JULY 1980 HIGH GEAR PAGE:
Misjudging the constituents
Ron Mottl's big flub
By R. Woodward Congressman Ron Mottl's cosponsorship of H 166, that semiliterate anti-gay bill in the House of Representatives, raises doubts about how well he really knows
what his constituents want.
His co-sponsorship of it seems to be an over-reaction to the
response he got to a question on gay rights in a survey he sent to his constituents last December. He asked if there should be "legislation to guarantee the civil rights of homosexuals and lesbians," and the response he got from those who mailed back the survey was over two to one against.
Many of Mottl's constituents being the type of conservatives they are, however, it is not unlikely that at least some of them reacted as much to the phrase "civil rights" as to the fact that the question was about gays.
Mottl does not seem to have considered that those who do not want gays to have anything special done for them do not necessarily want anything special to be done against them.
He does not seem to have considered the possibility that gay people in the Cleveland area are not seen as being outsiders in the same way they are in some other cities.
Unlike San Francisco or New York, the Cleveland area is not generally seen as being a location that gays move to. Most of the gays who live in the Cleveland area seem to have been born and raised in the area, and it seems that many if not most of them live within local telephone calling distance of most of their relatives.
The Cleveland area has one of the largest concentrations of gay inhabitants in the United States, and one of the largest concentrations of Cleveland area gays is in Mottl's district. Congressionnal District 23, which includes all of Lakewood and all of Ward 1 in Cleveland.
Unholy writing
Unholy Loves
by Joyce Carol Oates Vanguard, $10.95
reviewed by Daniel Curzon, author of Among the Carnivores
I read Unholy Loves because I had been asked if I was the basis of the homosexual professor in the novel. (Miss Oates and I were once good friends). I can't say that I see anything of myself in
As conservative as much of District 23 is said to be, many of its a
'ituents do not think of gay maple as being some vaguel threatening abstraction from out of town. Many of these constituents know that they are related to gays and many of them see people they know are gay regularly enough to regard them
as being ordinary human beings.
Probably trying to play on the strong family feelings of voters in Distict 23, Mottl has not bothered to consider how these voters might respond to what can easily be seen as an attack on their sons and daughters, on their brothers and sisters, on their aunts, uncles, and cousins, and, in
Relevant texts
The complete text of the first Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified December 15, 1791):
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The complete text of House Concurrent Resolution 166, the anti-gay bill in the House of . Represenatives, now cosponsored by Congressman Ron Mottl:
himself in the pursuit of his eternal salvation.
It can also be stated that no man should ever hold malice toward another based upon his irreconcilable conduct.
Nevertheless, it is unequivocally clear that consensual sodomy and ther homosexual acts should never be accepted as legitimate in this Republic, nor should the clas of individuals who advocate such conduct gain special consideration or a protected status under the law.
The idealism of this Republic that is embodied in its laws would be clearly debased by such an action.
The time has come, America,
turn our hearts back to God and away from the secular humanism that has led us to this day in our history. Let us finally have this turning take place with this issue and let it begin here and now. Be it, therefore,
CONCURRENT RESOLU-to TION Expressing the sense of the Congress that homosexual acts and the class of individuals who advocate such conduct shall never receive special consideration or a protected status under law.
Whereas homosexual individuals have over the last several years pressed their conduct and behavior strikingly before the eyes of the public in an attempt to gain legitimacy, acceptance, and recognition under the law; the need has arisen for this great legal body, the Congress of the United States, to finally address this class and their conduct.
A man's abomination against God may well be at times a matter solely between his maker and
her portrait of Alexis, the man with whom the woman writer has an affair. As with much of Oates' work, the story seems to have litle to do with what happens in her actual life, only-what she surmises or wishes.
I do think a writer has some obligation to know his or her subject matter. I'm afraid Miss Oates knows very little about homocontinued on page 17
INTEGRITY/CLEVELAND
• Forgay Episcopalians are their friends • Join us in fellowship anction
Meeting held the first and third Thursdays at 8:00 PM Trinity Cathedral
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that it is the sense of the Congress of the United States that homosexual acts and the class of individuals who advocate such conduct shall never receive special consideration or a protected status under the law.
some cases, on their mothers and fathers.
Many voters in his district, Including some of those who were his most avid boosters, feel that they are being stabbed in the back and are so angry that they would have voted for anyone else but him this autumn if he were not running unopposed. Many gays in his district are out to their families and are not hesitating to share their feelings about H 166 and his sponsorship of it with many of their adult relatives.
Inadvertently Mott! may be helping local gays get organized politically. There seems to be little disagreement among those involved with gay activities in the Cleveland area that if a large number of gay inhabitants have not been organized and heard from politically simply because most of them have never felt threatened.
In co-sponsoring H 166, Mottl may be playing jump rope with the tail of a sleeping tiger.
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