The Daily Sentinel from Grand Junction, Colorado • 4

y. i Page 4A Tuesday, March 15, 1994 The Daily Sentinel Pro-choice forces gain no ground John Loo ill Daily Sentinel editorials Justice system at work sponsored by radical groups, and that was true here. The sponsors included Queer Nation, an anarchist youth group, Sister Serpents (an underground womens collective) and the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican POWs and Political Prisoners. A few demonstrators wore patches that said, Feminist Witch, and Support Vaginal Pride. One placard, the( only nod toward humor, showed the face of Michael Griffin, killer of Dr.

Gunn, with the slogan: Life what a beautiful sentence. The church was expecting trouble. In 1992, a dozen members of Queer Nation were invited as guests to the Easter services here. They interrupted the sermon, blew a whistle and put condoms in the collection plate. Six were arrested.

Since then, car tires have been slashed, cars vandalized, and pro-gay or pro-choice graffiti sprayed on the church. The night before the rally, Choice or Else was sprayed on the church, and the church reported that rocks were thrown at the glass doors. No damage was done the doors had unbreakable glass panels. The building bristled with security people with walkie-talkies. The police were there too, cordoning off demonstrators from the church steps.

About 30 men from the congregation clogged the steps to prevent an invasion by demonstrators. But the air of tension dissipated rather quickly. The demonstrators seemed disorganized. With weeks of preparation and 10 sponsoring groups, only a hundred or so people had turned out. The most common chant was Racist, sexist, anti-gayborn-again bigots go away.

The racist charge is particularly weird. The Armitage congregation is about 40 percent white, 30 percent black and 30 percent Hispanic. For born-again bigots, the congregation has made an unusually successful effort to cut across racial lines. While the crowd was still chanting about racism, a group of young black men showed up wearing long red jackets that said SHS security. They were from a Southside black Baptist church, Sweet Holy Spirit, here to protect a fellow evangelical church.

The woman with the bullhorn tried to lead the crowd in singing Little Boxes," a song about suburban conformity popularized by Pete Seeger in the 1960s. This may have been an attempt to mock the small coffins sometimes used in the burial of dead infants and fetuses. Next, five yellow buses rolled up and a seemingly endless stream of people poured out. Theyre bringing in the homeless, one demonstrator said in dismay. But no, they were evangelicals from a second Southside church, mostly black families, showing up for the service.

More than a thousand people were then in the churph. The security men had been singing all along, picking fast-paced music that almost matched the volume of the demonstrators. Then they gave way to a choir of black kids. The demonstrators were done for. The kids were too good and too loud.

The rally trailed off strangely. At the bullhorn, a lesbian announced that her sexuality is so hot that when she has an orgasm, the pillars of patriarchy crumble. This was too much for one cop, who turned aside quickly and broke up laughing. Sunny Chapman, a rally organizer, said later, I was surprised at how strongly they responded, how threatened they were by our presence. We had no intention of having any type of confrontation.

What they did intend, Chapman said, was to apply pressure on members of the church to stop protesting at abortion clinics. Instead, the church just called in sympathizers. So it goes. Another inconclusive skirmish in the abortion wars. Universal Press Syndicate DEMONSTRATORS WERE SUPPOSED to bring whistles and other noisemakers to drown out church services.

The Womens Action Coalition (WAC) said it was bringing its drum corps. Fliers posted around town to draw a major crowd urged demonstrators to dress to shock ANDOR IMPRESS; come in costume and show your rage. But I counted only one or two whistles, no drum corps, and just one demonstrator either shocking or impressing us, by dressing as a demon. This was the pro-choice Night of Resistance in Chicago. Rallies were taking place around the country to mark the anniversary of the murder of abortion doctor David Gunn.

The Chicago demonstration was outside Armitage Baptist Church during its regular Wednesday service. Armitage, located in a huge former Masonic temple on Logan Square, is a center, for pro-life activities. All three pastors have been arrested in clinic protests; one of them 11 times. To much of the congregation, sitting down in front of abortion clinics is a form of non-violent civil disobedience worth going to jail for. Victoria Leyva, a community organizer and member of the congregation, says, We dont scream at women and call them murderers, though Ive seen that happen.

We have to shout the other side is blowing whistles but we shout that there are alternatives let us help. Rallies that stress rage, street theater and church disruption tend to be the ones A good insight into how deferential our justice system is toward the rights of convicted criminals can be found in the case of Mr. Shannon Bear Smith. Smith pleaded guilty last fall in Garfield County to four counts of statutory rape. He originally faced 17 counts of sexual assault and one of intimidating a witness.

The plea bargain Smith struck allowed him to plead guilty to just the four statutory rape charges. Smith became Mesa Countys problem when he was sentenced to six years of probation, and told to do it here because of conflicts with the judges in Garfield County. Terms of his probation forbade him from any unsupervised conduct with women under 18 and required him to attend sex offender counseling. Since he came here he has done nothing but repeatedly violate the terms of his probation. On numerous occasions he has had contact with at least two women who were under 18, and the contact was anything but pleasant.

He. was kicked out of his sex-offender counseling program because his therapist determined the counseling sessions were failing. One might reasonably conclude that since he has failed so miserably to comply with the terms of his probation that he would be in prison. Probation, after all, is a privilege. Its not a right.

Or is it? Shannon Smith is still at large in Mesa County. Its been more than a month since he was advised that he had violated his probation. At a hearing Thursday he said he wasnt guilty of the violations. In the courtroom at the time was at least one of the underage girls with whom he has had contact and his probation officer. Conceivably they could have testified to Smiths probation violations, and Mr.

Smith could be eating breakfast behind bars this morning. But thats not what happened. Instead, there will be yet another hearing, this one on March 31. In the meantime, he will remain free. Law-abiding citizens should know that a criminal who has done nothing since his conviction other than flout the system that has been too lenient with him is still on the streets.

As critics snipe, millions still uninsured Tom Toepcn 7WE 7BOU6U WOT THE CLINTON HEALTH CARS PLAN a Hank Browns blind eye few months ago, this il editorial xlli sat down with woolgrowers. Browns answer, such we remember it, had THAT HAVE DJVA THE COSTS Of US. fEALTJ CARE FAR. ABOVE THOSE Ofi Any other wourro ALrzD country. zzr 1 1 1 1 HEALTH CARE REFORM is shrinking faster than last weeks pay, and if the capering nay-sayers arent checked, it could disappear altogether.

President Clintons plan opened to strong applause. Polls at first logged support at a hefty 56 percent. The worst that GOP Senate Leader Bob Dole cou ink of to say at the time and Dole has a fecund imagination for the grim was that the plan was a little overgenerous and underfunded. Even business organizations were interested. Most businesses provide health coverage anyway, and the tradeoff for their required participation would be sharply lower costs down the road.

Then the pros got to work against the plan. Mind you, the Clinton proposal isnt sacrosanct. The president himself has said hes flexible. That was an invitation to open and serious debate. What we got instead were the worried-sick Harry and Louise of the TV commercials.

Harry and Louise were "us fretting in our place that the plan was somehow going to jerk us around. But Harry and Louise, of course, werent us. They were creatures of the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices, a front for the Health Insurance Association of America. National radio right-winger Rush Lim-baugh all mouth and no responsibility took to trashing the Clinton plan almost daily. And the GOP leaned on the business organizations to disavow the plan in which they initially had seen considerable merit.

All of that has so eaten away at support that some key Democrats are now hedging. Senior citizen groups, though they were dutifully bribed with new prescription coverage, have gone soft. And the political action committees of this and that medical as something to do with the fact that wool subsidy payments are made from a revenue pool made up of import fees on fo reign-produced wool and not general taxpayer revenues a rather dubious distinction in that earmarked funds ranging from everything from Social Security revenues, to airport trust funds, to highway user trust funds all are counted against the federal deficit. For that matter, Brown has made a lot of dubious distinctions regarding federal agricultural subsidies. In fact, hes often cast a blind eye on them.

Now comes word that Brown has collected more than $32,000 in recent years not to grow crops on his Colorado ranches, one in lower Mesa County. For shame. Brown should practice what he preaches for others. Colorado Sen. Hank Brown to discuss wilderness water issues, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitts proposed grazing reforms, Clintonom-ics and sundry other topics of public interest.

Still fresh in everyones memory was the colossal political battle that was fought over Bill Clintons first budget, a battle where Brown (per his usual custom) was on the side of angels as a voice of common sense opposing millions of dollars worth of subsidies for honey producers and other inane examples of federal spending. News types being news types, we felt obligated to ask Brown how he could be such a scourge of honeybee producers while being one of the more conspicuous congressional champions insupport of continued federal subsidy payments to western me rcal ttAtn cue? turns ft rut Maybe this wholesale slaughter of ideas will stand revealed in the long run as a creative winnowing that produced a solid program for universal coverage and cost restraint, but right now it looks as though were lapsing into the swoon of indecision that left the nation a political couch potato(e) through the dozen Reagan-Bush years. Meanwhile, lest we forget: Some 37 million of us are still uninsured at any given time and more are urfder-insured. An increasing number are being rejected for health insurance. And without change, the United States will soon be spending some 20 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on health about double what our industrial peers (and competitors) spend.

Cox News Service interest are picking off congressional stragglers. With the presidents plan undermined, Republicans are now backing away not only from any engagement with the Clinton proposal but even from the split-the-difference approach by Rep. Jjm Cooper at first a GOP refuge. Most Republicans seem unwilling to do more at this point than tinker with the system to meet two very limited and very partisan goals. They want to make the middle-class happy with protection from lost coverage and from being socked with outsized premiums.

And they are pushing malpractice limits, part of a supposedly populist antilawyer campaign by which the GOP, in reality, champions the corporate defense bar over plaintiffs trial lawyers. 0 Otters: Sentinel readers comment on district attorney and Fruita shooting Bob Bakers letters in the March 10 edition of The Daily Sentinel. Ms. Koppenhafer said, He could have gone back to the street and called the sheriff. Why? Officer Dailey didnt have to call the sheriff.

The law says that an officer who starts to pursue a vehicle inside the city limits may pursue until the person is caught. Officer Dailey could have chased him to the state line. Mr. Baker said the officer should be in jail. What for? We hire our police to uphold the law.

This man broke three laws: 1) When you are old enough to drive, you know you do not drink and drive. 2) When an officer activates his lights and siren, you stop. You are admitting guilt by running. 3) At 7:10 p.m. it is too dark to know if a man has a gun when he comes out of a car cussing and threatening an officer.

Even an officer has a right to defend himself. Its OK to use your heart to sympathize with the family over the loss of a son: I doubt if even a father could have talked to a son when he was drinking. This officer is mature and well-trained. It was not he who was breaking the law. V.B.

WARD Fruita Unacceptable actions led to shooting death Editor: Im tired of the hand-wringing liberalism where the police are depicted as evil and reckless and the victim is seen as innocent of any wrongdoing. The fact is Deano would be alive today, except his personal death wish caught up to him. His own actions that night are what got him into that fix. He was old enough to be out on his own. He should have been old enough to obey the taw.

His daddy should not have had to even attempt to control his out-of-control son. The boy brought it all on himself. This garbage about a happy drunk is a lie. Anyone who has enough alcohol or drugs in his system that he cannot Police needed to back off Editor: The death of the Fruita man by the Fruita police officer is not the first time men have been killed by the police when they could have backed off and let things cool. When a maij is killed, hes gone forever.

It looks to me that the Fruita policeman was more mad than worried about his own safety. It looks like Mesa County District Attorney Daniels was a fox guard- ing the chicken house. You could tell on television by the look on his face that he didnt believe1 his own ruling. Maybe he 1 should go find other work. -When a police officer kills, hes not using common sense and is in the wrong job.

A.N. SHEPHERD Mesa Officer didnt break law 1 1 Editor: I want to answer Ms. Koppenhafer and I comprehend that he is out of control is not to be trusted as a happy drunk. Deano died as a direct result of his own unacceptable actions. If he was a big enough boy to be on his own that night, then his daddy ought to stop running interference for a boy who should have been big enough to behave.

I see nothing to indicate that Officer Dailey was out of control or had singled Deano out for some sort of vengeance thing. I have heard a lot of changing stories from the friends of Deano, and the pictures of Deano seem to revolve around booze. It was unfortunate that he died, but he brought it on by his own actions. ROBERT J. BURKHOLDER Fruita Petition collector misrepresented issue Editor: Recently I was approached at our local Safeway store by a woman who asked me if I would like to sign a petition against gambling in Manitou Springs.

I looked at the document and noticed a sample ballot question at the top with yes or "no boxes. The no box was checked with a yellow highlighter as were several other phrases within the question. While I was reading the document, the woman continued to ask others if they would like to sign a petition against gaming in Manitou. Many if not all said they would. I asked her specifically if this was a petition to oppose gambling.

She assured me it was and along with many others, signed. I have since discovered that I was duped by the pro-gaming folks with paid petition collectors. If you, too, were fooled by the appearance of the petition and the statements of the signature collector, please write to the Secretary of State and ask her to remove your name and look into the practices of the petitioners. Because the petition collector was deceptive and misrepresented the issue, I cannot believe that this is an acceptable way of getting something on the ballot. LANA SINCLAIR Manitou Springs.