Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 19:36:45 -0700 Subject: Fighting "Special Rights" Rhetoric FLORIDA CASE COULD BE TURNING POINT IN ESCALATING BATTLE OVER GAY RIGHTS by Paul Danish -- January 12, 1994 Copyright 1994 -- Colorado Daily, Boulder, Colorado Reprinted without permission The gay community got a pop quiz on discrimination in Florida last month, and how it responds may well determine whether the gay-rights movement ultimately succeeds or fails. The issue might seem trivial, but it isn't. It seems that last month, the Late Show Night Club, a bar in New Port Richey, Fla., a town north of St. Petersburg, was sold to buyers who turned it into a gay club. The transformation involved personnel changes: The new management fired four of the bar's female employees - on grounds that they were not gay and wouldn't "fit in." The incident represents an obvious case of sexual discrimination based on sexual orientation, even if the role reversal -- gays discriminating against straights -- gives the case a man-bites-dog twist. However, before the nation's Ditto Heads start singing choruses of "I told you so's," they might want to consid er what Todd Simmons, a leader of the Human Rights Task Force of Florida, a Tampa-based gay rights group, had to say about the dismissals: "Sexual orientation has no bearing on your capacity to mix drinks or serve them. Discrimination is wrong whether it is directed against gays and lesbians or straights." Moreover, Simmons did not stop at denouncing the dismissals. He helped the women find a lawyer. The lawyer, Kay Morgan, intends to file a complaint with the Florida Human Rights Commission. Neither the state of Florida nor the city of New Port Richey has laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but Morgan may be able to base her complaint on plain old sex discrimination. It seems that while the bar fired four female employees on grounds that they were not gay and wouldn't fit in, it kept on two male employees who Morgan indicated were not gay and presumably would also have trouble fitting in. "It's a gender issue," Morgan said. "We cannot have straight women working in this bar, but we can have straight men. It shows a real lack of understanding to think the gay community would think this is OK. If you're against discrimination on one side, you're against discrimination on the other side." The position Simmons and Morgan have taken on this is the principled, moral, and correct one. Whether it represents the prevailing view in the gay community, remains to be seen. I hope it does, because there is a lot more riding on this case than four jobs in a bar. Come November, more than a dozen states are expected to have initiatives on their ballots that, like Colorado's Amendment 2, prohibit passage of gay-rights laws. The success or failure of at least some of those initiatives could well hinge on how the gay community responds to the Late Show Night Club case. Why this is so can be seen in polling done in Colorado following the passage of Amendment 2. The polling shows that while Coloradans overwhelmingly reject the proposition that employers and landlords have a right to discriminate against gays and even support passage of laws to outlaw such practices -- they still favor Amendment 2, which would ban such laws. For instance, according to a poll done last October for The Denver Post by Talmey-Drake Research & Strategy of Boulder, 70 percent of those surveyed disagreed with the statement that "employers should have the right to not hire some one because he or she is a homosexual" and 81 percent disagreed with the statement that "a landlord should have the right to evict a tenant on grounds that he or she is a homo sexual." Earlier surveys found lopsided support for passage of laws banning such discrimination. Yet the poll also found that 58 percent of those polled would vote against the repeal of Amendment 2 if the issue were put on the ballot again. If this strikes you 'as a mind-twisting contradiction, you are not alone, but there is an explanation for it, and it lies in the responses to another question. The survey also asked people if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, "When homosexuals talk about gay rights, what they are really saying is that they want special treatment." Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed agreed. In other words, what the gay rights issue boils down to in the public's mind is whether gays are asking for equal rights or special treatment, and at present, the prevailing view is that the answer is special treatment. (To be sure, public opinion in Colorado does not necessarily reflect public opinion nationally, but when it comes to social issues, Coloradans' views and those of the country tend to track closely. On gay issues, Coloradans responses tend to be more tolerant than the country at large, Amendment 2 or no.) I suspect how the gay community responds to the Late Show Night Club case will have a major and possibly decisive impact on how the public continues to view the equal rights vs. special treatment ques tion. If gays choose to side with the bar, those who hold the special treatment view will feel they have been confirmed in their belief. But if the prevailing view among gays is that of Simmons and Morgan, that discrimination is wrong regardless of who is doing the discriminating, then those in the special treatment camp, the intellectually honest ones anyway, will have to reconsider their position. If this seems to be attaching too much importance to a labor dispute in a bar, it might be worth recalling that the modem ,gay rights movement began with another dispute in a bar, which resulted in the Stonewall riots 25 years ago. The Late Show Night Club affair could be just as defining an event.