Anti-Homosexuals Campaign Risks Ideals
by Susan Chadwick
David Estes, a Mormon and Seattle city policeman, has a collection of dirty books and magazines he shows to those who ask him to explain his campaign against homosexuals. Estes keeps the material in the north Seattle office of Save Our Moral Ethics (SOME), the organization founded by him and Dennis Falk, also a city cop. Here also are the source books and “fact” sheets which describe homosexuals as being unstable, unable to keep a job, inordinately prone to crime, violence, disease, child molestation, and other evils.
From this office Estes, Falk, and a small group of volunteers “of all denominations” run a campaign for “normalcy” which they hope will result in Seattle’s becoming the fifth municipality in the nation to repeal ordinances prohibiting landlords and employers from refusing housing and jobs to suspected homosexuals. Volunteers carry packets of petitions and campaign literature filled with SOME’s allegations into the precincts of the city in hopes of gathering enough validated signatures by mid-August to place Initiative 13 on the November ballot. The issue has drawn national debate. Citizens on both sides of the controversy believe that the cherished ideals of freedom of choice and right to privacy are at stake. The question is whether society is going to allow a man or woman to be discriminated ‘against merely because of sexual orientation, said attorney Peter Greenfield, who has worked closely with groups opposing the initiative in Seattle.
Homosexuality is a private matter, he said. Beyond that the public or professional behavior of homosexuals should be judged for its appropriateness or acceptability as others are judged. “At what point should the government be telling us who we should accept?” said Estes. “We want the freedom of choice in who we are going to accept.” The government should remain neutral.” “People could make that argument similarly to race,” said Greenfield. “Or to religious ” freedom.
The theory behind extending this kind of prohibition into the private sector is the same as race or physical handicap or any other category: it’s an improper basis for discrimination.” Seattle is one of 39 municipalities in the country which prohibit discrimination in housing or employment on the basis of sexual orientation. Currently the only organized opposition to such laws is in Seattle, although California voters will decide in the fall whether to amend their state constitution to make it illegal to hire an’ acknowledged homosexual in state schools.
California amendment would also allow state schools to fire employees for “public homosexual activity,” which presumably could include anyone of the same sex hugging each other. In addition, anyone could be fired for merely talking positively about homosexuality in a way likely to come to the attention of school children or other school employees, which might include this article. A SOME “fact” sheet lists so called reasons it contends the fair housing and employment ordinances should be changed. They include allegations that “Homosexuals account for half the murders and suicides in large cities,” and “Half the nation’s syphilis comes from homosexuals.” Number nine on the list of 10 reasons for repeal: “Homosexuality” is an abomination, in the sight of God.” In some ways, the campaign is similar to those led by Anita Bryant and lesser-known fundamentalists that persuaded voters in record numbers to repeal similar anti-discrimination laws in Dade County, Fla., Wichita, St Paul, and Eugene, Ore., in the past year. Key words in the movement against this minority include: “Special privileges,” “flaunting,” “the homosexual lifestyle,” “recruiting of children,” “child molesting.” It is a campaign viewed as a reaction to the liberalized attitude towards homosexuals, estimated to be one out of 10 men and women in the country.
More than three dozen cities and the state of Massachusetts have adopted similar anti-discrimination laws in the last five years. The anti-homosexual movement is also seen by many as a threat to the freedom of anyone who holds unpopular views or does not conform to some imaginary “norm” yet does not interfere with the rights of others. “If discrimination is allowed against this particular group,” said Estes, “you ask (regarding discrimination against other groups) do the moral considerations outweigh the legalities? “If the moral considerations outweigh, you go outside the legal parameters on a temporary basis. It’s up to the judiciary to weigh moral considerations. “We’re not saying that homosexuals should be fired just because they’re homosexuals,” he said. What SOME is saying, he explained, is that homosexuals are “unnatural, emotionally disturbed,” and that they should either become celibate or keep their sexuality a secret “so that nobody is ever going to know.” What the homosexual is telling us is we must now accept them. We are not going to accept their behavior as normal,” said the 32-year-old father of two children. “We consider ourselves normal, normal concerned parents. “My view was the normal standard 20 years ago.”
We have shifted in a different direction,” he said. The elections themselves are seen as a signal. “It is an indicator of the enlightenment of a community, the extent to which it is prepared to accept diversity among its members and give people a measure of privacy,” said Greenfield. To Estes and his supporters, repeal is a message that homosexuals “cannot force their lifestyle on us” and that the public will not tolerate what he describes, without any substantiation, as the “side effects of accepting homosexuals”: increased child prostitution, crime, violence, strange public behavior, and so on. At bottom is the little-understood and disturbing fact of homosexuality itself, a subject loaded with the misconceptions and stereotypes characteristic of prejudice, against any minority group.
The campaign in Seattle has been slow and low-pitched, surprising even opponents of the initiative who believed that SOME would long age have gathered the 17,626 signatures necessary to qualify the measure for the ballot this year. “We’ve had very little cooperation from church organizations,” said Estes. “It was unexpected.” His opponents look to St. Paul for a comparison. There was little opposition to repeal in the other cities, including Eugene, Oregon, which all had a larger conservative or fundamentalist population, said Sandra Kraus, campaign manager of Citizens to Retain Fair Employment. In addition, the ordinances in those cities were new and were repealed before they ever went into effect, while “That’s not too exciting a number but people really don’t want to hear that. Seattle has been on the books since 1973 with no apparent problem. In Seattle, as happened in St. Paul, the heads of most of the major church denominations have expressed their opposition to the initiative. “The pro-gay rights group (in St Paul) had the endorsement of all the political leaders, churches, the responsible people in that city.”
Led by a Baptist minister, the anti-gay rights group campaigned door-to-door with the same kind of statements circulated by SOME. St. Paul, with a large Catholic population, voted 2-to-l in favor of repeal of their four-year-old ordinance. Something which may work against SOME is that Seattle has one of the lowest percent ages of church-going citizens of any city in the country. “There’s no question that when 33 percent of the people in a city like St. Paul vote in favor of protective legislation, while 10 years ago one would have expected nowhere near that number that’s an indication of progress,” said attorney Greenfield. “The trend is for greater protection for individual privacy in the area of sexual orientation.” In state and federal courts, with notable exceptions, said Greenfield, the trend is also that it was “contrary to the notions of liberty and privacy to take punitive of adverse action based on nothing more than one’s sexual orientation.” A decision by the Washington state Supreme Court that a teacher may be fired solely on the basis of sexual orientation is contrary to that trend, as is the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the matter, he said. As yet the only federal protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is found in federal civil service regulations, said Greenfield. “The question of what defines the constitutional right to privacy, the guideposts for judicial decision making, are not clearly marked,” he said. “The Supreme Court is going very slow. There have been numerous opportunities, but the Supreme Court has not heard oral arguments or written an opinion in any (sexual orientation) case in the last decade. “One can expect it will do so before long.”
