Hi. Welcome tonight. My name is Adam Dick I'm with the Texas Libertarians one of the four co-sponsors of this presentation tonight. Gene Cisewski [sha SEV ski] is a political activist living in Washington DC right now where he is President and CEO of the Monticello Group, which is a political communications firm, as well as Chairperson of the Liberty Council, which supports local and statewide races for candidates with a libertarian viewpoint on political issues.
Gene has a long history in politics. He began his political career as a city chairperson for a bicentennial celebration in 1976 and has gone on from there to be Chairman of the Young Republicans of Wisconsin, vice chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party and, after switching parties in 1992 in the presidential election, national coordinator of the Libertarian Party Council of State Chairs.
But before we introduce Gene Cisewski, I wanted to tell you a few things about some of the groups that are sponsoring this event. Two of the sponsors are from the Texas Union Committees - The Texas Union Distinguished Speakers Committee and the Texas Union CO-Sponsorship Review Board. Both of these groups have meetings each Wednesday and do seek individuals on campus to be involved in helping to pick speakers in the future to come to the University of Texas. Additionally, this lecture is sponsored by the Texas Libertarians, which is a non-partisan political group on the campus. Next Wednesday, we'll have our regular meeting at 8 pm in this building at Batts 202 in which Paul Velte, the President of Texans for Firearms Rights, will be speaking to the group and fielding questions dealing with the Second Amendment.
Additionally, the final co-sponsor of this speech is the University Review Society, which publishes the University Review, the independent newspaper at the University of Texas campus. The University Review is bringing a major speaker to campus next week to speak on Wednesday at 1 PM in the UTC just down the road, room 4.124. The speaker is David Horowitz who was a radical activist in the 1960's, who has had a political change of heart in the last few years and is still practicing his radicalism, but in a dramatically different direction.
I met Gene Cisewski in the 1992 presidential campaign when I was a personal aide to the Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Andre Marrou. When we met Gene, he was living in Madison, Wisconsin. We went out to lunch with him and I was just impressed with how nice of a man he was and a great conversation we had. It was a little unusual because working on a political campaign, you always end up talking to people who you meet and spend time with - the local campaign supporters - talking about political issues exclusively. But with Gene it was a lot different. We could just sit down and have a normal conversation .. talking about different things in the area of the city. It was a great relief. Since then, I have kept in contact with Mr. Cisewski and been impressed with all of the activities he's done, including activities on behalf of the gay community including fund raising for the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League that helps gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth in the United States - individuals who definitely need a lot of help given the pressures which are inordinately placed on such individuals in our society. It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you our guest lecturer for this distinguished speakers
Thank you for inviting me and thank you for having me here to speak with you today about some very important topics. I guess one of the things, if we look for any point I am going to try to get to this evening, is how can we have a more peaceful and more civil society. Growing up I didn't have a lot of the traditional experience that one has in looking at the differences that are brought about by issues such as race, religion, ethnicity because I grew up in a family where, between adoptions and marriages, there never was a time when I didn't have cousins, nephews, nieces - somebody who was Native American, who was African American, who was Korean American. My experience was just that we were all people. And we all had differences, but they were incidental because we were family, we were friends and we got along.
Then about 25 years ago when I was just a boy living in Northern Minnesota, our family was camping in the national forests north of Cass Lake just outside the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. I, being the explorer that I am who loves the outdoors and the wilderness, set off to go on a hike on the some of the trails through the beautiful forests. As I walked along, there was a jog where the trail broke and I had to go down a dusty gravel road to reconnect with the trail. Suddenly a car pulled up behind me and the driver offered me a ride. Well here I am probably 20 miles from the nearest city so that was odd in itself. As I was hiking, a ride was not on my agenda at that particular point so I politely declined and continued on my way.
But at that point I could feel a little adrenaline, a little rush, because in the car there were 5 or 6 Native Americans. Honestly, today I couldn't tell you how many, other than it was a car full of adults - young adults, but they were considerably older, taller and bigger than I. The car got started up and came to a halt behind me again as it was kicking up the dust and kickingup the gravel. Everybody leapt out of the car and right away, questioning me, "Where are you from? Are you too good to get in the car with Indians?" were the questions asked of me. And before I could say anything -- I was more stunned with the surprise with what was happening -- a fist hit me in the face. From that point I was bludgeoned, I was beaten, I was held against a tree with a knife in my throat. The last thing I recall was a boot that tore into my face.
So I can understand what happens -- to some extent -- when you happen to be the wrong color or the wrong person at the wrong time. I used to kid it was just plain tough being a "Polack" 25 years ago in a very heavily Scandinavian community. But that incident on the hiking trail was something beyond hurtful words. It was actually an act of violence that caused blood and pain in my life.
In sharing that with you, I bring this picture to life and I will occasionally draw parallels and contrasts with America's struggle for racial equality as we talk about gays, lesbians and the state. They are not exactly the same thing, but there are a lot of important parallels that we have to look at and that we can draw upon as we look to create a more peaceful society for ourselves.
Now the first thing, I am very excited about being here and in this room because my understanding of how this event was promoted and what is taking place tonight. This is probably one of the more diverse mixtures of people coming together. Generally, when we are discussing these topics we do so in a vacuum in where either we are riling the righteous right on one side to call to action or we are stirring the liberal victims on the other hand.
Whatever we're doing, we're calling people to arms to come to some head -- to fight a political battle or fight something else.
I believe in this room tonight we have a mixture of people who come from all the different perspectives where these issues could fall and so let us take some counsel together tonight. When we differ from one another, let's identify what it is and why we differ and what the specific issues are where we differ. Let's just discover what the points at issue are. And if we remain open to listening -- remembering in communication that our ears are at least as important as our mouths -- then we will find that we are not so far apart after all. We will find that the points on which we differ are small and the points on which we agree are many. If we have some patience, and especially some candor, and a desire to achieve a more peaceful community for everybody, we will come together.
I will look for common ground and I am going to look for a principle -- no matter where you are in your perspective of gay and lesbian issues when it comes to public policy matters -- that can we find agreement. What common principle can we find that every faith can embrace - that even people who do not accept a God but recognize that there is a good moral code for human beings - can embrace? What is one fundamental principle that we can all probably together embrace here?
I would suggest that if we look at a principle - the principle that says "I reject the initiation of force or fraud" - then I think we can all come to agreement on that point. I think everyone in the room can say the initiation of force against another human being - and the word "initiation" is important because after all there are times when self-defense may justify an act of violence to protect oneself - the initiation of force is inherently wrong.
If we can all agree on that point, then we will do very well in coming together and perhaps toning down the rhetoric to find real solutions to the real problems facing us today. So with that principle at the root of all my ideas, I am going to address some very specific issues that concern the lesbian and gay community. I will address these issues from this principle of eliminating the initiation of force in how we handle the situation.
Just to be clear, I want to make some definitions when I speak - when we talk about gays, lesbians, the state. I think gays and lesbians - everybody pretty well understands those terms. When I refer to the state, I am not talking about the states of Texas or Louisiana. I am talking about government - the entity that is empowered to tell people what to do -- and if the people don't comply, they can use the force of guns and governments to make people behave a certain way. That is what I refer to the state - that is you local, state and federal government.
In the course of my discussion tonight, I am also going to ask us to separate the public sphere and the private sphere at certain times. The public sphere is what I define as the state - the government. The private sphere is you as an individual, it's non-profit organizations, it's companies and corporations, it's everything non government - it's everything one might describe as civil society.
And then also as we get into some of the very specific issues, I'll want to separate the issues of crime and vice because often people don't see that there is, in fact, a difference between the two. Crime will be an act where someone initiates force or fraud against their neighbor. Vice is where people might do something stupid or distasteful, or something that other people frown upon, but you are not doing it against someone else. So we'll make a distinction there to separate crime and vice, though when you look at the penal code here in Texas -- and many other places -- they are merged into one and called criminal. I am going to ask that for this evening, let's consider separating those two. To do this and to look at some way in which we can come together, we have to recognize the complexity and the enormity of the issues at hand.
Too much of a war of words has been inspired - a war where rhetoric and sound bites are the arms as people have drawn harsh sides against one another. We'll take on the extremes of the left and the right so to speak. And what we fail to do when we break issues down to a war of sound bites and ignore the complexity of issues, we do not appreciate that our words and our ideas have consequences. So to those of you that are gay and lesbian, or bisexual or transgender, I'll ask you -- at least for an hour or so this evening -- to understand, not necessarily to embrace, but at least try to understand the depth and complex moral foundations and the reasons that Christians, conservatives, and all those from the Judeo-Christian tradition have - why these folks embrace a pro-life position, an anti-homosexual position. Try to have some understanding for the depth of where those positions come from.
I can draw a parallel to this that might be helpful is I'm a very fortunate person. I got to be more than 30 years old before I lost a single one of my four grandparents. The grandparents on my mother's side - Howard and Doris Monty - were fundamentalist Christians. They embraced the faith through the Assembly of God and they even sent money to Jimmy and Tammy Faye when they believed they still had integrity. And these are good people. They had a hard time understanding some of the things they saw in the modern world, but they were not bad people. They were not mean spirited people and they would not be out to hurt anybody. Likewise, Tony and Stella Cisewski on my father's side were good people, but they come from a heavily ethnic Catholic tradition. While they were very open to people and tolerated differences in their lives, they had again a strong Judeo-Christian tradition. They were not evil. So I am asking you to consider that - that gays and lesbians have to look at the traditions that come from most of the people on the right. I am not talking about the rhetoric that comes from a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson because some of these people are certainly questionable and I may question some individuals motives in how they inflame the fires of the faithful on these issues. But when it comes down to it, the bulk of the individuals who embrace the Judeo-Christian ethic are not out to hurt gays and lesbians. We have to understand that if we are going to find some peaceful resolution.
I've also grown weary of listening to the intolerance that comes out of the politically correct community - the elite gay activists who are based in Washington D.C. I find that really, when you get down to it, they love going to the White House for cocktail parties. The rabid partisanship that comes out of the underlings in Bill Clinton's White House - people who show no respect for the deeply held religious beliefs for the Judeo-Christian tradition reduce all of the faithful to a term like "fanatics." And I believe that this behavior - these words - again have consequences and these are partially responsible for the backlash we're seeing in some cases with hate crimes.
Now that being said, to those of you who embrace the Christian tradition - the conservatives in this room- I also ask you to recognize that the different views you hear coming from the lesbian and gay communities are equally based on sincere convictions. There are many in this room who just have to stand stunned and awed when they hear the vicious, mean-spirited rhetoric that comes out of some Christian leaders -- yet a striking silence on your part when acts of violence are perpetrated in the name of God against lesbian and gay individuals - like the famous Jenny Jones murder case where a young man gasped his last breaths as he felt bullets tearing though his flash . . . when his only crime was uttering a statement - to speak. And so I have to ask that those of you from that tradition recognize and respect the other side.
But then again this brings me back to the left again. And as we especially talk about those who embrace political correctness, understand this one basic premise -- and I think it has been expressed very well by scholar and one the most fun lesbians on the speaking circuit -- Camille Paglia. She says the more you suppress speech, the more you drive issues to the right. When the gay elite put down those individuals within your own - our own- communities who do not embrace your world view and liberal politics with terms like "self-hating faggot" you lose your moral high ground. This hurts the entire argument and by attacking people who merely disagree, in the long run, you are setting yourself up for more violence and more loss because people do not like to be abused.
Free speech and free inquiry is absolutely essential if we're going to get anywhere on these topics. One of the best examples to illustrate this point is in the segregation field -- when forced bussing was determined to be the key. This , we were told, would bring the races together by forcing school children to be bused for hours to be different schools - and move them around and mix them up - yet it really hasn't gotten us anywhere. But once the policy was put into effect, the elites who put this policy into effect told everybody to "shut up." "Don't revisit this issue." "We are not going to talk about it again." These elites, most of whom who already have their own children in private school, were raising these issues and telling the working class and the lower classes in this country they were going to solve their problems and here is what they did -- yet they exempted themselves from the very system they forced onto others. When something like that happens, what you do is you stifle the debate. You stifle the conversation. You move it to the right.
So who becomes the champion of the working people? Who is the only one who will talk about issues like this? Patrick Buchanan and people of that ilk. And so it is important that no matter how unsavory some of the topics might be, we have make sure there is a complete airing. We have to open these topics up and we have to dissect and examine every unsavory idea -- but most importantly we have to make sure these ideas come to the surface. We cannot suppress them, because when you suppress those ideas you end up with an opposite and equal reaction that strikes out in violence against people. So that kind of lays the foundation of where I am going to go on to specific issues for lesbians, gays and the state tonight. Essentially, I want to speak about coming at these issues from a principle of non-initiation of force. I want to, at least for tonight, separate the issues of the public sector versus the private sector. And I want to make sure we open up the discussion and inject some new ideas into the debate, because right now we have some hard and fast arguments on the left and the right and there doesn't seem to be any movement. We're in a battle for political power and as the process wages, the people are the ones being hurt.
So now let us examine a number of specific issues. Coming into Austin this week, obviously hate crimes legislation is a key issue that is hot on a lot of folks' minds - the march last weekend, the people appearing before the Legislature talking about hate crimes.
I guess I'd have to say as a kid - I mean I'm no svelte, little, tiny thing here today - but I have to say the first time I experienced what is routinely called a hate crime today was as a child on the school playground. I was a chubby little kid and fat kids weren't very popular. So I got beat up after school for no other reason than my size. OK. So I've had that kind of experience and I think other people in the room have gone through some sort of experience where an act of violence was committed against them for nothing they did, nothing that was provoked - no other reason than somebody didn't like the way you looked and that was enough to cause an act of violence.
What I say is we have to stop the violence in this country. We're outrageously violent . . . and you can't use guns as an excuse. The most armed civilization in the free world today is Switzerland where virtually every household has some sort of weapon - most of them automatic. Yet you don't see the level of violence in Switzerland you see in our society today. So we have to look at what is causing this and part of that is we're forming camps.
We're becoming groupthink people. We're identifying ourselves not as individuals but as parts of groups - warring factions which escalate in the political arena and then move things on into where we see things happening in the streets. And so I say to you it should not matter if someone is beating the pulp out of my late Grandmother because they want to steal her Social Security check or if they are beating the pulp out of me because they think, or they know, I am a gay man. Those are not issues that should be concerned.
Look at the difficulty juries have today. It maybe cliché, but you don't have to look much farther than the multiple O.J. Simpson trials to see the challenges jurors have when they go to trial. So now, through hate crimes laws, we want to say we want to dissect the motive? I'm saying no - no specific motive should be isolated to say this group of people or that group of people are more precious to us. We have to say all humans are precious and any act of violence is cause for society to act swiftly and severely to punish the person who perpetrates it.
We have to end the violence. But we won't do that, I am firmly convinced, when we say it's going to be worse for you if you pick on somebody of color, somebody who's gay, somebody based on ethnicity. And from what I can see from this statute being proposed in Texas today, nobody is putting fat people in there for all the little kids being beat up on the playground. But I'm saying it shouldn't matter. We should be anti-violence period. Any act of violence has to be punished swiftly and severely and it shouldn't matter who the person is who is the victim. It should matter that we deal with the perpetrator. And as an aside, I don't think it's my responsibility to rehabilitate, I think it's time to punish violent criminals. That is my main premise - the initiation of force is wrong, it doesn't matter why, the mere fact you had a motive is enough. I say that to distinguish and separate the truly insane in society who really don't know what they may be doing when something happens - the case of somebody who may be so severely mentally retarded, there may be no concept of life and death. But those who knowingly commit an act of violence have to be dealt with and it doesn't matter what their motive is. The fact that they had a motive is bad enough.
The Texas Triangle reported last week about hate crimes that are being reported. Now, for one thing, in the two largest jurisdictions - San Francisco and New York, which have been tracking these issues for some time -- the actual number of reported cases last year went down from the previous year. In other jurisdictions, they're just getting up and reporting these things so the numbers aren't consistent and it's hard to draw conclusions from the statistics yet.
But one shocking statistic jumped out. While the activists are shouting "our number one priority has to be the hate crimes," the number of hate crimes committed by strangers, in other words non-domestic violence and non friend-on-friend and partner-on-partner violence, but the non-familiar violence with strangers committing acts of violence rose from 5% to 19% of the total hate crimes committed. What shocks me is why are we making our number one priority the 19% and we're not discussing the 81% of the acts of the violence being committed within the gay community by the friends, family, lovers and partners of the victims? It would seem to me if we could eliminate 81% of the violence, we'd have a better priority at the top of our list. But again there is no excuse for the violence so I reject the notion personally that we should segregate how we treat people.
Now before the right gets too smug in hearing a gay male say this, you have an obligation to help here in the issue too because the reason for the call for hate crimes comes from bad enforcement of the laws. Historically in racial issues as well as in the case of gays and lesbians, we have had a history of law enforcement officers who chuckle behind the scenes "Wink-wink, yeah we'll pursue this. We don't care it's is just a fag getting beaten up. We're not going to chase this one down."
We have to make sure that we hold every law enforcement official and every court official that administers justice to the standard that every American is guaranteed equal protection under the law. And if and when we find law enforcement officers who will not protect everyone equally in this society, then they should be prosecuted. And the bad cops, or the bad judges, or the bad DA's also have to face the music for their failure to keep the public trust that they have earned in their positions of power and authority. So it is important that we look at both sides of these and that we understand both sides because violence has to come down and we have to see an equal respect out of all the communities for all the victims of acts of violence.
Now there is another area. We get into talking about discrimination and sometimes that is a tough issue to understand when we talk about what is discrimination. Everyone one of us in this room is discriminating. What do some do when coming to a new city? You pick up the Austin Chronicle when you are here and you open up to the personal section and you take a look at the ads. Let's take a look at the section here - "men seeking men." Let's see if there is any discrimination. For this first one, you have to have height and weight proportional only. Then again here you have to be white male between 23 and 34 and a non-smoker. Here you have to be smooth. Next one: you have to be between 30 and 40, thin and beautiful. Let's see here you have to be white and between 20 and 29. Let's see here's another one - wait, we'll save that one. Now, it's clear as you look through these you find a lot straight-acting, straight types only, straight-acting, disease free bi-male 18 to 30.
A lot of discriminating. While the preponderance, the males obviously are more discriminating in what they seek, it's not the males alone because we can flip to the "women seeking women." Here's a butch who loves cats who wants a knock-out fem between 25 and 30. Here you have to be a soft butch and white. Here you can be any race, but you have to be between 35 and 50. And then there's a woman here in the late 40's wondering if romance has passed her by and I guess that one stands out because it was repeated twice. But the point is here - we all discriminate in our individual lives.
We all have discriminations as individual human beings. So how does this apply to today's issue? This is where I draw the idea that we separate public and private spheres. You as an individual have the right to choose who you want as a mate in your life. You as an individual have the choice and the right to decide with whom you are going to live. Now, that is not always the case. In Madison, Wisconsin while I was living there, the human rights law in housing was so stern that when two women refused to take on a lesbian roommate in their apartment - the person whom would be living with them- they were brought before an appointed tribunal and they were each fined $1500 a piece for not cohabiting with a lesbian. While I don't think that necessarily should have been an issue - and I didn't have respect for the women who looked at who they were going to live with in that sort of light - it's none of the government's business who individuals choose to live with. So there is a situation where you have the public policy interfering with individual policy. We're all discriminating, but we have to separate private sector/public sector here.
Look at our heritage of racism, of the vicious impact of discrimination, and when we add that to today's perverted free market - a marriage of big business and big government that concentrates power and capital unjustly - a sense of victimization is not necessarily unreasonable. It comes from a primal instinct - survival. Right wing abuse of the politics of freedom working in tandem with the left's politics of class warfare creates fear among people.
America's tragically violent record with racial civil rights was government policy. It was our courthouses -- the centers of justice -- that segregated drinking fountains and toilet facilities based on race. It was metro transit, city buses and city ordinances when Rosa Parks was told to go to the back of the bus. It was Jim Crow laws that were denying equal economic opportunity and access to economic advantage. And it was sheriffs and unethical law enforcement people who were setting up chain gangs in the South to provide free slave labor long after Reconstruction to farmers and manufacturers. These were government policies. These were not policies of the private sector. This was law. This was our government mandating. And so again, we have to look private versus public.
This brings us to the military - gays in the military. Where would we put that if we're not initiating force - if we're just looking at how do we come to a more peaceful resolution? I tend to embrace the soundbite that was thrown out by Barry Goldwater. It shouldn't matter whether a soldier is straight - it should matter whether he can shoot straight.
In that case, we take a look at Bill Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell heads-in-the-sand" policy against gays in the military. This policy still sanctions people for who they are, not how they perform. In fact, this policy doesn't get at the core of the very old, original reason gays were not supposed to be in the military. That old excuse was that somebody might blackmail them back in a time when nobody was out of the closet. Somebody might blackmail them and that would jeopardize national security. So if you institute "don't ask don't tell" and you still keep a veil of secrecy on everything, your not solving the real problem. Instead, what we have to take a look at - go back to what Barry Goldwater said - whether they can shoot straight. The best military requires objective qualifications and skills and obedience to orders. The Tailhook scandal and the recent sexual harassment scandals show that the acts of individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, ruin unit cohesion.
At the same time, you have to take a look at this idea a little deeper. The moral underpinnings of why the military should not discriminate based on sexual orientation alone is the same one that makes affirmative action/quota laws for the private sector wrong. If one accepts the argument that qualifications and skills should be the basis for your position in the military, laws forcing private employers to hire people based on some sort of quota structure is hypocritical. How can you at one time make the case that it should be a matter of who can do the job best and then turn around and say that doesn't matter over here? I mean, we have to have some consistency here.
Nobel economist Milton Friedman laid down a moral code for companies. He said that management had a single obligation to stockholders and that was to earn honest profits. When managers deal with anything short of how well employees do their jobs, they violate the fiscal responsibility and trust that has been instilled in them. They violate their responsibility to shareholders. In a real free market, this allows shareholders to sue for corrections in the policy. Even more powerful, they can collect damages from those who enforce such policies that work against their vested interests. When a manger says we're going to make sexual orientation more important than their ability to enter this data or to manufacture this product, then they're violating the stockholders' trust.
Beyond these legal remedies, people with talent and skill will beat small-minded firms in head-on competition every time. As employers are free to choose whom they will hire, who they want working for them, employees have to see their own value. Workers have to have that sense of empowerment that comes from self-worth. Take your talents away from a bad business - deny them having the best skilled labor. Take them to another company or, better yet, start your own business.
Now the spirit of independence, the motivator of all creation, is coming back big time in the United States. Forbes Magazine noted the entrepreneurial spirit of what's called loosely "Generation X." People with talent and brains are moving away from the big institutions of employment - both government and the corporate world. Home-based businesses in the United States are growing at an amazing pace and all over the U.S., gays and lesbians are proving this natural element of the free market.
Like ethnic immigrants earlier in the century, many of us have naturally segregated ourselves into urban areas providing our own sense of community, building our own support structures, building our own businesses. Classic examples - the gay gentrification of the Dupont Circle area in Washington D.C. and the independence of the city of West Hollywood, California -- are communities where the gay community has just naturally flocked. San Francisco, of course, is another example. But there are specific areas all over the country where the community is drawing a strong parallel to what ethnic immigrants did when they first came to the United States - forming a community, getting their feet on the ground and branching out. Getting bigger and creating companies, creating their own opportunity, yet having a social structure they construct of their own.
This is something to consider: If we strictly enforce the idea, the principles of some sort of quota system, then 90% of the employees in all gay bars would have to be straight and half of them should be women. And if we are going try to make everything fit in, and we are going to try to let some central planner put us all in our places, that would have to be the end result ultimately. That shouldn't be a matter for the private sector. The private sector should be allowed to grow and blossom as long as there is no initiation of force against anybody else.
On the other hand, when we talk about government, government is owned by all of us. Our taxes are taken away from us the moment we earn our first dollar in the workplace, the moment we buy a home, the moment we buy anything at the store. The government takes its money from all of the people so all of us own it outright. And that's why it is appropriate for the government to reject any system that favors one group over another. Justice is blind is the statement. It wasn't meant they weren't supposed to hear the specifics of the case. It means it doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, black or white, it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, we're here to talk about justice and that means government is owned by all the people. So that is an important factor again where we separate public and private discrimination.
Do we want affirmative action policies in the personal ads? The personals would sure shrink up, dry up and be gone and America Online would probably lose half of its subscribers instantly.
But let's bounce around with a couple of other situations. And here's a challenge I put forward to the conservative and Christian communities. Recognize and condemn the violence that's being perpetrated against people. Get on board and join with the lesbian and gay communities to repeal the sodomy laws. Start right here in Texas. There's no reason -- if what Newt Gingrich says the Republican revolution meant, what conservatives say when they it say it's time to get government out of everybody's everyday life, it's time to make government smaller and quit intruding on people's lives -- then there's no business for the sodomy laws that are enforced against consenting adults in private.
Now in Texas you have a special case. Here in Texas, from what I seen, they're not enforcing the law, but that "selective enforcement" can be more dangerous and I'll come back to that in just a minute. But in Texas, and in a small handful of states with sodomy laws on the books, they're enforced only against same-sex couples. But if you look around in most of the states with sodomy laws, Virginia included, the real sodomy laws, the original sodomy laws date back to the 18th century and they basically prohibit everything except the missionary position of sex between married couples. So if you really think about it, and think about what's going on in bedrooms all across America, heterosexuals are breaking more sodomy laws than homosexuals by a long shot.
This comes back to selective enforcement. You have laws on the books, even though the Texas sodomy law, for instance, hasn't been enforced. Nobody's been prosecuted in years under the law, even though back in 1993 they raised the fine from $200 to $500. The fact is you have laws that say it's wrong, but then you leave room for corruption in law enforcement, corruption in the judicial system when only certain groups of people are selected for prosecution. You also have other bad situations arising because these laws sit on the books, even if they are not being prosecuted. You can look to the case of Sharon Bottoms in Virginia. Here you had a mother who was raising her son. The father had been convicted of manslaughter, I believe it was, but the important point is that the father had no interest in being a presence. But because Sharon and her life partner were sharing a bed, that was grounds for the court - the highest court in the state - to yank her child from her arms and place her child with the child's grandmother. After all, Sharon Bottoms was committing a felony by carrying on a relationship with another woman. No she wasn't being prosecuted. She wasn't being threatened with fines or jails in this particular instance. But when you can go into the home and the government can yank a child from a parent and decide they know what's best in child rearing, we've got a real problem. And so I want to see the right be true to their words about less government and get on board with the gay and lesbian community and let's get rid of the sodomy laws and let's do it now.
Now, we have another issue that's hot and bouncing all over the country - gay marriage. Let's start with a fundamental question. Why should government regulate marriage? What does a government-issued marriage license mean?
One assumes when you get a driver's license you are going to be tested and prove some competency for going on the road with your car. The same thing is supposedly true when you get a license to be a cosmetician or a mortician. If you get a license to practice law or medicine, somewhere in there the idea of licensing is to show competence to deal with the public.
That's surely not the case with marriage licenses. It's a matter of the government will take your money and sign the paper and there you go. In a couple of jurisdictions, they still ask for a blood test to see if, you know, the babies will come out all right, but that's very rare and that's diminished and almost non-existent today. Essentially, you have the government issuing licenses, but nobody proves any competence that they'll marry well or raise children well or anything of that nature, or they have the means or anything like that. So we can't make the case that licensing has anything to do with competency.
That leaves another argument that conservatives use. The institution of marriage helps to stabilize families. In light of the attacks, some of them justified, about promiscuity within the gay and lesbian community and the lack of responsibility, one would think there would be encouragement, there would be support for encouraging the formation of stable unions. And so I would strongly encourage that we look at that. You know, certain family models may provide statistically better environments for the masses, but this collectivist argument for public policy goes against individual liberty and responsibility.
So I suggest that on this issue we consider a separation of marriage and state. Eliminate marriage licensing. Strip the law of references to marital status. Decide that the affairs of the heart are none of the government's business. That would reduce the intrusion of government into our everyday lives.
So we have to ask two questions now of the conservatives. Do you really mean again what you say about government? Would you go in this direction to take away government intrusions in marital affairs? Now, then we also have to turn around and ask the left, the gay and lesbian community, will this be enough? Let's not ask the state to sanction our relationships. The relationships should be a personal thing. We don't need someone else's sanction to say that we can form a loving partnership and a strong, enduring bond. We don't need the sanction of some bureaucrat who takes our $60 and signs a piece of paper, or whatever the fee may be in some jurisdiction. Consider the solution, you know, stable families don't necessarily exist in heterosexual relationships. Half of marriages end in divorce now. Consider incestuous abuse, consider domestic violence, consider deadbeat dads. I mean, it's not like the marriage laws as they exist today now are creating a perfect environment for children by any means as it stands. Let's admit that. Let's be honest. Marriage licensing and the state sanctioning of marriage doesn't do that.
Now, with the government out of the way, here's where the private sector can step in the issues of marriage. For those choosing to marry within a religious domination, the churches, the synagogues, the temples can offer marriage contracts to pick up where basic common law falls short, or the Napoleonic code depending on the state, and the type of law we're watching, or using, but the churches can do that. It also has to be important, again in keeping church and state separate, no law should ever force a community of faith to perform a ceremony for those who don't share their common values. They'll either find a community of faith who will recognize your marriage, or if you choose not to go to a community of faith, a lawyer or a paralegal can draft the basic documents that define the relationship and the partnership. For crying out loud, this can be something that standard forms can be made that go right next to the leases at Office Depot. But as far as government is concerned, marriage is a voluntary contract entered into by individuals. That will never change. The marriage institution was around long before government bureaucrats started issuing those pieces of paper. So all of the legalities will still be in place, which are primarily there to deal with dissolution. That's in place so we could just take the government out of the issue altogether and just find our own way, our own community, our own friends, our own definition of family, to recognize whatever partnership that we choose and that we would like to follow.
So essentially, what I would like to do, if I rattle off how I see how some of these issues fit. It's inappropriate for government, which is owned by all people, to discriminate. Ergo it's inappropriate to discriminate gays in the military. The unit cohesion argument was used with racial discrimination years ago. Face it, you have standard laws or rules of procedure in the military - no fraternization. It shouldn't matter what sex the partner would be or who else it would be - no fraternization means no fraternization. And if that is something that keeps the military working in the proper order, then it should be enforced across the board.
When it comes to hate crimes, we have to find ways in which we can reduce violence across the entire country. We don't have to look at picking different groups to protect more than other groups. Violence is wrong. It is abhorrent and we should deal with it at all levels.
When it comes to discrimination, as individuals you and I, well that is just going to be a natural part of life and no government law is going to change that. It's only going to make the legal system more complex and more choked than it already is, denying real justice where we need it most: in cases of acts of violence - the initiation of force and fraud against people.
With marriage, I can find no reason, and some of you may advocate it, but today the way it works, marriage licensing doesn't really mean diddle. And so let's just get the government out of marriage and let us find our own ways to define it and let that be a true meaning of faith and family and friends and a bond of individuals.
This whole thing boils down to: don't force anybody to do things your way just because you think it's a good idea.
When we look at government policy, if we want the experts to lead to us, the experts to tell us what to do, we should think again. A couple of months ago Newsweek ran a whole column of things - what do the experts tell us. Well let's see, the President of the Michigan Savings Bank, who was instructing Henry Ford's attorney on investment, said "the horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad." Or how about the Commissioner of Patents in 1899 - "everything that can be invented has been invented." Or how about Kenneth Olson, the President and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation said "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." Or how about the President of Western Union, William Orton, "what use could this company make of an electric toy" talking about the telephone.
Don't trust some central planning agency in Washington to come up with the answers and to make it apply to you because, inevitably, history, science and time proves that nobody's right all the time. We have to trust the goodness, the individuals in our society and if we do that, holding tightly and clinging to the idea that the non-initiation of force will give more people peace and opportunity regardless of the superficial differences between us, we'll get closer to that. As that image of the lion and lamb laying together, we'd be able to come together as human beings a lot faster by embracing that principle and that tenant.
So just remember as I close this speech, every life is a new thing under the sun. There has never been anything like you before and there will never be anybody like you again. Get that idea through your head. Find your spark of individuality that makes you different from other folks and develop it for all you're worth. Society, schools, gay rights organizations will try to iron that out of you. Their tendency is to try to put you in a mold. I say don't let your spark get lost. It's your only real claim to importance. Thank you.
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Saturday, 6 July, 2002 21:07