ICA FILES ANTI-GAY INITIATIVE

by Dan Popkey and Kim Eckart
The Idaho Statesman

     The battle over gay rights in Idaho began in earnest
Thursday when the Idaho Citizens Alliance filed an
initiative prohibiting the state from condoning
homosexuality.
     The initiative would prohibit "minority status" for
gays, bar schools from teaching homosexuality as "a
healthy or acceptable lifestyle" and prohibit public
spending "to sanction or express approval of
homosexuality."
     "We feel that a man sleeping with a man, or a woman
sleeping with a woman does not warrant minority status,"
said ICA Chairman Kelly Walton.  "It's a behavior."
     About 110 people turned out to oppose the
initiative.  Most wore black to symbolize "an official
day of mourning for civil rights in Idaho."  In addition
to Walton, 12 ICA supporters were on hand.
     Brian Berquist, chair of Idaho for Human Dignity--a
group formed to battle the measure--said the initiative
discriminates against homosexuals.  Civil rights--not
special status--are what gays and lesbians want and
deserve, he said.
     "What are special rights? are they the right to a
job?  The right to eat dinner in a restaurant?"
Bergquist said.  "We need to get past this rhetoric."
     Walton said the measure includes protections for
gays, including a provision that no citizen be denied
"governmental services, licenses or approvals" on the
basis of "private sexual practices."
     To place the measure on the November 1994 ballot,
the ICA must collect 32,061 signatures from registered
voters by July 1994.  "It's a hard job," said Walton, who
campaigned for an even tougher measure that failed in
Oregon last November.
     "It's a very benign version of what they did in
Oregon," said Jim Risch, a Boise lawyer and former leader
of the Idaho Senate.  "There's a toning down of the
language, but more importantly, the actual substance is
toned down tremendously."
     The Oregon ballot measure condemned homosexuality as
"abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse."
     The Idaho initiative was attacked by organizers of
a boycott against Colorado after that state's approval of
a similar measure in November.
     "These militant fundamentalists will stop at
nothing," said Jan Williams, a representative for Boycott
Colorado Inc. of Denver.  "They will generate such fear,
such hatred and such resentment that they will probably
win in Idaho."
     Opposition also came from a wide political spectrum,
including Rep. Larry LaRocco, D-Idaho.
     "The last thing our state needs is an imported hate
campaign," he said.