The Denver Post
March 5, 1993
Idaho group is first to mimic Colorado law
By Michael Booth, Staff Writer
An Idaho group yesterday launched its own campaign for a statewide prohibition
on gay rights, bearing out claims from gays and their opponents that Colorado's
Amendment 2 is spreading.
The Idaho Citizens Alliance filed a proposed ballot initiative called "Stop
Spcial Rights" and said it would circulate petitions to force a 1994 vote.
States where groups now have expressed interest in Amendment 2-style
initiatives include California, Oregon, Wasniington, Idaho, Montana, Ohio,
Minnesota, Arizona, Michigan, Florida, Missouri, Maine, Georgia and Iowa.
Like Amendment 2, the proposed Idaho law would prohibit discrimination
protection as well as hiring quotas or other preferences for gays. It also
would prohibit schools and government institutions from teaching children that
"homosexuality is a healthy or acceptable lifestyle."
The Idaho alliance is an offshoot of Lon Mabon's Oregon Citizens Alliance,
which lost a close election last fall on an anti-gay measure there. The
Oregon alliance has renamed itself the United States Citizens Alliance and
will help promote similar initiatives in other states.
"With the actions that are begun today comes a call to conservatives in Idaho
and across America to begin to work together as a national movement," Mabon
said in Boise.
Said alliance political director Phillip Ramsdell: "I think this is going to be
the big issue of the '90s, there's no doubt about it."
"People in Idaho have never really dealt with any gay-rights legislation
before," said Scott Nakagawa, a Western political organizer for the National
Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "People are operating in an informational void
there. This is particularly rich ground for organizing for the right wing.
They fill the void with disinformation."
The Idaho effort will be led by Kelly Walton, a former Oregon Citizens Alliance
official who also has consulted with Colorado for Family Values about the
wording and promotion of Amendment 2.
The alliance and its opponents agree Idaho could be fertile gorund for another
anti-gay-rights measure.
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