Colorado leaders already are choosing sides over a ballot initiative that would ban civil rights protections designed specifically for homosexuals.
University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, who calls homosexuality "an abomination of almighty God," and former U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong, R-Colo., have sided with the group backing the initiative.The opposition's honorary chairman is Gov. Roy Romer, who says he will not "allow Colorado to become a place where prejudice has a home."
Colorado for Family Values, a group formed to "stop gay activists before they trample on your freedoms," last week received word that its initiative will appear on the November ballot as Amendment No. 2. The group gathered 16,000 more signatures than needed.
The Equal Protection Campaign, which opposes the initiative, calls the measure an attempt at "legalized discrimination."
The measure would prohibit the state from passing any civil rights laws protecting gays, lesbians or bisexuals. If approved, Amendment 2 would void already existing laws in Denver, Boulder and Aspen that ban anti-gay bias in housing, employment, health and welfare services.
Colorado for Family Values founder Kevin Tebedo said the initiative sprang from its successful campaign against a gay rights measure in Colorado Springs last year. Homosexuals already are protected under the U.S. Constitution and do not need "special rights" that would give them an advantage over others, Tebedo said.
"Primarily the reason we're doing this is that homosexuals in our nation are not an oppressed class," he said. "Homosexuality does not meet any of the civil rights criteria."
Armstrong, a senator from 1978-90, wrote in a fund-raising letter for the initiative that further civil rights protections would "force you and me to give our state's legal blessing to aberrant homosexual behavior and lifestyles."