killed by a clown, just for fun.

So legally speaking, it is perfectly acceptable to say, “Sorry - it’s my apartment building, and I don’t want clowns living here. It’s bad enough I have to see them on TV when the circus comes to town.”

Right?

Now, I think we can all agree that I may not, legally speaking, evince the same policy with respect to Methodists. That is, even if my soul burns with a hatred of Methodists and all things Methodisty, even if my entire family was slaughtered before my eyes by a crazed Methodist minister, the law protects religion as a class, and does not permit invidious discrimination based on that class.

Right?

Now, is that policy fairly characterized as “special privileges for religions?” It does allow a person handicapped by his religion and some discriminatory practice arising based on his religion to successfully challenge it. The clown is out of luck. So I don’t think it’s absolutely out of this world to say that the policy provides a special right to enjoy freedom of discrimination based on religion. It’s not a right we extend to occupations. It’s not a right we extend to anything except religion, and race, and creed. and gender. So it’s not beyond the pale to describe these as special rights.

Now, I would argue the salient question is: is this a WISE policy? In the case of religion, I argue that it is. In the case of race, I argue that it is. So if I were proposing such a policy for race, and someone said, “Ah, you’re just giving special rights to blacks,” I would answer, “In a strained sense of the word, yes, but it’s the correct thing to do.”

So, too, here. I don’t think anyone can point to any terrible effects; we already have religion listed as an impermissble reason to discriminate, no one has yet forced a Baptist church to hire an atheist minister. So it seems clear to me that if being homosexual is in clear conflict with the specific requirements for a job, such as “Living and believing the Christian faith as defined by the Baptist Church” might be a job requirement for a pastor, then the Baptist church still has every right to say no to a gay pastor just as they have the right to say no to an atheist pastor.

This is a WISE policy to adopt. Getting bogged down in “special rights” is a mistake, because it puts proponents on the losing side of a hairsplitting argument. I would just counter the hysteria with the athiest pastor comment above: we ALREADY have ‘religion’ in the law, ya bozo. Point to the parade of atheist pastors hired as a result!

  • Rick