"A Latino activist (requesting to be identified as `Desidario Fernandez') believes there was no intentional plot to exclude people of color, but racism certainly pervaded the [gay activist strategy] meetings on a subtle, potent level... Despite EPOC's [the leading militant gay organization opposing Amendment 2]] ability to rope in outside [financial] support, within the gay/lesbian community the perception of subtle and overt discrimination was a concern for many people. It was a problem dating back to the original Denver ["gay rights"] Ordinance campaign. `Fernandez' notes that there were `no people of color' and `few were involved in the day-to-day operations' of the campaign.

"Several people of diversity approached EPOC in 1991 at a general meeting, among them Carmelo Flores... She was one of many who wanted to get involved but stated, `We could see there was a lot of insensitivity in terms of racism.' Flores believes, `...these people were not willing to see it.'

"...By never coming to grips with the scourge of perceived racism in the community, and their own exclusionary practices [EPOC's] leadership allowed deep chasms of distrust to develop" ("EPOC: A Look at the Campaign and the Organization," December, 1992, pp. 16-18).

And again we see gay activists' conscious duplicity. While gay militants appeal on the one hand to Democratic liberals on the grounds that they are "oppressed" and need government protection, they attempt at the same time to gain a foothold in the more conservative Republican party. Their rationale? To quote David LaFontaine and Patrick Ward, writing in Denver's gay monthly tabloid, Quest (June 1991, pp. 25, 30):

"We believe that the allegiance between gay people and the Republican party is a very natural expression of a shared desire to prevent government intrusion into the private lives of American citizens... The Republican party at its best has always been a champion of individual rights and liberties... If we, as gay people, can only cast aside foolish preconceptions of what it means to be a Republican, and give suitable Republican candidates our full support, we stand to gain an unprecedented degree of power and influence."

Summing up, despite their manifestly two-faced "civil rights" claim, gays as a class simply do not warrant protected class status under the above three historically established civil rights criteria. Protected class status is a privilege which, in certain circumstances, may even be forfeited by legitimate minority groups which as a class achieve income, educational or cultural parity or superiority to the general population. (Qualified oriental American students often now get the "short end" of "affirmative action" allotments in college scholarships and other minority benefits despite their unquestioned ethnicity -- because their demonstrated academic superiority is perceived as giving them an edge over less-educationally advantaged minority groups.)

Gays as a class would actually need to (1) greatly reduce their mean income, educational and cultural stature, (2) discover some other basis than mere shared sexual behavior or alleged "orientation" and (3) relinquish the evident political power base gays have achieved to date in order to begin qualifying for protected class status by traditional civil rights criteria. Somehow, we suspect that gay activists have no plans to make such concessions in order to achieve legitimate protected class status.

As we have seen, there is little substance to the surface reasons gay activists give for promoting legislation granting protected class status to homosexual orientations, i.e., that gays are subject to frequent discrimination, "bashing" and other abuse. All civilized people abhor violence and abuse of any sort generated by bigotry and hatred. Numerous criminal laws are now in force to administer appropriate punishment for assault and other violent crimes, as well as for various other forms of abuse and intimidation against individuals. Special gay advantage laws, including "hate crimes" laws, would add nothing to the protections already available to gays.

"Time" magazine recently reported on a study by the FBI "based on information supplied by law-enforcement agencies in 32 states," [which] found that 4,558 hate-crime incidents were reported in 1991. Racial bias motivated 6 of 10 offenses reported, religious bias 2 of 10, ethnic and sexual orientation bias 1 of 10 each." The article continued: "According to the FBI's classifications, blacks are the targets of most bias attacks (36%), followed by whites (19%) and Jews (17%)" (January 18, 1993, p. 22). The City of Colorado Springs, often referred to these days by the media and gay activists as the "hate capital of the nation" since the State of Colorado passed Amendment 2 (which originated in Colorado Springs), banning protected class status for gays, recorded under the federal Hate Crimes Statistics Act a total of two "hate crimes" against gays in all of 1992 -- during which the Amendment 2 battle raged for the entire year -- both alleged, unproved instances of name-calling.

Considering that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's own figures credit "verbal abuse or threats" as being the source of nearly 80% of these "hate crimes" statistics, these figures hardly argue for a desperate need for protection of gay people above and beyond that afforded every citizen by laws governing assault and other crimes against persons.

And the fact that individual gays may experience society's rejection based on their behavior does not compel society to award all gays protected class status. The writer of this paper, a Caucasian male, was assaulted and robbed by ethnically different individuals several times during eight years of residence in New York City's ghettos. However, the fact that I, and other individuals like me, suffered "bashing" under like circumstances, and that, according the study just cited, nearly twice as many Caucasians are victims of "hate crimes" as gays, simply do not add up to sufficient grounds to argue that Caucasian males should be awarded protected class and special rights and benefits.

Again, clear away the spurious "civil rights" smoke screen behind which gay extremists have advanced their agenda and you find an avaricious special interest group, cleverly and duplicitously masquerading as a "disadvantaged minority," so as to garner special advantages and entitlements -- and protection from all criticism by using government to silence its critics.