County : AIDS Education Booklet Criticized by Minister

An Anaheim minister and veteran campaigner against gay rights on Wednesday criticized a booklet intended to educate teen-agers about AIDS.

The Rev. Louis Sheldon and his wife, Beverly, objected to listing the AIDS Response Program of Orange County, which is the education project of the Garden Grove-based Gay and Lesbian Community Center, as a contact agency for information on the booklet, “Teens and AIDS.” They urged that only a public agency be listed.

Sheldon took his complaints to the Board of Supervisors a day after the board voted to make the booklet available to junior and senior high school school district superintendents. It will be up to the superintendents and their school boards to decide whether to distribute it.

The booklet, written by a registered nurse, explains how acquired immune deficiency syndrome spreads. But Sheldon, the leader of a political action committee known as the Traditional Values Coalition, criticized it because it does not emphasize sexual abstinence.

The county Health Care Agency and the state Department of Health Services each paid half the $5,000 cost of developing and printing the pamphlet.

Supervisor Harriett Wieder said that traditional values are reflected in the booklet but that “maybe it needs to be stated differently.”

Beverly Sheldon said later that she and her husband might write to school superintendents, urging them not to distribute the booklet as written. Her husband said he believed in the need to educate teen-agers about AIDS but said that other groups had produced better instructional materials.

In the past, Sheldon has lectured against homosexuality, unsuccessfully lobbied Long Beach officials to prohibit a gay pride festival and joined in pressing Gov. George Deukmejian in 1984 to veto a bill barring discrimination in employment against homosexuals. The governor did veto the bill.