AIDS Law Opponents Worked Fast

Until the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition swung into high gear Friday, public opinion had appeared to favor a proposed Orange County AIDS anti-discrimination ordinance. But from then until Monday, telephone calls in opposition--the most for any issue this year--swamped the Board of Supervisors’ offices.

The result, Sheldon claimed Tuesday, was the 3-2 defeat of the ordinance, similar to measures already passed in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco and Alameda counties.

“We had clear indications from (Supervisor) Don Roth and from Gaddi (Vasquez) that they would vote against it. We had not spoken to Roger (Stanton). He was the unknown,” Sheldon said.

Sheldon, an ordained minister in the conservative Presbyterian Church of America, said he was unaware of the ordinance until last Wednesday, when his wife, Beverly, learned of it as a member of a subcommittee of the county-sponsored HIV Advisory Committee, which had proposed the ordinance.

Sheldon said he then spent nearly $2,000 mailing out flyers and tele-copying the proposed ordinance to his supporters, including more than 800 churches in Orange County whose members formed a telephone bank.

Sheldon figures their efforts drew an estimated 175 conservative Christians to Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors’ meeting in Santa Ana, including Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton). Sheldon said his group alerted Dannemeyer that the ordinance would be considered Tuesday. The congressman was one of 21 people to speak against the measure.

They succeeded in defeating the ordinance, he said, because “we made a commitment in our ministry to educate our people about what the homosexual networks are doing.” While many studies now support the idea that homosexuality is biologically rooted, Sheldon said gay rights groups have “sought to change the regular, true nature of minority status” to include “behavior-based status.”

But the former pastor agreed that it takes money to succeed. “That greases the skids to make the whole thing move,” said Sheldon, 55, now a full-time lobbyist for the Anaheim-based coalition that he formed eight years ago and which he claimed now represents 6,000 churches statewide.

Fighting Abortion

Besides opposing anti-discrimination ordinances protecting homosexuals, the coalition’s agenda includes fighting abortion, pornography and school-based health clinics, as well as promoting creationism and sexual abstinence for equal time in public classrooms.

He said the annual budget for the Traditional Values Coalition and its educational arm, the California Coalition for Traditional Values, is $300,000--raised from a constituency that includes evangelical conservative Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as orthodox Jews--”any religious persons of any persuasion who believe there are moral absolutes.”

The coalition also led the opposition to a gay-rights parade, considered in May by the Santa Ana City Council. While the city granted a permit for a September festival and parade, Sheldon claimed victory for having limited the venue to the civic center’s Plaza of the Flags. Santa Ana City Manager David N. Ream said he had passed Sheldon’s suggestion along to festival organizers but did not necessarily endorse it.

Sheldon said the coalition is providing only “moral support” to the Irvine Values Coalition, a local group that succeeded in bringing to a vote a city ordinance banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Sheldon is barely known to those he calls “enemies,” say leaders of gay-rights organizations and local chapters of Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union. Some find his tactics more sad than threatening.

Simple Answers

Changes in family structures have occurred so rapidly over past decades that “the Lou Sheldons need to find answers that promote their agenda and provide simple solutions to complex questions,” said Laguna Beach Mayor Robert F. Gentry, who supported the ordinance and is one of the few openly gay elected officials in Southern California.

Sheldon left his pastorate at Trinity Church of Anaheim eight years ago to form the coalition with Herb Leo, an Anaheim businessman.

With the help of two other lobbyists in the coalition’s Sacramento office, Sheldon said, he succeeded last year in pressuring state legislators to adopt legislation requiring sex education teachers to stress sexual abstinence.

Among its lobbying efforts, the coalition sent boxes of candy to all 40 senators and all 80 Assembly members, as well as to Gov. George Deukmejian and state schools Supt. Bill Honig in February, 1988, and again in February, 1989, according to state lobbyist reports.

The coalition also spent $2,311.90 on a dinner for six state senators, including Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), and nine Assembly members, including Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) and Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach). Four representatives of the state Board of Education and three people from the governor’s office also attended the dinner on May, 11, 1988.

Get Out Votes

Sheldon said that the group’s political action committee is no longer active and that it does not contribute to individual campaigns. Instead, he said, the group is able to mobilize a conservative Christian voting block. “We get votes out,” he explained.

Every election year, the Coalition sends its California Voters Guide to 250,000 voters statewide. In it, candidates are ranked according to their stands on the coalition’s issues. “We have people call in” to coalition offices, Sheldon said. “They lobby these guys (candidates).”

While he is promoting a nation founded on biblical beliefs, Sheldon said his group is not trying to create a theocracy. “This is a nation built on biblical principles,” he said.

“Our purpose is to always remind and educate people, the elected officials and the populace of what the principles are. If we deny these principles, the nation will crumble and will crumble fast like ice in the sun.”

While his organization sometimes has been criticized for pushing religion into the political arena, Sheldon said, “public policy” has overtaken issues--such as abortion--that are fundamentally biblical and moral. “We’re moving on solid ground.”

ORDINANCE LOSES Law protecting AIDS victims defeated. Part I, Page 1