Tuesday, June 4, 1996
to: The San Mateo County Times
Editorial Page Editor John Horgan
1080 S. Amphlett Blvd.,
San Mateo, CA 94402-1802

THE POLITICALLY SAVVY reader can easily see where Charlie Reese is headed in his June 4 column, "It depends on how we define 'rights'." Reese begins by stating that "all laws about discrimination" are unwise. He next amends this, making exception for Black Americans only, who have suffered systematically under the law and likely would continue to be denied their rights on racial grounds. Reese has already undercut the laws prohibiting "separate but equal" rest-rooms by making them compensatory. We further understand that Native Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, women, sexual minorities and religious minorities (to name a few) have not yet met the Reese "suffering criterion", aren't subject to real injustice now, and aren't deserving of laws affirming their right to equal protection under the law. Reese won't go the extra mile.

Citing his right to refuse to have anything to do with people he doesn't like, he points out you can't have rights which violate rights, and proceeds to glorify the blatantly discriminatory Colorado anti-gay amendment. Any law which says gays and lesbians have the same rights as everybody else, says Reese, defines a "privileged class".

Reese claims that a "right" to press for legal sanctions against gays is both a democratic right, and a state's right. But, he argues, the minority legal action to defend against those same sanctions would be merely intrusive of a "policy matter" properly belonging to state legislators, "rights" having nothing to do with it.

We've all heard this before. Are you for or against civil rights, gun control, abortion, gay marriage, or smoking? Reese, telling the courts to butt out, has really said that all rights, associated with either side of such issues, reduce down to a matter of legislative discretion. Having obliterated any means of rationally justifying either side of a "gay rights" debate, Reese concludes with a bigot's toolkit of untruths and falsehoods:

1. "Homosexuals today have exactly the same rights as heterosexuals in every state in the union."
2. "What homosexuals want is privileged status ... privileges heterosexuals don't have."
3. "No one has a right to have his marriage recognized as a legal contract by the state."

Reese is the one doing the creative "defining" here, to bar homosexuals from access to the same rights as everybody else. If heterosexuals really only had "exactly the same rights" as gays in every state in the union, or if your mom and dad didn't really have a right to have their marriage recognized as a legal contract, I'd say we're all in a lot more trouble that we thought. Gay and lesbian Americans want equal access and protection under the law -- no less, and no more.

/s/ Alex Forbes June 4, 1996