THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 21, 1996 TAG: 9605210334
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
In a breakthrough victory for gay rights, the Supreme Court on Monday struck down a sweeping Colorado constitutional amendment that would have denied legal protections to homosexuals.
Splitting 6-3, the justices said the voter-approved amendment improperly stemmed from animosity toward homosexuals, singling out gays and lesbians ``not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else.''
The decision, issued in the face of a blistering dissent and coming 10 years after the court upheld state laws making sodomy a crime, will strengthen gay-rights struggles throughout the nation.
It bolsters the crusade of gays and lesbians for protected status, which has produced laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation in nine states, the District of Columbia and 157 cities and counties.
Moreover, the ruling provides some legal ammunition for gay activists seeking to permit homosexual marriages and invalidate the Clinton administration's policy on gays in the military.
The ruling also dampens a conservative campaign to pass state anti-gay laws or amendments, and to omit sexual orientation from existing anti-discrimination statutes.
``This is a major setback for the radical right, a crowning blow to their efforts to repeal laws that protect gays from discrimination,''said William Rubinstein, former director of the lesbian and gay rights project of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Although the Clinton administration chose to stay out of the case, White House spokesman Mike McCurry said President Clinton ``believes today's decision was appropriate.'' The Colorado amendment was ``inconsistent with our common values,'' McCurry said.
But to Will Perkins, a Colorado Springs car dealer, ``This is a sad day for America. This can be a step toward same-sex marriages, giving minority status to homosexuals . . . and allowing teachers to advocate homosexuality in the public schools.''
Perkins, chairman of Colorado for Family Values, which spearheaded the successful drive for the anti-gay amendment, said his group would consider options ranging from promoting a narrower amendment to urging the impeachment of the six justices who formed the majority.
The ruling produced sharply polarized reactions on Capitol Hill and across the country reflecting the extent to which the subject matter remains an undecided issue socially and politically even after the court took one important step toward resolving the legal debate over gay rights.
Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who opposed the amendment but defended it in court, said the court had given the ``right answer'' and that he would ``do everything I can to get Colorado to accept that answer.''
``Let's stop litigating and legislating and see if we can bring people together,'' he said.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote for Monday's majority, said Colorado had no legitimate reason, no rational basis, for precluding all legislative, executive or judicial action designed to protect people based on their sexual orientation.
The majority opinion and the angry dissent written for the minority by Justice Antonin Scalia, while revealing little about how the court would rule on gay marriages, the military's prohibition on homosexuals and other looming gay rights issues, now become important entries in the continuing and often divisive debate over gay rights.
``A state cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws,'' Kennedy said. He said the Colorado provision, known as Amendment 2, had placed the state's homosexuals ``in a solitary class,'' singling them out in violation of the Constitution's equal protection guarantee for a legal disability so sweeping as to be inexplicable on any basis other than ``animus.''
``It is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort,'' Kennedy said in an opinion joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Scalia filed an equally forceful dissent, accusing the majority of taking sides in ``the culture wars'' through ``an act not of judicial judgment but of political will.'' The process by which Colorado's voters adopted Amendment 2, by 53 percent to 47 percent in 1992, was the ``most democratic of procedures.''
While no other state has such a provision in its constitution, petitions to place a similar referendum on the November ballot are now circulating in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Voters in Maine defeated a similar proposal last year. Local governments in Florida, Oregon and Ohio have taken the same approach through local ordinances. A federal appeals court last year upheld a Cincinnati ordinance that stripped homosexuals of civil rights.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia's dissenting opinion, accusing the majority of ``inventing a novel and extravagant constitutional doctrine to take the victory away from traditional forces.'' He said the Colorado amendment was an ``eminently reasonable'' means of preventing the ``piecemeal deterioration of the sexual morality favored by a majority of Coloradans.'' MEMO: Knight-Ridder News Service, the Washington Post and The New York Times
contributed to this report.PILOT ONLINE: The full texts of the Supreme
Court's opinion and dissent in the gay-rights case, plus other decisions
from Monday, are available on the News page at
http://www.pilotonline.com/
ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
AP
GAY RIGHTS BY STATE
SOURCE: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: GAYS HOMOSEXUALS U.S. SUPREME COURT
COLORADO by CNB