Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1973)
-Editorial Homosexuals deserve city protection For reasons that are not entirely clear the Eugene Human Rights Commission has been unwilling to recommend ex tension of city anti-discrimination statutes to protect homosexuals. Eugene city ordinances prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex or national origin. But a move to in clude “sexual orientation” in the wording has not been approved by commission members. An open hearing on the subject is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Eugene City Council Chambers. The commission will take testimony on the issue and then decide whether to make the . change. If the commission is to remain true to its purpose — fighting arbitrary discrimination within the city — it should recommend the change to the Eugene City Council. For that reason every effort must be made to back the proposal at the public hearing. Homosexuals face discrimination in employment and housing much the same as any other identifiable minority group. The fact that more and more homosexuals are unwilling to hide their orientation means that discrimination against them has increased in recent years. But a homosexual who becomes the victim of discrimination has little legal recourse. Inclusion of a sexual orientation clause in city statutes would allow homosexuals to present cases of discrimination to the Human Rights Commission. When discrimination charges are found to be accurate an of fending party would face a number of penalties. Commission chairman Bobby Ed wards has indicated one objection to the change is the problem of enforcement. How can a homosexual prove discrimination based on sexual orien tation? After all employment applications do not carry questions asking sexual orientation. And few landlords demand proof of sexual orientation before renting or selling. But this is not entirely relevant to the issue. Similar problems of enforcement can be found in any anti-discrimination statute whether it deals with Blacks, Chicanos, or women. The burden of proof, in each case, rests with the plaintiff who must show a case exists. If a homosexual can prove discrimination, there should be legal recourse. There has been little or no opposition to the wording change when the subject has be£h raised in the past. If members of .Eugene’s homosexual community — and those who support them in their effort to gain equal rights — present a strong case to the commission next Tuesday the change should be ap proved. Letters Nevick resigns There are many things that are depressing about student government in general, and the ASUO Senate in par ticular. Two trouble me now. First, students at this University need to realize that the ASUO Senate is not representative of their interests. Power groups, previously rejected by voters, have gained office in more subtle at tempts. The most abrasive instance is the example of the “Consciousness III” campaign of nearly two years ago, where a group with a common identification in the public mind was roimdly slaughtered at the polls. Yet a much more cohesive group, with no public identification, a sort of highly organised political machine without public exposure, won substantial representation in last Fall’s elections. These senators elected themselves as a group, vote as a group, and the students do not even know. Secondly, in the governmental system that operates on campus, politics degenerate with miserable ease. A senator’s surest means of retaining his office is to strive to anger no one, to do next to nothing during his term of office, and then ran again under the banner of “re-elect a working senator.” Campaigns hinge by necessity, then, on insults and counterclaims. I find that I cannot be part of a body spurred by vitriol, diseased with the cancer of groups hungry for only power, and a frustratingly useless power at that. Therefore, I hereby resign as ASUO senator from the College Inn and the co operatives effective this morning. I urge students to look closely at the candidates who seek their vote, to look intently for signs of the hidden machines, and to work toward the creation of a campus political system that has no tinge of the urban but adolescent version of a grade B western that prevails today. David Novick 1000 Patterson No CIA ads I noticed in Tuesday’s Emerald a job recruiting advertisement for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It brings to mind a controversy last year over the ‘Gentleman’s Retreat’, a local body shop, at which time the Emerald was prevailed upon by public opinion to discontinue advertising for the ‘services’ offered. But now here we have the CIA, to which we owe our thanks for such worldwide “counterinsurgency” operations as the Bay of Pigs invasion, military coups in Guatemala 1954 and the Dominican Republic 1961, the murder of Che Guevara, and various other assorted activities such as the Watergate caper (?). (It’s hard to determine the exact extent of their “services”, since the CIA isn’t held accountable to the American public or Congress.) Everywhere in the Third World where struggles for national liberation promise to emerge, the CIA is secretly watching and waiting, prepared at a moment’s notice to crush any attempt to defy or threaten American world power hegemony. It it’s possible for me to say this without being construed as endorsing the social attitudes underlying phenomena such as the ‘Gentleman’s Retreat’ or as making any relative value judgements between the two, I’d like to suggest that the CIA is an equally unpalatable client, and equally deserves to be run off the pages of the Emerald. (Public clarification by the editors as to Emerald policy and priorities regarding this issue and this organization would be greatly appreciated.) I’d also like to ask anyone who shares my feelings to write the Emerald editors and let them know. The student sub scription is negotiated and paid for with ASUO incidental fee funds. If it’s our money (at least in part), then it seems natural that we should also play a part in directing Emerald policy toward organizations such as the CIA. Are we being ethically consistent as a community of students if we publicly * deplore operations such as those in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, while at the same time tacitly or passively supporting the very organization that was in strumental insetting it all started? Bob Reno ASUO Senate A REfCCTER HAS HC& COJFlCajIW scuecfc. mjcosces &\ie HIM A 9T0RV. -nesjw ppsojs iw n0 &fc&uoe of CORRUPTIOD |W HiGM PLAC5S. W jorv ORcefe me ee fORTCRJD REVBV HIS _ R£ aup is sewr Oft the more ooeeuPTKX) IU W6« fUOS W „ to? oue IdSUGS’ TD, gkxoueXee cor e)pnoujw i-pH gar its arms. mr dr k free: press.
