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Tuesday, January 19, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
City should support move to end gay discrimination
It's really just a case of simple justice. An easy choice between banning discrimination or endorsing it.
The Lawrence City Commission tonight will consider amending the city's human rights ordinance to prohibit discrimination against homosexuals. The ordinance presently prohibits housing, job and governmental discrimination based on sex, race, religion, national origin, age, ancestry or handicap.
The city Human Relations Commission, which recommended the amendment, reported at last week's commission meeting that discrimination against homosexuals does occur in Lawrence. Several members of Lawrence's gay community backed that report and also charged that gays in Lawrence had received death threats.
The commission cannot pretend that discrimination against nomosexuals doesn't exist. History, common sense and law have shown that such a conclusion would be unethical evidence.
The commission should pass the amendment. To do otherwise would be a gross act of intolerance and bigotry.
human relations report should be more than enough evidence And the commission cannot ignore the fact that opponents at last week's meeting didn't deny the discrimination reports. Instead, they argued that the amendment should be defeated on a moral and religious basis. In essence, they asked the commission to endorse and impose their religious beliefs on the city of Lawrence.
This is a civil rights issue. The commission must defend the rights of all people — gay, heterosexual, white, black or blue. Everyone has a right to work and live where he wants.
Todd Cohen for the editorial board
New plates need a facelift
The new Kansas license plates are attracting attention for one reason - they are incredibly unly.
These new and "improved" plates with the three-letter three-numeral numbering system are showing up all over Lawrence.
The design of the new plates includes stencil-type lettering of the word "Kansas," designed by the state Department of Commerce, formerly the Kansas Department of Economic Development. The plates also feature a piece of wheat and a dark blue band across the top.
The new SAM 123 numbering system will reduce the number of classifications of license plates and make it easier to distribute the plates between counties. But the trademark county classification will be missed, despite the fact that county initials appear on a microscopic sticker in the upper left corner.
The plates look like a design-by-committee project, trying to get everyone's ideas into the design.
Well, anything to make things easier on the state.
Kansans are sentenced to five years with these license plates. With any luck, the next license plate design committee will work a little harder to give Kansans something they can be proud of.
Jody Dickson for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board
Other Voices
Our own, our native son, a president! Ah, to be close to the heady wine of ultimate power.
The Wichita Eagle-Beacon, usually a model of rationality in its editorial pages, endorsed Bole Dole for president six months ago. Oh, but why not? Think of the invitations to the White House. Isn't Dole more likely to allow chats and interviews with the tamed dogs of the Kansas press than those who growl at him?
Now news has arrived that Steve Rose, publisher of the Sun Newspapers, has been named as one of the initial members of the Johnson County Steering Committee of the Dole for President Campaign.
Should Sun readers worry that their local paper will be objective in its coverage of Bob Dole?
Oh, and Steve Rose is also president this year of the Suburban Newspaper Association. Is it a conflict of interest for him to take official part in trying to get Dole elected? Oh well, that's for the Suburban Newspaper Association to decide. Steve is beyond such a decision because the lure of filing the string of presidential power through the ring in his nose is too strong to resist.
Bob Dole might go on to be a great president. One of his first tests would be to distinguish valued advisers from boot-ly scaphycons.
Olathe Daily News Olathe, Kan
News staff
Alison Young...Editor
Todd Cohen...Managing editor
Rob Knapp...News editor
Alain Player...Editorial editor
Joseph Rebello...Campus editor
Jennifer Rowland...Planning editor
Anne Luscombe...Sports editor
Stephen Wade...Photo editor
Richard Stewart...Graphics editor
Tom Eben...General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Kelly Scherer...Business manager
Clark Massad...Retail sales manager
Brad Lenhart...Campus sales manager
Robert Hughes...Marketing manager
Kurt Messersmith...Production manager
Greg Knipe...National manager
Kris Schorno...Traffic manager
Jennie Brown...Classified manager
Jeanne Hlowe...Sales and marketing adviser
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jan.15,1929-Apr.4,1968
The only way the dream will die, is if we allow it to.
KLINE
Gucci introduces chic to banking
Swans and sunrises might be pretty, but designer checks bounce
A Chicago bank has hired a creature named Gucci to design art new checks and checkbooks.
Gucci, who is famous for designing women's shoes and purses, has created checks with swans, daisies, mist-shrouded trees, rippling water, a sunrise and even a seagull against a lavender background. Gucci is not the hairy-chested type.
The bank thinks this will attract new customers. Maybe it will, but I won't be one of them.
Banks should be serious. My attitude toward them is the same as that of Mrs. Grobnik, who was Slats Grobnik's mother. "A good bank," she always said, "should look like a jail, except the bank's walls should be thicker."
Whenever she made a deposit — and she never made withdrawals — Mrs. Robnik would walk around the lobby to see if they had hired any new guards. If she found one, she would ask him:
"Are you a good shot?"
Are you a good shot?
They always said yes, so she'd ask.
They always said yes, so she'd ask:
They always said yes, so she asks
"How many people have you shot?"
How many people have you met?
If they hadn't shot anybody, she would go to the chief cashier and ask why they were hiring inexperienced people.
Sometimes she would purposely include a half-dollar in her deposit. If the cashier didn't bite it, she would triumphantly report him to the vice president.
Once in a while, she would set the alarm clock for 1 a.m. Then she'd get up and walk to the bank and rap on the door. When the night guard peered out, she'd say: "Remember, no sleeping."
After using the same bank for 24 years, she abruptly closed her account and put her money somewhere else. The reason was that a cashier had grown a mustache.
Mike
Royko
Syndicated Columnist
"The next thing," she said, "is he will take my money and run away to Las Vegas."
I'm sure that Mrs. Grobnik would not have felt comfortable with Gucci's checkbooks. In fact, she never in her life used a checkbook. She thought that anybody who would put their money in a basket or put a nickel writing a check to get some of it, should be put away by his relatives for his own good.
Mrs. Grobnik finally stopped dealing with banks entirely when she found out that they loaned money. She had always thought they just stored it away. It was her opinion that anybody who borrowed money did so because they didn't have enough of their own, which means they were bums. And she didn't want to trust her money to an institution that would loan it out to bums.
I'm not quite as conservative as Mrs. Grobnik about such matters, but the business of the Gucci checks would make me nervous.
For one thing, his name isn't just plain Gucci. No Italian mother is going to send a boy into the world with no more of a handle than "Gucci." An Italian priest baptize a baby as plain "GUCCI."
Yet, when I called the bank and asked them
what Gucci's full name was, they said they didn't know.
Maybe being just Gucci is enough for the fashion circles in New York, but a bank ought to get a guy's first name before they do any kind of business with him. If they hire somebody who goes around saying, "I am Gucci," they might decide to lend money to people who walk in and say, "I am Smith — give me a thou."
I am not opposed to adding a little art to checks. But it should be something serious. When a person writes a check he shouldn't think about daisies, seagulls, ripping waters, sunrises, trees and other pleasant things. He is spending money, and he should think dark thoughts.
If there are going to be daisies on the check, they should be surrounding a gravestone with his name on it. If there are going to be rippling waters, a hand should be sticking out of the water. If there is a tree, it should have a noosed rope attached to a limb.
I'd like to check checkbooks with pictures of a turnip, with a drop or two of blood oozing out of it.
Or maybe a bleak, rickety old building with a sign over the door that says: "Poor House."
Many men would like checks for their wives that would bear a drawing of a widow in black, sitting at a lawyer's desk, with the lawyer saying: "Well you can always sell the furniture."
Married men could use personalized checks with a snappy slogan across the top. Maybe something like: "Bartender: Please don't cash this. Signed, His children."
Mike Royko is on vacation. While he is away, we are reprinting some of his favorite columns. This first appeared June 18, 1970.
AIDS calls for realism
In the Jan. 13 issue of the Kansan, in an article titled "Condom handouts attract attention," Don Hermesch of the Great Commission Students organization stated that "There are some sincere people in Senate, but there are
homosexuals in Senate and on the task force. What we have is a homosexual response to the AIDS issue."
as a member of Senate, and one who voted in favor of the programs, I would like to respond. In fact, what we have is a responsible program instituted by concerned individuals dealing with the issues it is issue. What Don Hemesch and his group of intellectual midgets are dealing with is unclear.
Father Vince Krische of the St. Lawrence Catholic Center stated that the program "...promotes promiscuity and does not say anyone should be a threat to people about AIDS, not give out condoms."
Vince's point that handing out condoms says
nothing about morals is absolutely correct. There is no link between condoms and intimacy. His statement regarding education is right in line with his church's doctrine, which, in effect, educates people about AIDS but does nothing to deal with it responsibly.
In other words, Don and Vince preach death from their self-righteous little pedestals.
Thank God that there are people, homosexual or not, who are willing to live in the 20th century. If Don and Vince ran the show, we would all be well-informed on but the fast track toward a slow and painful end.
Jon Gregor Leavenworth junior
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed