Where Oregon Could Go Wrong : Measure 9 would embed condemnation of homosexuality into state constitution

During the Republican convention, what troubled many about the party’s militant proclamation of “family values� was the suggestion that the power of government was soon to be extended into the home. What sort of family counts as a real family? What sorts of sexual relations are permitted and forbidden?

Americans have not been accustomed to hearing these private matters debated by presidential candidates as if they were political matters. But times are changing: We need look no further than Oregon to see where the political enforcement of “normality� can lead.

Measure 9, on Oregon’s ballot, asks the voters to answer yes or no to the following question: “Shall constitution be amended to require that all governments discourage homosexuality, other listed ‘behaviors,’ and not facilitate or recognize them?�

The state will be required, if the measure passes, not just to refrain from policies allegedly encouraging homosexuality, such as the very use of the phrase sexual orientation , but also to “assist in setting a standard for Oregon’s youth that recognizes homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism and masochism as abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse. . . . “

The four terms homosexuality , pedophilia , sadism and masochism recur like a mantra in this measure, and for a reason only too repugnantly apparent. The Oregon Citizens Alliance, the Christian-right organization that put the measure on the ballot, aims at shame by association.

Pedophilia is undeniably “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse.� Certain kinds of punishing, or self-punishing, behavior may also deserve those labels, though the line is hard to draw. But homosexuality is indeed an orientation. It will not be eliminated in the homosexual minority--nor, for that matter, will heterosexuality be encouraged in the majority--by any set of repressive laws.

Oregon’s Measure 9, in short, is as foolish as it is cruel, and Oregonians will disgrace not just themselves but all Americans if they vote it into law.