The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Gay Rights

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Good evening. Of all the social issues that have gripped this country recently, none has stirred any fiercer emotions than that of so-called gay rights. And the event that has really turned up the heat for and against homosexuality across the nation takes place in Miami tomorrow. Voters of Dade County will go to the polls in a referendum to repeal or leave as it is, an ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals in housing, employment, and public accommodations. The ordinance was passed by the Dade County Metro Commission in January. A campaign began almost immediately to repeal it, and the passions

that campaign aroused have attracted national attention. Tonight, with Jim Lehrer in Miami on the eve of the vote, we look at the issues facing what the Washington Post calls the first city in the nation to be faced with declaring what he thinks of homosexuality by popular vote. Jim? Robin, a local TV commentator probably summed it up best the other night. For Miami, he said it's a no-win deal no matter what the voters do tomorrow. If the ordinance is repealed, some will say Miami is anti-civil rights. If it isn't, then others will claim Miami is soon to become a haven for homosexuals. This either-or view of things is explicit in the slick TV commercials that both sides have run in this bitter show-bizzy battle. Here's a sample from each side's arsenal. The Orange Bowl parade, Miami's gift to the nation, wholesome entertainment. But in San Francisco, when they take to the streets, it's a parade of homosexuals, men hugging other men, cavorting with little boys, wearing dresses and makeup. The same people who turn San Francisco into a hotbed of homosexuality want to do the same thing to Dade County. On June 7th, vote for the human rights of your children.

Vote for repeal of Metro's dangerous homosexual ordinance. All men are created equal. No, wait a minute. Everybody but homosexuals. Some people want to decide who's going to have human rights and who isn't. Here it's the rights of homosexuals. But somewhere else, it might be Jews, or people with foreign names, or women, or anybody. When you start tearing away at the foundations of our country, where does it stop? Well, look, let's just throw the whole thing out and start over. On June 7th, vote against the repeal of human rights in Dade County. And in some ways, those are the nicest things that have been said. As the Miami Herald said in an editorial yesterday, excessive claims and exaggerated counterclaims have created a witch-burning hysteria more appropriate to the 17th century than to the 20th. Much of the attention, abuse as well as praise, has fallen on the woman who started it all, Anita Bryant.

You don't have to be a Christian to love your children. You don't have to be a Christian to know that what is happening in this county is vulgar and vile and dirty. If on June 7th, this county fails to vote for repeal of this ordinance, legalizing homosexuality, and denying what we believe to be biblical rights. If this county fails to go God's way June 7th, it will create a domino effect, which we feel will cause city after city across America to fall. This little girl loves the Lord. She has a precious family, and she has a love for your children. Somebody had to lead the battle. Somebody had to raise up the banner, because I want to tell you we're dealing with a vile and a vicious and a vulgar gang. They'd kill you as quick as look at you.

If I had known the depth of the vicious attacks of the opposition. I probably would have turned and run the other way. At that time, when I made the decision, it was one decision as a Christian, as a mother, in protection of my children and my love for them and for God and for America. Realizing that once legislation is turned around to support and to flaunt the abnormal, rather than to be laws to protect the normal, then our nation is gone. The ramifications I felt were very far reaching, and I particularly stood because this local ordinance would allow flaunting homosexuals to be role models to my four children. Do you consider homosexuality a disease? No, I don't. It's a sin. That's not my standard, but it's God's standard. It's very plain in many, many scriptures, in the Old Testament, as well as the New, that God calls it an abomination.

And if they continue in that sin and do not repent of it, you see any sinner has an opportunity to repent of sin, rather than flaunt it and want to change legislation to condone that kind of sin. So my stand is based on the word of God, and if God is not the standard of morality, then who is? Certainly not the Dade County commissioners. I've never heard of a real- happy homosexual, that's why I won't call them gay, because there's nothing gay about their lifestyle. They're very miserable within themselves. And I feel that's where the real discrimination is, even if you don't believe in the Holy Scriptures, they know it's against nature. And in sharing the truth, as stated in first Corinthians 6:9, to 11, God names all of these sins. He talks about idolatry, adultery, fornication, effeminate, and murder, and thievery, all of these things. But then here's the good news. He said to the disciples, he said, such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of God.

[music] Glory, glory hallelujah, glory, glory hallelujah, glory, glory hallelujah, his truth is marching on. The other side says Anita Bryant may be the best thing that ever happened to the gay rights movement. They have focused much of their campaign around her. They have accused her of camouflaging a vicious hate campaign under a banner of Christian love. They brought feminist Gloria Steinem, poet Rod McEwan, the San Francisco sheriff, and others to Miami to speak against her and for the ordinance. They've spent an estimated $350,000, twice that of the Bryant anti-ordinance forces. Even with the money and the electoral heat, only 30% of the eligible voters, some 200,000, are expected to actually vote tomorrow. And there are no authoritative polls out saying which way it's likely to go.

I think Anita Bryant is wrong. Why? Of course, I used to like it. I'm not against Negroes or so Jewish people. It's like that. It's discriminate. I'm for the repeal. I believe that Anita Bryant is right on. As a parent of five children, I'm very concerned for them. And it may be an extreme measure that has to be taken. But if so, I'm for it. The man in the film, handing out those leaflets, was Bob Kunst, co-director of the Miami Victory Campaign, one of 11 groups here supporting retention of the ordinance. Why is the ordinance needed, sir? Very simply that there is a great deal of discrimination against Gays. In the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, they took a research there are 516 cases across the taxpayers, tens of thousands of dollars. Well, the point is we didn't go through all of that here. We knew very well that there was discrimination. Every time there was an election, there was a raid on all the bars. People would be having their names printed in the Herald, on the news, and they'd lose their jobs. There was no way that you could protect people.

And a classic example is the assistant executive assistant to the Public Service Commissioner, Paul Hawkins, a guy named Jim Karasi, who stood up against our governor and said, listen, I think that you have no right to take away my civil rights. And because he wasn't protected in Tallahassee, he lost his job. That's a classic example that just happened two weeks ago. The point is that Gays need protection as much as anybody else needs protection. All we did was add four words, affectional and sexual preference, to an already anti-discrimination ordinance that related to race, color, creed, religion, marital status, sex, physical handicap, and a few other issues. And in fact, the issue affects everybody in the community, in the sense that it protects everybody in the community. There's not even the word gay in the ordinance. The fact that it's been blown out of proportion like this is really sort of absurd. Well, in that editorial that I quoted from a moment ago in the Miami Herald, they made the point that the very things that you are now complaining about, there are already laws on the books. Do you not agree with that? No, not at all. If it was, you know, this should have been, I suppose, settled with the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights long time ago, but then we needed a 1964 Civil Rights Act in order to protect blacks, and we need the equal rights amendment, which the Bryant forces conveniently stopped in Florida using the gays as a stumbling block on that issue.

We, of course, need this kind of issue and protection. And in fact, what is happening right now is that the so-called Save Our Children People are asking for the right to discriminate. They are proving our case. Here we have an existing ordinance that's been passed four times already by Metro, twice by both a local court and a district court, affirming the constitutionality of the ordinance. And what we are facing really, the tremendous danger is to take somebody's civil rights that already exists and overturn it while you're establishing official second-class citizenship. So they have actually demonstrated the absolute need for this ordinance. Now this ordinance has been in effect in 40 cities. We haven't had one single problem. There hasn't been one single incident in Dade county since the ordinance has been passed. And what we have from the Bryant forces is this incredible witch hunt, which, by the way, was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan today in the Miami Herald. I mean, what is really so unbelievable about the Bryant forces is that last year we had 100,000 child abuse cases in the state, 30,000 actually reported, 1,200 kids literally killed by their parents. And where were the Save Our Children when we really needed them? The point is the gays have been exploited.

And when you have people like Shirley ?Spellabirk? who says, well, if we keep the ordinance, then the next thing you'll find is Gays running around having sex with animals and with dead people, Anita Bryant screaming about every, you know, the California drought as responsible for the gay ordinance out there. I mean, the thing is reaching an absurdity. And the point is this ordinance has nothing to do with sex acts. And their entire campaign has been obsessed with sex acts. Really incredible. I know things have gotten hot and you've just demonstrated that. But again, let me ask, what are the kinds of discrimination against homosexuals in Miami that you want to curb with this ordinance? Well, it's just really very simple. I'm not going to participate in any conspiracies for Anita or Mike or anybody else to lie to their kids about who I am. I'm not going to lead to, you know, a double life simply because they want to tell their kids that Gays are different from who we really are. We're not the myths and the chivalists and the stereotypes that they've been flaunting themselves on these commercials. And there's no reason for me to have to waste that kind of energy. It's not productive to me or to my family or to my friends or to the community.

And when people are free to express themselves, that's for us really important in life. What we have in Miami is a bunch of very insecure people who are obsessed with sex who really, I don't know what their trip is with it, but it's against everybody, not just against Gays. And all they're trying to do is lay their philosophy and their religious philosophy on everybody else in the community, shoving it down everybody's throat. And it's not going to work. All right. Thank you. Anita Bryant is not the only anti-ordinance leader in this campaign. Mike Thompson is a Florida advertising man, president of the Florida Conservative Union and communications director of the Save Our Children Group. Mr. Thompson, what would be the effect, in your opinion, if this ordinance is allowed to stand as is? Well, the effect will be that homosexuals who are lawbreakers under the laws of the state of Florida and the laws of 44 other states will be given a special privilege, a special privilege, which is not enjoyed by the law-abiding.. We don't think that there is ample evidence of discrimination against homosexuals in this community.

In fact, Mr. Kunst and others were unable to cite any cases before the Metro Commission when this issue came up last January. We're concerned that this Metro ordinance also is an abridgment of our First Amendment Freedom of Religion because it applies peculiarly to religious and private schools. It tells religious and private schools that the test of religion aside, that they may not refuse to hire a homosexual applicant as a teacher or as a counselor in a religious school. We think that's a clear abridgment of freedom of religion and the Archbishop of Miami, Coleman Caroll, agrees, the Episcopal Bishop James Duncan, who was in the forefront of the civil rights movement agrees, 27 conservative and orthodox rabbis agree, more than 80 Baptist ministers agree that this is an abridgment of freedom of religion. So we have other issues here. The issue of human rights, which has often been touted by those who want to keep this ordinance in effect, is not an issue that has been recognized by the Miami Herald, which is for repeal, by the Miami News, which is for repeal, and by various other institutions and individuals in this community.

So the issue of human rights or civil rights is a phony issue. What about the name of your organization is Save the Children, Save our Children. How are the children affected by this ordinance? Well, the children are affected in the area of being exposed to role models. And I would like to quote a psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Silverman, who recently wrote- he's a social professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. It is very admirable to be tolerant and sensitive to people's civil rights, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and a homosexual teacher who flaunts his sexual aberrations publicly is as dangerous to children as one of the religious cultists. Many of these militant gays are not fighting for their own civil rights, but are attempting to win converts to their way of life.

Young people in school, whether we're talking about religious schools or private schools, which are the ones affected by this ordinance, or in public schools, which are the schools that would be affected by House Resolution 2998, the so-called Koch Bill before Congress now. These are impressionable young people who when exposed to a form of life or a lifestyle, as we say, which is aberrant, but which is treated as normal and on a par with heterosexuality, these young people could get the impression that there is no difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality, and therefore could opt for this deviant lifestyle, which is anathema to our culture and anathema to our religious values. Yes, but it's such an incredibly phony issue. The kids and the teachers and the parents and everybody have been so incredibly exploited in this community. I know Mike thinks that 20% of us fall out of the sky, but we are his children, and we are his next door neighbors, and we are his parents, and people that he knows and cares about, same thing with Anita. The child sexual formation takes place by age three to five. For anybody to say that a person who is a teacher there, that they are going to be flaunting their lifestyles simply because they admit who they are, they are not teaching anything about being gay, they are simply being themselves, which has nothing to do with affecting the kids.

In fact, if anything, it's just an absolute slap in the face to heterosexuality, male-female relationships, to assume that anybody has to see an up-front gay, and they are immediately going to turn gay. It's completely backfired on the Save Our Children people in this community because of that kind of attitude. Mike may not agree with the fact that there are 38 flavors of ice cream, he may be stuck on vanilla, and that's his privilege. But the point is everyone else may want to just have some choices in life, and that's their business, not yours. Mr. Thompson? Well, Mr. Kunst, of course, had his first homosexual experience at the age of seven in the back of a school bus, according to an interview in Tropic Magazine. And for the past 30 years, he has decided to lead this deviant lifestyle, this perverted lifestyle, which is his prerogative. We're not really concerned about the perverted lifestyle that Mr. Kunst has selected for himself. But what we are concerned about is his right under this ordinance to give the impression to young people that what he's doing is okay, is acceptable.

In fact, last week, the San Francisco School Board voted to require that homosexuality be taught in the public schools as part of the sex education courses, and to be taught on a par with heterosexuality, as just simply another lifestyle. We think that is the next logical step in this ongoing battle to reduce society's values, to destroy society's values. This is just one shot in an overall war. Mr. Kunst, let me ask you this. Does society, in your opinion, have a right to decide through votes like this, what kind of behavior would [inaudible]? Absolutely not, this whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. It doesn't even have the right to begin with. What if I decided, Mike, that I wanted to go after your freedom? Supposing I didn't like the way you combed your hair or what you did in bed? You know, the point is, I can put your issue on the ballot and take it away.

Excuse me, let me finish. [crosstalk] May I finish please? What is immoral and indecent and un-American is discrimination. That is perversion. My love is my business. I'm not asking for your endorsement. I don't need it. I'm perfectly satisfied. I happen to be gay. I am happy. I have liberated myself from the negativity of people like yourself, and no one's going to change that situation tomorrow on any kind of level whatsoever. In fact, what you've done, and I think its beautiful, and I must congratulate you, that with all of your personal insecurity, you've managed to help get hundreds of thousands of gays out of the closet all across the nation. This is the only issue that's ever united people, not just nationally, but all over the world. I really congratulate you. I think you're the most beautiful person around. Not physically, I would not like to be described by you as beautiful. If you want to recruit, I wish you'd restrict it to- [crosstalk] Just respond to the basic point of society's right to make the decision that the people in Miami are making tomorrow. Well, of course we have the right, and if we didn't have the right, I would suggest that Mr. Kunst and others of his ilk, would have gone into federal court and would have sought an injunction against the holding of this election.

Of course we have the right, and society also has the right to establish moral values, and then to set laws. Thou Shalt not Kill is based on a moral law which we have translated into secular law. So society does have a right to speak out on the issue of aberrations and perversions, and we shall continue to do so. The controversy in Miami has split religious communities, the legal profession and educators, partly because the society across the country knows relatively little about homosexuality. The psychiatric profession is also divided. The American Psychiatric Association recently removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, but some psychiatrists disagree with that, and some believe that homosexuality should be discouraged. Dr. Robert Gould is a New York psychiatrist who's written extensively about the problem. First of all, Dr. Gould, why in an era of growing sexual permissiveness does this issue arouse such fierce emotions?

Well, one of the reasons it arouses fierce emotions is that the permissiveness is not altogether permissive. That is, men and women who are now being told they can change their roles, they can engage in sex somewhat differently from what they've done in the past, also threatens them, because it means giving up something they have learned was the right way from early childhood on. Suddenly they said, hey, you have more freedom to do things. Actually they're rigid and they're hemmed in by what they've learned all their lives. So now that homosexuality has come out of the closet, it is a threat to a number of men and women who may have homosexual feelings, who may have some of these traits within themselves, have never faced them, don't want to face them, don't know what to do with them if they came out. So there was a tremendous backlash at this point against homosexuality. I think that's one of the things we're seeing in the whole Anita Bryant movement.

One of the issues in Miami, as we've just heard, is the claim by the Save Our Children people that, and their fear, that homosexual teachers would proselytize or recruit in the schools or be role models. Now, is there any psychiatric, any consensus in the psychiatric profession, that would sustain that fear? There are a lot of myths about homosexual behavior and homosexuality. One of the myths, and I think there is consensual validation among most psychiatrists, that you do not have homosexuals praying on children to any considerable degree. Yes, there are sick homosexuals who do so, as there are many sick heterosexuals who do so, and there is a consensus that there is more child molestation by heterosexuals than there are by homosexuals. So that is a myth and it's not a problem. The other thing you mentioned about the role model is more controversial. There is the theory that- In other words, that could be a problem.

It could be a problem, but if you accept, as the APA, the American Psychiatric Association, has decreed, that it is not an illness, homosexuality per se, and it is a valid alternate lifestyle, then one has to take a position, if one is humanitarian and a liberal, that the more varieties one is exposed to in living, the more possibilities of fulfillment for one's own personal way of life, the likelier it is that a youngster is going to pick something that works for him. Now, not to show homosexuals as school teachers, or in any other sensitive position, is in fact a lie. It is pretending to children that there are no homosexuals. It is sweeping them under a rug, putting them back in the closet, and nothing can be unhealthier for society, for children, or for homosexuals themselves, if we go backwards and say this is not an entity in our lifetime, and a very large entity that many people subscribe to, and in fact, they do live happy lives. Anita Bryant is incorrect. Psychiatrists who have said, and they often have, that homosexuals are very disturbed people, but psychiatrists have said this only from the viewpoint of their patients.

Those who have seen homosexuals outside of the psychiatrist's office have seen many of them who are constructive, who do all the things that we consider normal for heterosexuals, except having a sexual preference for the same sex. But can I ask you this quickly? Does the fear that homosexual teachers, whether you think it would be a good idea to have that pluralism or not, might become role models for the children in schools, and children might choose that model? That has some foundation. If one considers homosexuality an illness, and a real disturbance in personality, it's unlikely that a homosexual school teacher teaching English or math is going to persuade a normal, healthy, growing, developing youngster to become a homosexual. If it's inborn from birth on, which is also another theory, again, a homosexual teacher will have no influence on that. So any kind of theory that one were to use as to what causes homosexuality, but hardly account for a teacher who spends one hour a week teaching a youngster English or a language, is going to be a role model to change, but otherwise would be a healthy, normal development.

I see. And just one other quick question. If the society adopts a very much more liberal or tolerant attitude towards homosexuality, does that mean there is going to be a lot more homosexuality? There will be a lot less compulsive homosexuality. There will be homosexuality, perhaps on an increased basis, due to allowing one to be what one otherwise would be repressed. So in other words, you'll have more overt homosexuality, but it will be of a healthier nature than we have now. And if, matter of fact, there's a lot of bisexuality, which we have never seen before to this degree, and to most of us that have seen youngsters in college who are bisexual, they seem quite healthy and normal development. So we will see more kinds of all sexuality. That's where permissiveness and sexuality will cause increase in being whatever they were meant to be and want to be.

Let's go back for a final reaction, Mr. Thompson. Well, I would like to observe with all respect to Dr. Gould that there were 2800 psychiatrists who voted against a change in the status of homosexuals in the vote taken by the APA. The second point is that in Sexual Offenders published in 1965 by the Kinsey Institute, a study of eight penitentiaries found that 38% of those prisoners who were behind bars for child molestation were there for having committed homosexual acts. Now, if homosexuals constitute 10% of our population, then their incidence as child molesters is four times greater than their incidence is in the population. Well, I'd like to respond also because it's just nice how you keep on distorting the fact, you've done it through the whole campaign. In essence, 98 to- 96% of the molestations in this county happen to be heterosexual molestation. We have to leave. We have to leave it there. I'm sorry, Mr. Kuntz. Thank you very much both of you and good night, Jim. Thank you, Dr. Gould.

That's all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I'll be back tomorrow night. Other news permitting we'll be examining the congressional fight for a consumer protection agency at the lobbying effort for and against it. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night. For transcript, send $1 to the MacNeil Lehrer Report. Box 345, New York, New York, 10019. The MacNeil Lair Report was produced by WNET and WETA. They are solely responsible for its content. The program was made possible in part by grants from public television stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Exxon Corporation and the Ford Foundation. From Washington, New York and locations around the world, we focus on one important national or international issue and take 30 minutes to examine it.

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