Western Front - 1997 January 24

              FRIDAY Keroua R
S a y C-xieei^p^
Page 9
WESTERN FRONT
Western Washington University Volume 99 Issue 4 Bellingham, Washington
There goes the neighborhood? Lawyer discusses
gay-marriage case
Front/Tim Klein
Forest Decker, 18, and Sharon Plaster, 17, linger outside of Cellophane Square Thursday.
City to loitering kids:
get off the sidewalk
By Jana Alexander
The Western Front
Starting this summer, the City
of Bellingham will enforce its
ban on sitting and lying down on
sidewalks.
The Pedestrian Interference
Ordinance #10371, which passed
in 1992, was exhumed from the
city books to deal with com­plaints
the Public Safety com­mittee
heard on Jan. 21.
Merchants complained that
large numbers of teenagers hang­ing
out downtown are intimidat­ing.
Mayor Mark Asmundson
said the problem can be man­aged,
but it cannot be solved.
"Living in America, as we all
do, we know that there are con­stitutional
requirements that we
are all sworn to uphold,"
Asmundson said.
When large groups of kids
assemble it tends to make some
people nervous, and things occa­sionally
can get out of hand,
Asmundson said. He added that
the issue needs to be addressed
without infringing on people's
civil rights.
The juvenile court is handled
by Whatcom County; juveniles
are not punished by city courts.
The city cannot do much to
ease the minds of merchants.
The city police can only do so
much, said Don Pierce,
Bellingham Chief of Police.
"We are not interested in bluff­ing
people about what they can
and cannot do," Pierce said. "It's
not really at this point and time a
crime problem. It's an order
maintenance problem."
The police have taken mea­sures
in response to illegal activ­ity.
Beat officers, surveillance
cameras and high intensity light­ing
have been used.
Pierce suggested community
members" take part with their
own prevention methods.
"If, as a community, we want
to be different we have to make a
difference," Pierce said.
The city, police are working
with the Railroad Avenue
Merchants Association. Pierce
suggested merchants eat lunch
together to discourage teenage
loiterers.
A Block Watch Program,
which is designed to raise com­munity
awareness of criminal
activity, is also endorsed by the
city police.
By Aleesha Towns
The Western Front
Evan Wolfson shared the hope
of a dream nearing fulfillment
Wednesday night in the Viking
Union.
Wolfson, co-counsel in the
ground-breaking gay marital
rights case Baehr v. Miike, car­ried
the message of equal rights
for gay and lesbians all over the
country.
"We are in a strug­gle
here, not just for
gay people, not just
for marriage, but for
those of us who
believe this is a
country where peo­ple
have the right to
be both different and
_equaL, We believe
that you shouldn't
have to give up dif­ferences
just to be
equal," Wolfson said in a press
conference prior to his speech.
Baehr v. Miike was filed in
Hawaii in 1991 after three same-sex
couples were refused mar­riage
licenses. The case was
denied in lower courts; the cou­ples
went on to appeal to the
State Supreme Court in 1993. In
September 1996, the case went to
trial. Wolfson said after three
months of deliberation, the judge
ruled that the state of Hawaii had
not shown a single reason gay
and lesbian couples should not
wed. The state of Hawaii
appealed the decision, and the
case will return to the courts in
the next few months.
"Allowing gay couples to
marry will hurt no one," Wolfson
said. He hopes that within the
year gay people in Hawaii will be
able to enjoy the legal interde­pendence
that heterosexual peo­ple
have taken for granted.
The retaliation of conservative
groups led by the Christian
Coalition and Pat Robertson has
already started.
In July 1996, Congress passed
the Defense of Marriage Act,
which bans federal recognition of
same-sex marriages and allows
each state to ignore such mar­riages
performed in any other
state. "The backlash has begun
even before we lash," Wolfson
said.
Wolfson is the senior staff
attorney at Lambda Legal
Defense and Education Fund.
Lambda is considered the equiva­lent
of the ACLU for homosexual
people. It has handled many
famous cases relating to gay and
lesbian people, including the
right of admittance into the
armed forces.
Wolfson's call to action was
clear. He encouraged audience
members to "beat back backlash"
by resisting discriminating laws
on the state level.
"Your congressmen would love
to hear from you," was his
reminder that the battle is not
over for gay and lesbian activists.
The second step is to educate het­erosexual
citizens on gay/lesbian
issues. "Most Americans do not
support discrimination," Wolfson
said.
Bad weed puts student in hospital
By Kristen T. Paulson
The Western Front .
If you smoke pot, read this
before you load your next bowl.
Two students, possibly four,
got sick last Thursday after smok­ing
marijuana. One student had
to be transported to St. Joseph's
Hospital. Campus police are
warning Western students who
smoke marijuana that their pot
may be very dangerous.
Police posted notices through­out
campus which read in part:
"The illegality of possessing
marijuana not withstanding, this
batch appears to have additional
hazards in the form of an immedi­ate
health risk. University Police
encourage anyone possessing
marijuana in the past two weeks
to dispose of it."
One student suffered from
extreme nausea, while students
who were present, presumably
smoking the same marijuana, also
reported nausea and other symp­toms.
University police were
called at 8:25 p.m. to Higginson
Hall to transport the sickest stu­dent
to the hospital.
"We had a call at one of the res­idence
halls. An individual had
used some marijuana and became
ill," Chief of University Police
Doug Gill said.
"A second party complained as
well, and we had some second­hand
reports of two others
(becoming ill)," Gill said.
"Apparently, there is some
marijuana available in the com­munity
that contains some sub­stance
that can cause severe ill­ness
when smoked. Symptoms
include shortness of breath and
nausea, sometimes with extensive
vomiting," according to the
notice.
Gill would not speculate on the
reason the students got sick.
"That can happen," he said. The
student was taken to St. Joseph's
Hospital and released in satisfac­tory
condition the following day.
This hasn't happened before,
"but there have certainly been
overdoses of several drugs," Gill
said.