Think About:
1. What is Chavez’s perspective on “homosexual rights”?
2. Why does Chavez hold this perspective?
3. According to Chavez, to what extent was the movement for LGBTQ rights part of the broader movement for Civil Rights?
Civil rights protections ought not to be extended to Gays and homosexuals should be encouraged to stay in the closet, the staff director of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission said in an interview with a New Christian Right publication.
Linda Chavez, staff director of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, also said “the homosexual rights movement has really damaged what ought to be the privacy of homosexuals” by insisting on civil rights protections.
“...What you are really doing was inviting public scorn and also public persecution, when you attempted to make these issues a matter of public debate,” Chavez told the Family Protection Report, a publication of the ultraconservative Free Congress Foundation, which also sponsored publication of The Homosexual Network, a book alleging that the Gay rights movement receives in excess of $250 million in public funds each year. The Family Protection Report was launched as a support newsletter for the Family Protection Act, a New Christian Rights proposal that included provisions to deny Gays and Gay rights supporters any right to participate in federal programs… “There is a big move afoot to have sexual preference included in the list of so-called protected classes that would come in, not just for housing, but in other aspects-of the civil rights law as well,” Chavez said in the March 1984 newsletter.
“I have very strong reservations about including sexual preference as one of the so-called protected classes,” Chavez said. “I think that distinctions based on gender ought to be protected because those are invidious distinctions when it comes to employment, but preference is not the same thing and it certainly is not the same thing as race or religion. And, I have very strong reservations about expanding civil rights laws to include protections for those whose so-called lifestyles are different than the majority.
“The old Commission did not believe that it was this Commission’s jurisdiction to take a look at sexual preference,” Chavez noted. “I don’t know whether they had a position about whether sexual preference ought to be included under the Civil Rights Act. And, my guess is that that issue is going to come before this Commission. As you well know, at the federal level there is a bill that would make sexual preference one of the protected classes.”
Citation: U.S. Civil Rights Director Attacks Gays, 1984.