Date: Wed, 05 Feb 97 18:50:24 EST
From: "Phil Attey" <phil.attey@mail.hrcusa.org>
Subject: President's Call To "Repair The Breach" Falls Short
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     NEWS from the
     Human Rights Campaign
     
     1101 14th Street NW
     Washington, DC 20005
     email:  communications@hrcusa.org
     <A HREF="http://www.hrcusa.org">
     WWW:    http://www.hrcusa.org
     </A>
     ________________________________________________________
     
     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
     Wednesday, Feb. 5, 1997
                                     
          PRESIDENT'S CALL TO "REPAIR THE BREACH" FALLS SHORT
     
              Watts' Response Includes Anti-Gay Innuendo
                                     
     WASHINGTON -- The Human Rights Campaign offered a mixed reaction
     today to the State of the Union address, commending the
     president's call to end America's divisions while lamenting a
     missed opportunity to address our nation's rift over the issue of
     sexual orientation.
     
          By contrast, Rep. J.C. Watts exploited an opportunity in the
     GOP response by seeming to justify discrimination against gay
     people.
     
          "The president deserves credit for calling on all Americans
     to unite across our divisions and be repairers of the breach,"
     said HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch. "I only regret that
     he missed a perfect opportunity to help repair America's breach
     with its lesbian and gay citizens."
     
          Birch also called upon Watts, R-Okla., to clarify a passage
     of his speech in which he seemed to be justifying faith-based
     discrimination against gay people.  After calling for an end to
     racial discrimination and asserting that "America must be a place
     where we all ... feel a part of the American dream," he said:   
     "It does not happen by trying to turn rich against poor or by
     using the politics of fear.  It does not happen by reducing our
     values to the lowest common denominator, and, friends, it does
     not happen by asking Americans to accept what's immoral and
     what's wrong in the name of tolerance."
     
          "I am concerned that Congressman Watts may have made a
     thinly veiled appeal to the very politics of fear which he had
     deplored in his previous sentence," Birch said. "Like other
     faith-based differences, sincere religious disagreements over the
     issue of sexual orientation are not a valid reason for unfair
     discrimination."
     
          No federal law protects Americans from discrimination based
     on sexual orientation. So while it is illegal to fire good
     employees from their jobs just because of their religion, it is
     legal in 41 states to fire them because of their actual or
     perceived sexual orientation. HRC and other civil rights
     organizations are advancing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act
     in Congress to change that.
     
          "The president spoke eloquently about what separates America
     from nations where religious strife festers into violence and
     terror," Birch continued. "I only wish he had taken the
     opportunity to remind the nation that, whatever our deeply felt
     beliefs may be about sexual orientation, gay people ought no
     longer be excluded from the basic non-discrimination protections
     which most Americans take for granted."
     
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