🚀 go-pugleaf

While I'm delighted to hear the support for some future defeat of 
Amendment #2 in Colorado, it's very interesting being 1) a Colorado
resident who 2) worked hard for months to raise money, phone voters, etc.
to defeat #2 in the first place, and now 3) hears blanket criticism of
Colorado.

Please keep in mind, if you come to Colorado for ALA or other business or
for pleasure:

***Aspen, Boulder and Denver have/had gay rights protection in place--
the majority of the residents of those towns are pretty horrified right
now that laws they passed will be overturned.  The restaurant or hotel
whose employees or owners you smugly taunt may BE gay, may well have been
among the majority who voted those protections into law in the first place,
may well be people who voted AGAINST amendment #2 this month.  Please
keep in mind that not every Coloradan is supportive of #2.

***Many top officials worked to defeat #2, appeared publicly on election
night to commiserate, and currently are doing a lot of work to have it
overturned--these people include, but are not limited to--Gov. Roy Romer,
Mayor Wellington Webb (Denver), mayors of Boulder and Aspen, Rep. Pat
Schroeder (who faxed Clinton on election night re: 14th Amendment and 
appending gay rights protection to federal civil rights act), and several
clergy people.

***the bastion of conservatism is Colorado Springs--and before you have at
it freely, I live here, as do many other politically-minded and politically-
active men and women, gay and straight, who dared to put stickers and
posters on our cars and lawns.

Guess I'm just saying that it's always been easy for me, from the outside,
to criticize "Arizona" or "Utah" but now I'm walking in some different shoes
and I hope you all will take a moment to realize that a lot of us are
recovering from the shock of election night, mobilizing statewide, and
hoping that you from outside Colorado will look at people as individuals,
not as an undifferentiated group who supported such an atrocious amendment.

We'd like to keep all the support we've got and add more, not alienate people.

Ronnie Storey
rstorey@csn.org