NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/motss/54156

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From: [e-mail] (Rod Williams)
Subject: "Anger and Regret in Aspen as Boycott Grows"
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Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 19:05:12 GMT
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A front-page article in today's (12/30/92) New York Times on
the Colorado boycott, reprinted here without permission...

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Anger and Regret in Aspen as Boycott Grows
by Michael Specter
(special to The New York Times)

ASPEN, Colo., Dec, 29 -- The celestial people of Colorado's
most exclusive ski resort are sulking.  This is the week when
they usually emerge triumphantly from Land Rovers and Learjets
to immerse themselves in fresh powder, endless nights and the
adulation of those mortals able to afford $400 hotel rooms and
$12 glasses of Scotch.

But this year, bitterness has crept into the thin mountain
air.  On Jan. 15, Colorado will become the first state in the
nation with a constitution that prevents adoption of laws that
specifically protect homosexuals from discrimination.
Amendment 2, which passed in November, will also rescind local
anti-discrimination statutes in Aspen, Boulder and Denver.
Although officials worry about long-term damage to the state's
$5 billion-a-year tourism industry, a growing boycott has done
little to diminish the celebrity presence in Aspen this week.
But it has done much to tarnish it.

"People there act as if they are exempt from all this," said
Jan Williams, of Boycott Colorado, a Denver-based group
leading efforts to repeal the amendment.  "Even gays in Aspen
act aloof, as if the end of their civil rights doesn't matter
that much.  Isn't there anything more important than their own
momentary pleasure?"

It's hard to tell.  The residents of Aspen, known for their
wealth their redwood sun-decks and their dedication to
leisure, are divided and angry.  The city voted overwhelmingly
against Amendment 2, so many citizens don't understand how a
boycott that includes them, let alone focuses on them, can be
fair.  The boycott has already cost the state as much as $20
million, with cancellations continuing to roll in at a rate of
$500,000 a day, the amendment's opponents say.  And as it
becomes clearer that the effort is far more than a passing
whim, people here are beginning to seethe in public.

"Hypocrites" is what John Denver called those members of the
Hollywood establishment, most famously Barbra Streisand, who
favor boycotting Colorado.  Jack Nicholson, who has two houses
here, called the boycott "rubbish."  And George Hamilton,
whose Gothic family photograph adorns a wall in the exclusive
Caribou Club, begged Liza Minnelli not to withdraw from a
benefit concert for Undo 2, a local organization trying to
have the amendment repealed.  Ms. Minnelli pulled out anyway
-- a decision that some here called a valiant act of
conscience and that others called mindless pandering to the
politically correct.

It will be months before the true power of the boycott can be
assessed, but it could damage this state considerably.  A
similar boycott in Arizona, designed to force officials to
adopt a holiday in recognition of the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr., cost the state at least $500 million in business over the
last two years, and this year the state reversed its stand.

More than a dozen groups in Colorado and around the nation
have joined the effort to overturn the new constitutional
provision, under which gay men and lesbians could be dismissed
from jobs and denied housing because of their sexual
orientation, and then prevented from challenging the
discrimination.  The Colorado office of the American Civil
Liberties Union joined the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the
cities of Aspen, Boulder and Denver in filing suit in Federal
court to prevent the amendment from taking effect.  But even
the lawsuit's supporters question their chances in court, and
most say it will take a new ballot referendum to reverse the
amendment.

Representatives of Colorado for Family Values, which
sponsored Amendment 2, say they have no desire to
discriminate.  "What they want is a special protected status,"
Will Perkins, a leader of the group, said of homosexuals.
"They just don't deserve it.  The majority of America is with
us on this."  He and other leaders who support the amendment
say that homosexuals already have the rights guaranteed to
every American under the Constitution and that it weakens the
definition of a minority to say that someone deserves that
legal status because of sexual orientation.

As much as the residents of this town that bills itself as a
"small Democracy in the state of Colorado" would like to
forget the issue, the boycott is spoken of everywhere: in the
dining room of the newly completed Ritz Carlton, where almost
everything but the Colorado Elk is "free range"; at Bonnie's,
the popular Aspen Mountain lunch spot where Ivana Trump first
accused Marla Maples of trying to steal her husband, and in
the graceful bars of the Caribou Club, where there are two
cloakrooms, one for fur (which Aspen almost banned three years
ago), the other for lesser outerwear.

"It's a real problem," said Harley Baldwin, the owner of the
Caribou Club, which caters to rich residents and celebrities
so famous a single name is often enough to describe them
(Melanie and Don, Goldie and Kurt, Cher, Chevy), "and we do
understand the sentiment for the boycott.  Upon reflection,
though, people who boycott Aspen must realize it's like
attacking the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto because of the Nazis."

On Sunday, the rich and not-so-famous rolled up to the benefit
concert at the Wheeler Opera House in custom-built, four-wheel-
drive stretch Range Rover and Jeep limousines.  Everyone
seemed uncomfortable, as if their boots were too small.  They
gave dozens of reasons for thinking it unfair to pick on such
a liberal, tolerant place as Aspen.  In the end, only one
message came through: boycotts cost money.

"Why bite the hand that feeds you?" asked Terry White,
chairman of the Aspen Gay and Lesbian Community, which unlike
most Colorado gay groups is opposed to the boycott.  "I think
we can deal with it in other ways."

Not everyone agrees.  Tatou, the New York nightclub, has a
wildly popular branch here, and Rudolph, a principal owner and
well-known Manhattan nightclub impresario, came here for
Christmas.  "This boycott is going to hurt us badly," he said.
"And it should.  What has happened in this state is a disgrace.
If we lose a little money, then we deserve to lose a little
money.  People here are kidding themselves if they think they
can brush this off."

Even though hotels are booked and ski company officials say
lift ticket sales are up as much as 15 percent over last
winter, the boycott has shone a particularly harsh light on
Aspen.

The sight of rich people swaddled in Gore-Tex and mink
complaining that they shouldn't suffer economic privations
because they would never "do this to gays," as the television
actor Harry Hamlin said on Sunday, has angered many people
who see in the Colorado amendment the first successful step
in a national attempt to curtail the civil rights of
homosexuals.  The paradox of people fleeing liberal Aspen for
ski vacations in Utah, one of the most conservative states in
the nation, has been noted often here.

"I am sorry to say I have no sympathy for the liberal people
of Aspen," said Thomas B. Stoddard, former executive director
of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.  "Where were
they when this thing got on the ballot and when it passed?
This is not about a few hundred decent people being
inconvenienced.  It is about guaranteeing basic human rights
to American citizens.  And if we fail in Colorado we will
fail all around the country."

Acutely aware that conservative groups in at least seven
other states (California, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri,
Ohio and Oregon) are working to put similar initiatives on
the ballot next year, Mr. Stoddard and other national gay
leaders want to make an lesson of Colorado.  "We want to
convince the people of that state that they have more to lose
than to win by such measures," said Bill Rubenstein of the
American Civil Liberties Union's National Lesbian and Gay
Rights Project.  "People need to know that if they adopt
measures that discriminate against gays they will be
ostracized."

Several cities, including Atlanta, New York and Seattle, have
announced that no employees on city business will travel to
Colorado.  Groups as diverse as the National Council for
Social Studies and the National Mayors Conference, have
canceled conventions.  A California company, Xchange Computers,
has decided not to build a plant in Colorado that it said
would have meant $5 million in wages a year.

"This could be very painful," said Rich Grant, director of
communications for the Denver Metropolitan Convention and
Visitors Bureau.  "Anybody who thinks this is a minor problem
is being naive.  We are doing everything we can to repeal
this thing.  But I don't think it is fair to compare a
boycott of Colorado with a boycott of South Africa, as some
have done.  There you had decades of government-sponsored
abuses, and here the amendment is not yet in effect.  Really,
aren't we just paying because we are the first?"

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rod williams -=- pacific bell -=- san ramon, ca -=- [e-mail]
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