THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 25, 1996 TAG: 9605240026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 45 lines
By affirming that states cannot put people into classes and discriminate against them, the Supreme Court protects everyone, not only the gays and lesbians most directly affected by this week's court ruling.
A philosophically divergent lot - Anthony M. Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer - joined in the controversial decision. The breadth of that group affirms that certain guarantees of the U.S. Constitution transcend political or philosophical persuasion.
``(I)f the constitutional conception of `equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate government interest,'' wrote Justice Kennedy for the majority, quoting from an earlier court decision.
With its opinion, the Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved provision of the Colorado Constitution. The language, which was endorsed in 1992 by 53 percent of voters, overturned ordinances adopted in Aspen, Boulder and Denver and forbade similar laws elsewhere. Those cities had barred discrimination against gays in housing, employment and public accommodations.
Supporters of the constitutional prohibition argued that such ordinances created ``special rights'' for lesbians and gays. ``The people of Colorado have adopted an entirely reasonable provision which does not even disfavor homosexuals in any substantive sense, but merely denies them preferential treatment,'' said Justice Antonin Scalia in a three-judge dissent.
The majority, however, held that there was nothing ``special'' or preferential in the protections withheld by the Colorado amendment. ``These are protections against exclusion from an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civil life in a free society,'' wrote Kennedy.
Scalia complains that the court has interjected itself into a Kulturkampf, or cultural war. Not so. The ruling does not necessarily portend one outcome or another on matters of grave concern in the debate on homosexuality: whether gays may serve in the military or form marriages, for instance.
What the court has said simply is that certain basic rights are not to be toyed with. In America, this Kulturkampf or any other will have to be won or lost without benefit of voter-sanctioned discrimination. by CNB