Off the Record

■ Whose side is the White House on, anyway? Cato asks this question in the wake of the high-handed treatment accorded William B. Allen of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Mr. Allen was appointed chairman of the commission by President Reagan. A longtime advocate of a color-blind Constitution, Mr. Allen is no shrinking violet. This spring, for example, he criticized the “country-club Republicans” whose idea of civil rights is to outbid the Democrats.

Most recently Mr. Allen attracted attention with a speech made to a “Symposium on Homosexuality and Public Policy Implications” in Anaheim, California. His speech pointed to the contradictions that crop up once we start inserting into law preferences based on race, sexual orientation, and so forth. The title of the speech—“Blacks? Animals? Homosexuals?: What Is a Minority”— derived from an analogy Mr. Allen once read, to the effect that now that American law recognizes that blacks have rights, it ought to do the same for animals. Before the speech Representative Don Edwards (D., Calif.) wrote a letter asking Mr. Allen not to deliver it, the second time he’d made such a request. Mr. Allen’s response was straightforward enough: “I am not your ‘boy,’ ” he shot back. In the event he did not cancel; about forty gay-rights activists stormed the place to try to prevent him from speaking; his fellow commissioners issued a press release distancing themselves from his position. And now he is no longer chairman.

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■ Whose side is the White House on, anyway? Cato asks this question in the wake of the high-handed treatment accorded William B. Allen of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Mr. Allen was appointed chairman of the commission by President Reagan. A longtime advocate of a color-blind Constitution, Mr. Allen is no shrinking violet. This spring, for example, he criticized the “country-club Republicans” whose idea of civil rights is to outbid the Democrats.

Most recently Mr. Allen attracted attention with a speech made to a “Symposium on Homosexuality and Public Policy Implications” in Anaheim, California. His speech pointed to the contradictions that crop up once we start inserting into law preferences based on race, sexual orientation, and so forth. The title of the speech—“Blacks? Animals? Homosexuals?: What Is a Minority”— derived from an analogy Mr. Allen once read, to the effect that now that American law recognizes that blacks have rights, it ought to do the same for animals. Before the speech Representative Don Edwards (D., Calif.) wrote a letter asking Mr. Allen not to deliver it, the second time he’d made such a request. Mr. Allen’s response was straightforward enough: “I am not your ‘boy,’ ” he shot back. In the event he did not cancel; about forty gay-rights activists stormed the place to try to prevent him from speaking; his fellow commissioners issued a press release distancing themselves from his position. And now he is no longer chairman.