Discrimination "is still practiced covertly in this country to satisfy various prejudices in many areas of life," she writes.

"But under no circumstances -- employment, housing, job benefits -- is it practiced so overtly and, in most places, under full protection of the law, as against gays and lesbians."

This alone, she says, "should serve as refutation to groups who've asserted recently, in full-page newspaper ads and other forums, that gays can 'fix' themselves ... Who would actively seek out a way of life bringing denied mortgages, denied benefits, denied custody of your own children? It is not the orientation itself that brings these penalties but the prejudice against it."

Sadenwasser says the groups paying for the ads "have plenty of Bible verses to back them up. Unfortunately for them, our law is based not on the Bible but the Constitution...Religion was used by some of these same conservatives to oppose the legal codification of equality for women and blacks. While they were wrong to so vociferously fight change on those counts, they've assured us, they're right this time around. Those of us, gay or straight, who count among our friends and loved ones the only Americans yet facing legally sanctioned discrimination owe it to those who began the fight to see it through."

The column offers a forceful refutation of the ad campaign that extremists have targeted against lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender persons (lgbt) - and she does so in the clear tones and lingering resonance of plain common sense.

The columnist strongly makes a simple point - but one almost universally overlooked by much larger media outlets: that the lgbt community is the only group in America still to face legal discrimination.

Please thank Ellen Sadenwasser and the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer for this direct and directly-voiced commentary, which throws a bucketful of much needed cool rationality on extremists' heated rhetoric.

Contact:
Robert H. Ashley, Editor, and Ellen Sadenwasser, Owensboro
Messenger-Inquirer,
PO Box 1480, Owensboro, KY 42302,
Fax: 502.685.3446