Civil Rights Extend Even To Nutheads

Yet another Seattle Times article about the anti-gay ballot measures that panders to the bigotry of the matter, and this time they do so via the anti-gay activist Peter Sprigg:

Unlike constitutionally protected rights such as voting, issues involving employment and housing really amount to just a clash between employers and landlords wanting to make their own decisions and claims by homosexuals that they are entitled to protection.

Sprigg, of the Family Research Council, said the government should interfere in such cases rarely — when the characteristics of those claiming discrimination involve what he calls the five "I's:" inborn, immutable, involuntary, innocuous and in the Constitution, such as race and gender.

"The choice to engage in homosexual behavior meets none of those criteria," Sprigg said, contending that issues related to homosexuality therefore are not worthy of civil-rights protection. "I see no reason why they should not be subject to a vote."

Uh-huh.

How about protected rights such as your freedom of religion Mr. Sprigg? If Tom Cruise wants to worship at the Church of Scientology, that is entirely his right, even though it is his choice to engage in such a belief, as crazy as it might seem to anyone who is not an L. Ron Hubbard fan. Just as it is your choice to believe what you believe.

The thing is, one's sexuality is not a choice. Just as we neither choose to be a woman or a man but are born into it, we neither choose to be homosexual or heterosexual. Sprigg wishes to assert that which simply is not true, and in so doing, manages to set the agenda. The reporter falls into the trap and makes no effort to present arguments that address this matter, instead focusing on the issues as framed by the likes of Tim Eyman and Sprigg.

Eyman wants you to believe that the law passed by Washington legislators gave gays and lesbians preferential treatment, making them "a special class" of citizen. Only in their wildest dreams could any gay or lesbian American ever consider themselves to be a special class in this land that continues to treat them as second or third class citizens.

State Senator Dan Swecker previously said, "We, the state, are telling people to accept, actually to embrace, something that goes against their religious views."

Tough. Your religious views are not my religious views and I have to deal with them, and accept them every day. You cannot force me or others to choose to live by your religious views, and you cannot discriminate against me or others because of my views or who I am, regardless of how bigoted your religion is.

And while we're talking about this law it is about time somebody talked about the actual law as passed, as opposed to in the terms of the anti-gay crusaders that wish to abolish the safeguards the law finally brings to gays and lesbians.

First of all HB 2661 finally grants equal protection to homosexuals (not more protection as Eyman would have you believe). This is a civil rights law:

The legislature hereby finds and declares that practices of discrimination against any of its inhabitants because of race, creed, color, national origin, families with children, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, age, or the presence of any sensory, mental, or physical disability or the use of a trained dog guide or service animal by a disabled person are a matter of state concern, that such discrimination threatens not only the rights and proper privileges of its inhabitants but menaces the institutions and foundation of a free democratic state.

Eyman and Co will have you believe that this law is only about usurping the rights of employers and landlords. This law is not an assault on the rights of employers and landlords, however the insinuation that that's all it is is certainly an affront on common decency and justice. This law is about "the right to be free from discrimination", "the right to obtain and hold employment without discrimination", "the right to the full enjoyment of any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, or privileges of any place of public resort, accommodation, assemblage, or amusement", "the right to engage in real estate transactions without discrimination", "the right to engage in credit transactions without discrimination", "the right to engage in insurance transactions or transactions with health maintenance organizations without discrimination", "the right to engage in commerce free from any discriminatory boycotts or blacklists" on the basis of one's sexual orientation.

The protections were already there if you were simply a nuthead like Tom Cruise or Mr. Sprigg.

There is no great debate on these issues. There is no controversy about such freedoms and inalienable rights. Yet, in order to defeat this bill, in order to discriminate against our fellow citizens, Tim Eyman and his cohorts, be they Washingtonians or lobbyists from D.C., will try to convince you that hell is about to freeze over or the heavens are about to fall.

Too late - that already happened in 2004.