Letters To Editor -- June 14, 2007
Letters To Editor -- June 14, 2007
To the editor:
Barry Goldwater, the late Republican senator from
Arizona, is commonly regarded as the father of the modern conservative movement.
Although he suffered a landslide defeat as the Republican nominee for president
in the 1964 election, his ideas, his forthrightness and his integrity galvanized
the conservative wing of the Republican party, breathed life into the nascent
Republican state organizations in the South, and paved the way to a conservative
Republican reawakening that has shaped American politics for the past 43 years.
Georgia was one of the six
states that gave Goldwater their electoral votes in 1964. There may be many
people in Northeast Georgia who know about Goldwater and have a high regard for
him. Not many, however, can make the same claim that I can: I am proud to affirm
that I campaigned door-to-door for Goldwater's 1964 candidacy.
There were a few things that Goldwater disliked. He disliked big, bloated
government. “A government that is big enough to give you all you want,” he
warned, “is big enough to take it all away.” He disliked socialism and
collectivism, promising that, if he became president, this country would not
“wander down . . . the dead-end streets of collectivism.” And Goldwater deplored
racial prejudice and discrimination. He helped to desegregate the family-run
Goldwater's store in Phoenix, the Sky Harbor Airport, Phoenix's school system,
the city's lunch counters, and the Arizona Air National Guard. “I am unalterably
opposed to discrimination of any sort,” he once declared, and that was how he
lived his life.
As gays and lesbians across the United States began to press their case for the
same freedoms and protections that others have, Barry Goldwater came to support
their desire for equal opportunity, too.
“It's time America realized that there was no gay exemption in the right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence. Job discrimination against gays or anybody else is contrary to each of these
founding principles,” Goldwater observed.
On April 24, of this year,
U.S. Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Deborah Pryce
(R-Ohio), and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) reintroduced the proposed Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 2015). But as far back as June 1994, Goldwater,
writing on the Washington Post's op-ed page, urged Congress to support that
year's version of the bill. Among Fortune 500 companies, 433 of them (90
percent) include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies. A 2001
Gallup poll showed that 85 percent of Americans believe that gays and lesbians
should not lose their jobs because of their sexual orientation. H.R. 2015 is a
bill whose time has clearly come.
“Employment discrimination based on sexual orientation is a real problem in our
society,” Goldwater advised. “From coast to coast and throughout the heartland,
regular hardworking Americans are being denied the right to roll up their
sleeves and earn a living. That is just plain wrong.”
I hope that Congress will heed Goldwater's call. The only thing that I would
have enjoyed more would have been if the signature at the bottom of the Act of
Congress were that of President Barry Goldwater.
Barry D. Friedman
Dahlonega
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| Last Updated: Thursday, June 14, 2007 |
Copyright © 2007 The White County News
Barry M. Goldwater (1909-1998)
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