Caldara on KBDI's Colorado Inside Out: "[I]f we treated homosexuals the way we treat smokers, there'd be riots in the street"

On the January 3 broadcast of KBDI Channel 12's Colorado Inside Out, Independence Institute President Jon Caldara stated that "if we treated homosexuals the way we treat smokers, there'd be riots in the street." Colorado Media Matters has noted that Caldara has made similar statements in the past (here and here), when as host of Newsradio 850 KOA programs he asserted that smokers "are now the political minority, much like homosexuals have been treated as the politically minority," and that smokers "get less respect than gays."

After Rocky Mountain News reporter Lynn Bartels and Westword editor Patricia Calhoun challenged Caldara's analogy, he later added, "The larger idea here, folks ... we're not as tolerant of certain lifestyles as we are of other lifestyles."

The Colorado Inside Out panel had been discussing Colorado indoor smoking bans, such as the law against smoking in casinos that became effective on January 1.

From the January 3 broadcast of KBDI Channel 12's Colorado Inside Out:

RAJ CHOHAN (host): Mr. Caldara, the closing thought.

CALDARA: You know, we all hate smokers. Let's all agree with it. We all despise smokers; they smell bad, they got bad teeth, they got bad breath. We dislike 'em, but they're easy to beat up, and this is the perfect example of the tyranny of the majority. Since there's more of us now than there are of them, it's easier to throw taxes on them, it's easier to ban smoking in their private establishments and private restaurants. Really, this is the tyranny of the majority, and it's a shame. You know, we used to have a system of liberty here, an idea of liberty that if you didn't want to go to a smoky place, you took the responsibility. You didn't go. If non-smoking establishments are good for business, as I believe they are, over time they will gravitate and have more smoke-free places, more smoke-free casinos. This is not a place for intolerance; this is a place for liberty, and you know, if we treated homosexuals the way we treat smokers, there'd be riots in the street.

CHOHAN: OK.

BARTELS: If we did? I mean --

CALDARA: If we ban them from places? Yes.

BARTELS: Like they didn't used to.

CALDARA: Well, my point being --

BARTLES: Like the military --

CALDARA: My point being --

[crosstalk]

BARTELS: God, where they treat all the gays great.

CALDARA: My point being, we claim to have this great tolerance for different lifestyles, but we certainly don't tolerate people who choose to congregate together and have a beer and a cigarette.

BARTELS: Well, I'm just saying that I think Matthew Shepard's mother would get a kick out of your argument.

CALHOUN: Well, we're also not saying that homosexuals are supposed to have sex in the bars either.

CALDARA: Fair point. Fair point.

[crosstalk]

CALDARA: The larger idea here, folks, the larger idea -- we're not as tolerant of certain lifestyles as we are of other lifestyles.

CHOHAN: OK, fair enough.

—E.B. & J.F.B.