I’m annoyed that both President Clinton and Senator Dole avoided answering the question posed by the minister of the Metropolitan Community Church during the presidential debate.

She asked, “Why do people keep referring to equal rights for gays and lesbians as ‘special’ rights?”

Clinton and Dole both avoided answering this question, and Dole even used the term “special rights” himself. I have no idea what he means.

A “special” right would be if gay people were asking to be exempt from paying income tax, or from obeying the speed limit.

Laws to prevent discrimination don’t give people any “special” rights, but ensure that they have the same rights everyone else takes for granted — the right to rent an apartment, the right to find and hold a job, to keep custody of their children, to serve in the military, and to be in other ways treated as equals.

Perhaps the media has contributed to the confusion. By repeatedly referring to basic civil rights as “gay rights” they’ve implied that gay people are asking for something special. They are not. Gay people are not asking for special rights, or quotas. They just ask that people stop singling them out for persecution.

Civil rights laws are not about adding rights, they’re about righting wrongs.

There is no guarantee of equality without equal opportunity. Clinton and Dole should both have made that clear.

Alan L. Light

Iowa City, Iowa