DOING POORLY AT DOING GOOD
Cameron, J. M.
BEHIND ST. PAUL'S 'AFFECTIONAL PREFERENCE' VOTE JAMES D. TRACY One hopes St. Paul's vote (April 25) to strike the "affectional preference" clause from its human rights ordinance will not...
...The great difficulty with the enlightenment theory of politics is that it focuses more on the intentions of a law or policy than on its (often unintended) effects...
...But not even Rev...
...Here was a clear case in which a single gayrights militant sought to use the human rights ordinance as a lever to wrench from its mooring a legal system which since time out of mind has afforded special and unique recognition to heterosexual relationships...
...Bryant was ill) drew 8,000 instead of the hoped-for 17,000...
...A rally at the Civic Center featuring Anita Bryant's husband (Ms...
...While repeal won by as much as four-to-one in some blue collar wards, it was defeated by two-to-one in the liberal Summit-University neighborhood, which contains most of St...
...Angwin was prepared for the result in St...
...e wind...
...During the four years this wording has been part of the law, only six complaints have been brought before the city's human rights department, of which only one was deemed worthy of a full hearing...
...Supporters of the ordinance regularly cited the opinions of those psychiatrists (there are of course others of a different view) who believe sexual identity is firmly fixed by age three or four: hence teachers could have no effect on thenpupils even if they tried...
...Paul's vote (April 25) to strike the "affectional preference" clause from its human rights ordinance will not substantially affect the civil rights of homosexuals...
...Still others felt there had not been time enough in a month's campaign to "educate" the public, that is, to explain the true and limited intent of the law, and to make known the views of St...
...The St...
...Paul, likewise went on record against repeal...
...Paulites who voted for repeal also voted for liberal candidates who opposed it...
...There were also reports of DFL candidates receiving obscene phone calls of the ugliest kind ("you queerloving Jew," etc...
...But if hatred of homosexuals has truly become popular in St...
...Angwin...
...But Mr...
...Magnusson also made capital of the fact that the one complaint under active study by St...
...When the ten o'clock news flashed a scene of young men with no shirts on dancing with each other, one could have ticked off several thousand votes for Rev...
...So did the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party organization, and all but two incumbent or DFLendorsed city council candidates (the most conspicuous exception was Mrs...
...It did not seem CAM's fundamentalist rhetoric would have much appeal in a city which is 40 percent Catholic, and whose Protestant population is mostly Lutheran...
...Richard Angwin, a young Southern Baptist minister, first announced his campaign to repeal the affectional preference clause, few took him seriously, despite the 7,000 signatures he collected to place his initiative on the city election ballot...
...Quite apart from the question of making religious schools hire teachers whose sexual orientation conflicts with their doctrines (is it really the same as banning discrimination by race...
...This group was somewhat better financed than CAM (they raised $85,000), and its leaders conducted precisely the kind of campaign best calculated to have wide public appeal...
...The best reason for opposing Rev...
...Conversely, it is more than a bit dishonest to explain a vote one disagrees with by ascribing to the majority a pathological mentality...
...Paid Dispatch suggested the tide of opinion was running the other way as time passed...
...The first of three literature drops featured, on page one, large pictures of city hall and the St...
...One reason the turnout was high was that it included thousands of new or first-time voters who registered election day, as Minnesota law permits...
...But polls in the St...
...They stressed that a vote to keep civil rights for homosexuals was not a vote to extend public approval to the gay life style, and they made good use of endorsements by civic and religious leaders...
...This is perhaps what prompted a newly elected council member to exclaim, the morning after, "Evil has triumphed in St...
...but one must assume most of these votes were cast against repeal...
...Thus when Rev...
...It seems more likely that people voted for repeal for a specific reason which it behooves liberals to understand: they simply refused to believe there was no connection between writing homosexuals into the human rights ordinance and social approval for the gay life style...
...Whatever Scripture scholars may think of this claim, it was not calculated to reassure voters worried about the implications of the ordinance...
...Paul's huCommonweal: 435 man rights department concerned a Catholic pastor whose parish school allegedly refused to hire a homosexual applicant...
...Like so many other elements in this debate, the argument is not necessarily logical, but it is understandable...
...But one doubts that evil is precisely what triumphed...
...Thus while there is no logical connection between writing protection for homosexuals into the civil rights law and extending social approval to the gay life style, it is equally true that this argument failed to meet die legitimate fears which gave Rev...
...People voted for repeal not because they wished homosexuals to be persecuted, but because they wished to thwart the aims of die radical gay rights minority riding in the wake of civil rights...
...But logic is of little help in assessing the likely results of a law, since the dynamic element in political change is most often a factor of psychological momentum...
...His initative included striking from the human rights ordinance words to the effect that students could be denied admission to a school on religious grounds only if "all applicants" were held to die same requirement...
...LackJeorge Latimer repeal coalition, "his group was ley raised $85,•\y the kind of public appeal, ghts for homoapproval to the f endorsements of three literapictures of city >n the assump1 matter of edns what a law fs the views of e; having done of course, to n. By this askers had every sed they were...
...Angwin's name...
...The Archbishop disclaimed any intention of instructing people how to vote, but the Archdiocesan Priests' Senate came out against repeal, and fifteen individual priests signed newspaper ads to the same effect, as did Lutheran Bishop Elmer Agrimson and large numbers of Protestant and Jewish clergy...
...Some thought a Stenvig-like reaction might be brewing in St...
...No one would have thought St...
...Paul, since an unknown American party mayoral candidate named Nyborg (there being no Republican challenger) collected 20,000 votes...
...Paul cathedral...
...Highland Park, with a large Jewish population, voted for repeal but only by a slender margin...
...300,000) can be more liberal politically...
...With a third of the voters apparently still undecided on election eve, responses went from 38 percent to 30 percent opposed to repeal two weeks earlier to 38 percent to 30 percent in favor...
...Nyborg's totals hardly explain the vote for repeal, since Mayor Latimer polled well over 50,000 votes, as did liberal city council candidates who were just as closely identified with the Citizens for Human Rights campaign...
...Rev...
...fears that homosexual teachers might somehow influence their pupils were clearly of great importance in the campaign...
...But no one would question the legitimacy of fear about what kind of momentum could be generated by repealing any part of the human rights ordinance...
...Initially upheld by a civil rights department hearing examiner, the claim was thrown out of court by a municipal judge a few days after the TV debate...
...Longtime councilman Victor Tedesco, known for keeping an ear to the ground in blue-collar wards, joined Mrs...
...He stressed in particular the Big Brother case, in which a Minneapolis homosexual brought a complaint against Big Brothers under that city's human rights law (similar to St., Paul's), alleging his civil rights had been violated because the organization had made his affectional preference known to mothers of prospective little brothers...
...By this assumption, Citizens for Human Rights workers had every reason to be confident of victory, as indeed they were...
...The notion that such latent barbarism is widespread among the masses of people is an important part of the enlightenment theory of politics, since it justifies the expectation that people should fall in behind those who know better, such as elected officials or clergymen...
...This precise point was made over and over again in letters to die editor and, at die most local level, in the bulletin of a large Catholic parish in the Summit-University area, where two parishcouncil members registered their disagreement with an anti-repeal editorial signed by the pastor and his assistant...
...Since state laws were changed a few years ago to permit party designation on local election ballots, not a single Republican has been elected to city office...
...Labor leaders, without whose endorsement few people get elected in St...
...But opposition leaders began casting about for the reason why...
...Inevitably, however, they were outflanked by a splinter group of gay rights activists who (predictably) accused the larger organization of secretly plotting to sabotage the human rights ordinance, and who, owing to perverse notions of equal time, got more media attention than they deserved...
...Early in the campaign Archbishop, JAMES D. tracy is a member of the history department of the University of Minnesota...
...In a 55 percent turn-out, the highest for a local election in ten years, voters struck down the affectional preference clause by 54,000 to 31,000, not quite Miami's three-to-one margin, but amply decisive...
...Paul's black population...
...Lacking all but token opposition, Mayor George Latimer devoted his campaign energy to an anti-repeal coalition, St...
...Momentum is of many kinds...
...having done so,, one expects the public, as a matter of course, to fall in line behind "enlightened" opinion...
...Posed in these terms, die problem admits of no easy solution...
...Angwin his victory...
...For its hour-long debate on the subject, a local TV station chose as spokesman for the human rights ordinance a second-term State Senator from Minneapolis, Allan Spear, who "came out" as a homosexual during his first term...
...Angwin had said he was prompted to launch his campaign by the realization that, under present law, he would not have the right to refuse to hire a homosexual for his church school...
...But Mr...
...One carefully explains what a law intends and what it does not, and displays the views of those best qualified to speak on the issue...
...Paul Citizens for Human Rights were led by homosexuals who fully believed in the politics of coalition and practiced it with considerable skill...
...Butler in supporting repeal...
...Angwin's supporters found in the results nothing that required explanation ('You can't beat God's Word,' his assistant pastor said...
...But matters can only be made more difficult than they are if liberals persist in die belief that the public need only be "educated" to come round to die proper opinion...
...tiled the Minhen ex-mayor Charles Stenvig stunned incumbent DFLer Albert Hofstede and just about everybody else...
...One is left with the conclusion that some 30,000 St...
...the purpose of this change was obscure to everyone, but, being attached to the main proposal, it passed nonetheless...
...But gay rights literature is replete with examples of men and women who did not discover a new sexual orientation within themselves until well into maturity...
...Rosalie Butler, who had been repudiated by the DFL because of her somewhat obstreperous campaign against pornography and nude dancing, but who ran, successfully, as an independent...
...Angwin's initiative was a fear that repeal —whatever the intentions of its backers—might be an invitation for harassment of law-abiding citizens who happen to be homosexual It seems also that black and Jewish voters were especially dubious about the initiative...
...Paul's leading citizens...
...Intentions are a matter of logic, and can indeed be rendered more dear by a process of education...
...John Roach issued a statement saying that while the Catholic Church could not condone homosexuality, homosexuals should not be denied enjoyment of their civil rights...
...Longn for keeping Is, joined Mrs...
...Paul, one wonders why, as mentioned earlier, there has been in four years only one civil rights complaint deemed worth a full inquiry...
...CAM's newspaper ads carried signatures by six Catholic priests (Auxiliary Bishop Paul Dudley later added his support) and an orthodox rabbi, but most clergy supporting repeal were Baptists, many from the suburbs...
...Their idea of effective campaigning was to stage a dance in a hall next door to the Bryant rally...
...Few middle-sized cities (ca...
...for redress, he wanted Big Brothers to solicit homosexual volunteers by advertising in West-coast gay magazines...
...His "Citizens Alert for Morality" (CAM) raised only $68,000 in a monthlong campaign, $38,000 in a loan taken out in Rev...
...If these accounts be true, there must be some people whose latent homosexual tendencies are subject to influence one way or the other by die prevailing climate of opinion...
...Is it, then, totally unreasonable to wonder whether teachers known to be gay rights activists might, even unintentionally, have some influence on their pupils...
...It is clear, however, that the balloting has struck yet another blow at what one may call the enlightenment theory of politics...
...Unlike next-door Minneapolis, which once had a reputation for anti-Semitism (until Hubert Humphrey became mayor), Minnesota's capital city has never been known for intolerance...
...ON THE ROAD...
...Spear made the usual argument that the ordinance constituted no endorsement of homosexuality, but, with the aid of a liberal Protestant theologian, he also made a different argument which in effect undercut the first point, viz., that even the Bible does not permit one to conclude that homosexual behavior is immoral...
...Stenvig's one issue on this occasion was that Hofstede had designated a "gay pride day" in Minneapolis...
...Magnusson had made his point...
...Mobilization of opinion against repeal seemed far more impressive...
...If civil rights is a delicate fabric, easily torn, so too is die public trust in our institutions which is die underpinning of all political consensus...
...Every political movement in recent years has generated a momentum pointing well beyond the intentions of its most respected leaders...
...Paul another Miami...
...Paul Citizens for Human Rights...
...Conversely, Rev...
...There is no logical connection between striking out the affectional preference clause and discriminating against blacks or Jews...
...There were a few contrary straws in the wind...
...Angwin's spokesman—a lawyer named Magnusson—insisted that the affectional preference clause portended a deep change in our legal traditions...
...For over thirty years the fourth district has been sending liberal Democrats to Congress with thumping majorities, from Eugene McCarthy through Bruce Vento...
...Many groups active in politics work on the assumption that the political process is mainly a matter of educating the voters...
...Others recalled the Minneapolis mayoral election of 1975, when ex-mayor 7 My 1978: 434 that while the homosexuality, oyment of their i any intention le Archdiocesan , and fifteen inthe same effect, ison and large r. nent few people i record against -Labor (DFL) tnbent or DFLost conspicuous 0 had been remewhat obstreind nude dancwndent...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 13
